Apollo Disks

The Apollo Disks were a collection of encoded digital disks containing evidence of the international child pornography network operated through the Apollo Bulletin Board Service by Gerrit-Jan Ulrich from Zandvoort, Netherlands. Ulrich handed the disks to private investigator Marcel Vervloesem during their meeting in June 1998, before fleeing to Italy where he was murdered. Ulrich also hid a cache of additional disks beneath a floorboard in his apartment, which contained information on his network of associates and clients.¹

Vervloesem passed the Apollo Disks to his colleague Gina Pardaens-Bernaer at the Morkhoven Workgroup, who made copies before they were given to Dutch police. Pardaens-Bernaer identified a perpetrator linked to the Marc Dutroux network in a snuff film on the disks, telling friends before her death about "a video tape in which a girl is being murdered during a sex party" where "she believed one of the perpetrators to be an acquaintance of Jean-Michel Nihoul." Two days before her death in a car crash in November 1998, Pardaens-Bernaer sent copies of the Apollo Disks to the International Committee for the Dignity of the Child in Geneva with a letter stating her life had been threatened.¹

The disks found at Ulrich's apartment contained tens of thousands of images and videos showing extremely violent sexual abuse of children, including infants. Information on the disks identified suppliers including Warwick Spinks and Lothar Glandorf. Members of the Morkhoven Workgroup believed they identified Katrien de Cuyper in pornographic photos found on the Apollo Disks. A document on the disks contained a detailed order list for accessing infants for sex.¹