Jan Caubergh

Jan Caubergh (September 18, 1934, Lanaken – November 29, 2013, Bruges) was a Belgian serial killer. In 1966, he received 25 years of forced labour for his participation in a robbery in which his gang shot a nurse who was severely maimed and later committed suicide. In 1977 he was released on parole.

On February 21, 1979, he raped his pregnant neighbour, 19-year-old Yvonne Smits, shooting her in the back of the head afterwards. Later he strangled his girlfriend, 24-year-old Rina Van Geldorp and their five-month-old son Nicky. He also wounded a policeman with a Long Rifle, later rigging up his police car in an attempt to injure another two policemen. After a manhunt lasting several days in which he hid himself on barges on the Albert Canal and a bottle stopper factory in Deurne, he was arrested in a hotel in Athenembuurt, Antwerp.[1][2] He was given the death sentence, but it was later converted to a life imprisonment.

In 2003 Caubergh stabbed a prison guide with a cake knife during a trip out of the central prison in Leuven. The supervisor survived the attack. In September 2010, Caubergh received another 12 years in prison.[3] He spent more than 45 years of his life in prison, the last 34 and a half of which were uninterrupted. That made him one of the longest-serving detainees in the country.

On November 5, 2013, several reports from the Belgian media announced that Caubergh had died in the penitentiary complex in Bruges.[4] This was denied a few days later by the Belgian Prison System.[5] He eventually died on November 29, 2013. At that time he was the oldest detainee in Belgium.[6][7]