A hologram of a younger intercourse employee haunts Amsterdam’s purple mild district.
Wearing pale denim hotpants, a leopard-print bra, with a tattoo snaking up her abdomen and throughout her chest, the 3D computer-generated picture reaches out and seems to knock on the window to draw consideration.
She leans ahead, breathes on the glass and writes the phrase “assist”.
The hologram is designed to signify Bernadette “Betty” Szabo, a 19-year-old lady from Hungary who was murdered a couple of months after giving start in 2009.
Her deadly stabbing has baffled police for 15 years. Dutch chilly case detectives are utilizing the revolutionary expertise for the primary time in an effort to resolve the case.
The murdered teenager’s picture is being projected from behind a window, alongside lots of of younger girls who proceed to make a residing on this notoriously dangerous business.
Investigators hope the lifelike hologram will assist jog recollections and draw consideration to the unsolved homicide.
Till now, Betty’s killer has eluded justice and chilly case detective Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk is decided to vary that: “A younger lady, solely 19, taken from life in such a horrific method.”
Szabo had a troublesome life and her story was considered one of hardship and resilience, in response to the detective.
She had moved to Amsterdam aged 18 and have become pregnant quickly afterwards. She carried on working all through her being pregnant, returning to the job shortly after her son was born.
It was within the early hours of 19 February 2009, when two intercourse staff went to verify on the teenage mom throughout a break between shoppers, as a result of they realised her standard music was not enjoying.
Once they entered her brothel, a small room with a plastic-covered mattress, self-importance desk and sink, they found Betty Szabo’s physique.
She had been murdered three months after giving start, the sufferer of a savage knife assault.
Her child was positioned in foster care and by no means obtained to know his mom – a proven fact that motivates detectives.
Though police instantly launched a homicide investigation, her killer was by no means discovered. They combed via CCTV footage and questioned potential witnesses.
Nearly all of individuals eyeing the scantily dressed girls behind the purple neon home windows are vacationers. Police suspect the perpetrator got here from overseas.
Now they’re urging individuals who could have visited Amsterdam to assume again, with a €30,000 reward to encourage witnesses to come back ahead.
As Amsterdam grapples with controversial plans to relocate its well-known brothels to an out-of-town “erotic zone”, Betty Szabo’s hologram affords a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of intercourse staff in an space that, regardless of a spread of safety measures, stays perilous.
Intercourse staff have voiced considerations that eradicating the ladies who promote intercourse from public view might expose them to even higher hazard.
The truth that such a violent crime might happen in one of many Netherlands’ busiest nightspots with out witnesses coming ahead continues to confound investigators.
Within the historic red-light district the place she as soon as lived and labored, the teenage intercourse employee’s digital presence reminds passers-by that her case is but to be solved.
