Amersfoort police are making a new effort to find a man with a false hand who raped a 17-year-old girl in November 1995.

The girl was attacked in a road underpass after a night out close to the city’s main railway station at around 5 am. During the attack, the rapist told the girl about his false hand, saying he was “the only person in Amersfoort to have one”.

Even though the police have DNA evidence, they have never managed to trace the man, hence this new attempt to find witnesses almost 30 years on.

“Detectives did a major investigation in 1995 and later,” the police said in a statement. “In 2018 we were able to put together a DNA profile of the attacker, which was not a match in the DNA databank. Similar probes in 2021 and 2023 also drew a blank.”

A reconstruction of the crime was broadcast on a television crimes show on Tuesday evening.

Police say they hope the combination of the artificial hand and 1990s Amersfoort will jog people’s memories. “Knowing that we have DNA may lower the threshold and encourage them to come forward,” the statement said. “We expect him to be over the age of 50.”

Some 5,000 to 6,000 people in the Netherlands have a prosthetic hand.