Bombshell: Missing hotel heiress found in anonymous grave site

Corrie van der Valk’s remains were positively identified after Belgian authorities exhumation of a grave of an unknown woman killed by a train in 2001.

The unknown woman was apparently so badly injured by the train, she was unable to be identified and was laid to rest in an anonymous grave.

The train accident happened in Belgium’s Namur district on the same day Ms van der Valk was last seen alive at her family’s rural homestead in the Netherlands.

However, authorities did not connect the cases at the time.

The mystery was solved as Belgium exhumed the graves of more than 100 unidentified people for DNA testing and one matched with Ms van der Valk, according to The Brussels Times.

Husband was the prime suspect.

Corrie van der Valk, 58, was first reported missing after she didn't show at her husband Nico’s 60th birthday drinks.

At the time the couple was separated but still living together with their six children.

On the morning of her January 7, 2001 disappearance, Ms van der Valk reportedly told relatives she needed a change in her life.

She was not reported missing until three weeks later.

Dutch police quickly discovered that Ms van der Valk, who was heir to the family’s 98-hotel fortune, was in the process of divorcing her husband and named him prime suspect in her possible murder.

Mr van der Valk repeatedly denied causing his wife any harm, but in March 2001 he was arrested, spending three weeks in custody before authorities released him without charge.

Nico van der Valk (fourth from the left) surrounded by his children Maarten, Anouk, Sandra and son-in-law Walter. Picture: News.com.au

“I’ve known my wife for 40 years, she always managed to arrange everything perfectly,” Mr van der Valk told media after he was freed.

“Although she gives me a lot of trouble, I am also a bit proud of her. She has also arranged this perfectly. She succeeded in getting 25 police officers out of the garden.”

It was reported that Ms van der Valk had suffered from chronic depression and had been experiencing suicidal thoughts before she vanished.

Some speculated she had joined a cult or “New Age movement” and her yoga teacher told media she was convinced the missing woman had fled to India.

Even her own children believed for a time that she had fled to India to become a devotee of spiritual leader Sai Baba.

However, without a body, rumours Ms van der Valk had been murdered by her husband continued to swirl even after he was cleared by police in 2003.

Ms van der Valk was declared dead in 2008 after the statuary seven-year period, but her family remained haunted by the mystery of what happened to her.