"Woman with the German keys" identified 21 years after her body was found

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Interpol said Friday it has identified a cold case victim nicknamed "The Woman with the German keys" more than two decades after her corpse was found at the Dutch seaside. The case was solved thanks to a tip to police in the Netherlands, the agency said.

This is the fourth case to be solved by the international police organization's "Identify Me" campaign, which was founded in 2023 and is tasked with identifying women who were found dead across Europe in recent decades — murdered or in suspicious circumstances.

Interpol identified the woman as Eva Maria Pommer, a German citizen who was 35 years old when she died.

Her body was found on July 4, 2004 in the dunes in Meijendel, a nature reserve in the southern Netherlands. The cause of her death remains unknown, and Interpol would not rule out foul play.

Pommer was found dressed in an unusual number of layers of clothing for the summertime, including two pairs of trousers, according to the law enforcement agency.

"Her keys, clothing, and glasses all seem to point to Germany," Interpol added.

keys-0ee4e6347715-nl10-identified-en2.jpg Interpol identified a cold case victim nicknamed "The Woman with the German keys" more than two decades after her corpse was found, the agency said on Oct. 10, 2025.  Interpol

The discovery that one of the keys on her person had previously been delivered to a company in the German city of Bottrop, not far from the Dutch border, allowed investigators to probe the German connection.

But the destruction of the company's archives in a fire prevented them from tracing the key back to Pommer's address, a Dutch police spokesperson said.

After two programs bringing the affair's Bottrop connection to light were broadcast in October 2024 on both Dutch and German television, the police received "hundreds of tip-offs about the case," which allowed them to link the key to "a number of potential addresses."

In parallel, a Dutch foundation specialized in unresolved cases traced "a very interesting lead about a German woman who was said to have been missing for some 20 years," before sharing the information with the police.

DNA analysis then confirmed that Pommer's identity matched that of the body on the shore.

Interpol has asked the public to come forward with any information about Pommer to the Dutch authorities.

"This latest identification is more than just a milestone in our ongoing campaign — it's a testament to what we can accomplish when nations stand together," Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said in a statement.

The breakthrough comes just weeks after the Identify Me campaign announced it had finally put a name to the so-called "Woman in Pink," revealing her to be Russian national Liudmila Zavada. One of Zavada's relatives provided a DNA sample that was compared to the sample investigators had from the initial investigation. The samples matched, allowing officials to confirm that the woman was Zavada.

Earlier this year, 33-year-old Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima was identified when Paraguayan authorities matched fingerprints uploaded by Spain against their own national databases. She was previously known only as "the woman in the chicken coop."

In 2023 it also led to the identification of Rita Roberts, a British woman who was found murdered in Antwerp in 1992, after her relatives recognized her tattoo.

The Identify Me campaign is still trying to solve the cases of 43 unidentified women.

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