The Just Judges Panel, St Bavo's Cathedral

On April 11, 1934, the sexton of St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, a man named Van Volsem, began his morning round as usual. A few hours later he noticed that the lock on the door to the Vijd chapel had been forced. Commissioner Patijn of the Ghent police found that the iron hinges holding a shutter of the Ghent Altarpiece in place had been removed and that two panels had been lifted out of their frame. The police found no fingerprints and no other trace of whoever did it. VRT NWS, the Flemish public broadcaster, dates the theft to the night of April 10 to 11, 1934.

The two panels were the Just Judges and Saint John the Baptist. They had been painted on the front and back of a single board, which the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin sawed in two lengthwise in 1894 so that both sides could be shown at once. Visit Gent, the city's tourism site, says that cut made the theft easier. A note left on the frame, in French, said the panels had been taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Visit Gent calls it a diversion.

The ransom letters

On April 30, 1934, 19 days after the theft, Bishop Coppieters of Ghent received a letter in French demanding 1,000,000 Belgian francs. If the church did not pay, the panels would be destroyed. The letter was signed with the initials D.U.A. The bishop was willing to pay. The Ghent prosecutor and the minister of justice would not give permission. VRT reports that the letters asked for replies to be placed as newspaper advertisements.

With his third letter, the sender enclosed a receipt for the luggage office at Brussels-Noord station. The Saint John the Baptist panel was waiting there. A clerk remembered the man who had left it as about 50 years old, with a pointed beard.

The police then prepared a parcel holding 25,000 francs rather than the million, and the sender named an Antwerp priest, Henri Meulepas of the Sint-Laurentiuskerk, as the go-between. On June 14, 1934, a taxi driver arrived at the priest's rectory with an envelope. Inside was a torn newspaper page that fit exactly the half page the sender had mailed earlier. Meulepas handed over the parcel. The man took it and left. The last letter arrived on October 1, 1934, after what Visit Gent describes as a long correspondence that came to nothing.

Arsène Goedertier

In autumn 1934, at a political party meeting in Dendermonde, a 57-year-old named Arsène Goedertier had a heart attack shortly after giving his own speech. Goedertier owned a small bank office in Wetteren, was regarded as a respectable man, and, as a former sexton, had good connections with the Ghent diocese. He was carried to his brother-in-law's house and died there not long after.

On his deathbed, according to Visit Gent, Goedertier told his lawyer that he was the only person who knew where the original Just Judges was hidden, and his last words were "in my desk, key, cabinet, folder mutualité..." A witness quoted by VRT in 2018 gives him different words: that he alone knew where the panel was and that everything could be found in his file at home.

The folder held an envelope with copies of the ransom letters to Bishop Coppieters and no sign of the panel. Visit Gent counts thirteen letters. The Art Newspaper counted twelve that were sent, plus a thirteenth that never was.

Whether Goedertier was the thief is disputed. VRT wrote in 2024 that evidence found at his home suggests he was probably the extortionist. In 2018, VRT's Siel Van der Donckt relayed the view of Karel Mortier, a former Ghent police commissioner, that Goedertier was certainly not the thief and not the only one, and probably joined later to organize the extortion.

The copy

The Just Judges now hanging in the altarpiece is a copy, painted from 1939 by Jef Van der Veken. Sources differ on when it was finished. VRT reported in 2019 that Van der Veken worked from a 16th century copy by Michiel Coxcie and gave one of the judges the face of King Leopold III so the copy could be told apart from the original.

The file

In 2014, VRT reported that the theft was legally time-barred and that the police and the prosecutor were still working on it. On January 7, 2025, searches of a villa in East Flanders, made after the prosecutor's office received a tip, did not find the panel. Prosecutor Caroline Dewitte said the searches had produced nothing but that the office would keep investigating new tips and keep hoping for a good outcome. She added that she found it unlikely the panel had been destroyed: "It must still be somewhere." On January 6, 2026, VRT wrote that the file had still not been closed.

The last words. Goedertier's "in my desk, key, cabinet, folder mutualité" pointed to a folder that held copies of the letters and nothing else. Visit Gent says the folder held no trace of the panel.

The Kalandeberg. In June 2018, the authors of the book De veertiende brief, Marc De Bel and his co-author Marchal, argued that the panel lies in a small tunnel under the Kalandeberg, a shopping street near the cathedral, because sewer work was under way there in 1932. Mayor Daniel Termont said the prosecutor's office took the lead seriously. A ground scan in September 2018 covered the square to a depth of about 1.5 meters and found no hidden space. On May 7, 2019, a contractor paid for a dig on the street, with no public money. The work was stopped quickly and produced nothing. Workers had hit a concrete slab recently laid over vaults and an iron wall ladder. Marchal said the dig showed the tunnel had been opened at some point.

The well. A search of a well near the cathedral in November 2019 turned up a few coins and a wooden lid.

The 1971 account. Journalist Rudy Pieters has said the panel was destroyed in 1971. VRT noted in 2024 that nobody has claimed to have witnessed it.

The altarpiece hangs in the Sacramentskapel, its place since 2021, and not in the Vijd chapel the panel was taken from. Since May 3, 2023, seven of its twenty panels have been away from the cathedral for restoration and replaced by high-definition photographs. The cathedral's home page gives spring 2027 for the end of the work, and its history page says 2026. The Just Judges copy hangs in the lower register.

In October 2026, the cathedral was open Monday through Saturday from 8:30am to 5:30pm, and the Lam Gods visitor center from 10am to 5pm. A 25 minute Lam Gods visit cost 12.50 euros, and the 60 minute augmented reality tour that includes it cost 16 euros.

The cathedral's own website does not mention the theft or the copy. Art in Flanders notes that the copy shows less depth than the originals beside it.