BRUSSELS, Belgium – A Belgian teen, beaten with a bat and stuffed into a car trunk, made a last, futile call for help, sending her father a cellphone text message that his girlfriend was trying to kill her, officials said Tuesday.
Stephanie De Mulder’s father, on vacation in the Netherlands, found the message on his phone a day later.
By that time, the body of his 18-year-old daughter, dressed in her nightgown, had been dumped in the waters off the port of Antwerp.
The live-in girlfriend, Maura Van Lommel, and her 23-year-old son, Andy, were detained and confessed to the killing, the girlfriend’s lawyer said. Divers recovered the girl’s body Saturday.
“At the (court) session, she expressed regret at what has happened,” lawyer Steff Stevens told reporters.
The father, Gilbert De Mulder, told investigators he didn’t see the message until the next day. He then called police.
“Both have confessed to murder, but we have no idea about the motive,” Stevens told Belgian TV station VRT.
Gilbert De Mulder said he believed Van Lommel, his girlfriend of five years, was jealous of his close relationship with his daughter.
According to police, Van Lommel and her son went into the teenager’s bedroom the night of Aug. 11, struck her with a baseball bat and threw the unconscious body down the stairs to try to make it look like an accident. The mother and son each accuse the other of wielding the bat.
They then allegedly put her in the trunk of a car and drove from the home in Mechelen to Antwerp, 20 miles away, where the body was thrown into the harbor.
The teen apparently regained consciousness briefly and sent the text message from inside the trunk, according to investigators: “Help, Maura is killing.”
Today, officials will take the mother and son back to the brick row house in Mechelen, just north of Brussels, where the attack occurred. Re-enactments of crimes are a common practice in Belgium.
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