Belgian authorities are looking into more possible murder cases in connection with 38-year-old Ronald Jansson, who confessed over the weekend to the murder of a couple and then on Monday to a third murder.

Media reports are saying Jansson may have murdered more than just three people, with the Belgian news agency Belga saying that authorities in the Dutch city of Maastricht were investigating Jansson's link to the disappearance of a Dutch couple in 1994.

Jansson was born in Holland, near Maastricht, and lived in the border city for a time in the 1990s.

The next Dutroux?

According to reports, investigators are looking into at least 10 other unsolved murder cases to which the teacher could be linked.

"Investigators are afraid that this is just the beginning of a long list of Janssen's crimes," the Belgian De Standaard newspaper said.

Reports say the authorities have reopened the case of a 16-year-old German girl from the western town of Vechta who was killed in 1996 while on vacation on the North Sea coast in Belgium.

The Belgian prosecutor in charge of the Janssen case has warned Belgian citizens, however, against incriminating Janssen of any murders without the appropriate facts.

"At this point, we only have proof for two murders, no more," a statement said.

The case has pervaded Belgian media for days, with several newspapers calling Jansson Belgium's "latest serial killer." The daily Het Nieuwsblad asked in one of its headlines whether Jensson was "the next Dutroux."

The infamous Belgian sex offender and serial killer, Marc Dutroux, was convicted in 2004 of killing four girls and sentenced to life in prison.

The case garnered international attention, due both to the heinous crimes Dutroux committed and to numerous shortcomings on the part of the Belgian criminal justice system.

glb/AP/dpa
Editor: Michael Lawton