Forest Boy unmasked - he's a 20-year-old disturbed Dutchman

The mystery of the German “Forest Boy” has been solved less than three days after his picture was published — and his claim of living in a wood with his father for five years has been exposed as a lie.

Ten months after spinning his tall tale to German authorities in Berlin it turns out the Forest Boy is actually Robin van Helsum, 20, a deeply disturbed man from the Dutch city of Hengelo.

He called himself Ray when he turned up on the steps of a town hall in Berlin on September 5 last year with a story that stunned the world. “I am all alone,” he said. “Please help me.”

Speaking in accented English, Ray said his mother Doreen had died years earlier in a car crash in Germany and that he had spent the last 60 months living in a forest with his father Ryan.

He said he had buried his father in the wood two weeks previously and, with the aid of a compass, walked to Berlin. He claimed he had lost his memory.

Months of patient questioning by psychiatrists and police did not shake his story — but they never believed it.

Then on Friday came the call to Berlin police saying that his stepmother had come forward.

A Hengelo police spokesman said: “We are 100 per cent certain that we are dealing with the 20-year-old boy, who his stepmother unambiguously identified. We are very happy that he’s been found.”

Now that his identity has been established, sympathy for Van Helsum is changing into anger in Berlin where he was costing the taxpayer £5,000 a month in care costs.

“It’s no longer a joke,” said police spokesman Michael Maass. “He deliberately took us for fools, and he could be liable for the costs.”

According to sources in Hengelo, Van Helsum disappeared on September 2 last year and was reported missing by his family.