January 13, 1946 - Michel Bellen

Michel Bellen (13 January 1946 – 10 June 2020), also called the Linkeroever Strangler (Dutch: Wurger van Linkeroever), was a Belgian murderer regarded as the first serial killer in Flanders.

In August 1964, he raped a woman after chasing her from the supermarket in Linkeroever. The woman was able to escape. After this first rape, Bellen would eventually commit three murders. The first murder happened in December 1964. After the rape of a 21-year-old nurse, he strangled her in an alley with a piece of barbed wire. A month later, in 1965, he raped and murdered a 37-year-old nurse. In 1966, he was sentenced to death by the Assize Court, albeit his sentence was later converted to life in prison.

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel Bellen under CC BY-SA 4.0.