Jean-Claude Van Espen was a Belgian judge assigned to the reopened investigation of the [[Christine Van Hees]] murder from 1984 after [[Michel Nihoul]] was named as a suspect in 1996. Van Espen was a close friend and business partner of Nihoul but failed to recuse himself from the case. His conflict of interest was brought to light by a journalist two years later, in 1998, at which point he finally stepped down from the case.[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Dovey, S. (2023). *Eye of the Chickenhawk*. United States: Thehotstar.