Conman Ric Blum checked over Belgium’s unsolved Brabant Killers crime spree

Investigators working on Belgium’s most notorious crime spree have sought information from Australian counterparts about serial conman Ric Blum.

Ric Blum enters Byron Bay Local Court in February 2022 for the Marion Barter inquest. Picture: Tessa Flemming

Investigators working on Bel­gium’s most notorious crime spree have sought information from Australian counterparts about serial conman Ric Blum, after being told of a curious set of facts they believe warranted further checks.

Mr Blum is not a suspect in the series of unsolved robberies and murders attributed to a gang known as the Brabant Killers, but police on that case have taken an interest in him after being provided material by The Australian.

The material outlined a family’s suspicions about Mr Blum and detailed his height, leg injuries, physical appearance, past service as a gendarme, travel movements and criminal history.

It resulted in Belgian police asking the Australian Federal Police for all available information on Mr Blum, including whether there was access to his fingerprints and DNA, according to sources who were not authorised to speak publicly.

Missing teacher Marion Barter with her children, Sally and Owen.

Mr Blum, 83, has become a central figure at an inquest into the 1997 disappearance and suspected death of Queensland teacher Marion Barter after admitting they were in a secret relationship before she went missing.

Now living in Ballina in northern NSW, he has no known history of violence, denies any knowledge of what happened to Barter, and has rejected alle­gations he deceived and stole from a series of other women.

The Weekend Australian is not suggesting he was involved in the Brabant killings, only that there were enough questions to warrant further investigations by Belgian authorities.

It is expected anything passed from the AFP to Belgian police will be added to a database of information on the Brabant Killers.

This will allow police to check for or rule out any possible connections to suspects, tip-offs and forensic evidence gathered from crime scenes.

Between 1982 and 1985, the gang murdered 28 people in a string of offences that escalated from low level theft and robberies to acts of extreme violence.

The case has gripped Belgium ever since and remains under active investigation, with authorities still frequently receiving tips about possible identities of the gang’s members, including three dubbed The Giant, The Killer and The Old Man.

In March, The Australian detailed the case of Belgian widow Andree Flamme, 93, who says Mr Blum stole her valuable coin collection from her Brussels home in 2010. What wasn’t reported was that relatives of Ms Flamme had raised suspicions that Mr Blum may have been involved in the Brabant offences.

Andree Flamme, 93, and her daughter Agnes Plume. Ric Blum allegedly stole Ms Flamme’s coin collection in 2010 and the family suspected he may have a darker past.

Ms Flamme’s daughter, Agnes Plume, said she and her late husband, Pierre Dure, told Belgian police the theory around the time of the theft, but it had not led anywhere. It was speculation based largely on Mr Blum’s physical traits, but also on limited information they knew about his history, Ms Plume said.

“My husband had this idea that this man was The Giant,” Ms Plume said. “He was very mysterious, and he had all sorts of strange scars on his legs, and he had back problems, and he was supposedly an ex-police officer.

“It seemed to us as he could potentially have been implicated in the Brabant murders. But actual proof, we don’t have any.”

The Giant has been described as being tall with a limp, and there has long been speculation the offenders could be connected to the gendarmerie, Belgium’s former national police force.

Mr Blum is about 188cm and has told the Barter inquest he suffered serious leg injuries in a fall from a horse when he was a gendarme in the 1960s.

Ms Plume and Mr Dure’s son, Hadrien Dure, said his father was devastated by the theft of the coins after vouching for Mr Blum, and conducted his own investi­gations before his death in 2012.

“My father thought he was in the Brabant Killers,” he said.

The Australian subsequently examined available records on Mr Blum and intriguing facts emerged. Mr Blum was born Willy Coppenolle in Tournai, Belgium, on July 9, 1939, and changed his name to Willy Wouters as a child when his mother remarried.

He graduated from teenage thief to serious repeat fraudster, and has used at least 50 different aliases over his lifetime.

Australian immigration file documents state that from 1971 to 1974 he was jailed in France for fraud; in 1976 he became an Australian citizen; and in 1978 he was sentenced in Tournai to three years’ imprisonment for further fraud offences.

He was in his 40s when the Brabant offences occurred, and for at least some of that time lived in Luxembourg and in Burwash in Britain.

According to online reports, one of the earliest Brabant offences was the theft of automatic weapons from the Gendarmerie barracks at Etterbeek on December 31, 1981. Mr Blum’s Australian immigration records list his address and workplace from 1959 to 1964 as the same barracks.

Travel records show he had been in Australia but left to travel overseas 27 days before the barracks burglary. He does not appear to have been in Australia at the time of any known Brabant ­offences. In 1986, when the Brabant ­offences stopped, Mr Blum moved back to Australia to live permanently.

On March 7, this newspaper emailed Brabant investigators with questions and a list of reasons Mr Blum appeared to warrant further investigation.

A 1986 photo of Ric Blum sent to Belgian investigators.

Belgian police were aware of Mr Blum from various complaints of deception and theft made against him, but did not have his full criminal history.

Mr Blum could not be contacted for comment.