Dutch television programme Spoorloos (without a trace) which helps reunite people with long-lost members of their family has again matched someone with the wrong relatives.

Adopted daughter Marthainès de Vries was helped by the show to find her relatives but, 23 years later, found they were not and that her real parents had died.

“I am so sad and angry at Spoorloos. If the researchers had done their job properly, I could have had nine years with my real mother and 11 with my father. They are dead and I’ll never have that time again,” she told the Volkskrant.

KRO-NCRV said in a reaction it was happy the woman had found her true family in Colombia and that they were “sad and sorry” about the mismatch.

“We have been in contact with Mrs de Vries for months and have offered more DNA testing, but she declined the offer,” the broadcaster said in a statement. The statement also said that discussing the case in the media was “not the right route”.

It is not the first time Spoorloos has identified the wrong relative. In 2022, it admitted to at least two cases in which Colombians who were adopted as babies were reunited with the wrong family.

DNA testing was not a standard part of the show’s detection work until 2019.

The paper said De Vries had started a crowdfunding campaign to finance taking the broadcaster to court.

Journalist Kees van der Spek, who discovered the errors, and former presenter Derk Bolt have been called as witnesses along with several researchers. The case has been scheduled for March 6 and April 15, lawyer Royce de Vries confirmed.