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Apr

Survivor

Written by Satish Sekar

The 'Defence' Witness
It doesn't happen often, but the the Schiedam Park Murder offers many lessons and a victim who should have been a compelling defence witness. Maikel Willebrand was lucky to be alive. "Maikel was very, very lucky and very, very cool in the way he played dead and that's really the only reason that he survived, so he played dead," Dutch DNA expert Richard Eikelenboom said.

Eikelenboom played a crucial role in this case, but that came later. "A pool of blood was found at the crime-scene and DNA testing on the victims also yielded DNA profiles," said Eikelenboom. "Maikel was there bleeding for a certain amount of time, but he could still hear and see parts of the crime." Willebrand's quick wits not only saved his life, but provided a crucial witness to a horrible crime. It should have been the police's dream, but they made a terrible mess of it. An entirely preventable miscarriage of justice occurred and it almost happened to Willebrand as well.

Evidence
A decade ago the 11 year-old boy survived one the nastiest crimes in Dutch history. Stabbed eleven times, he played dead while Wik Haalmeijer raped and murdered his 10 year-old friend, Nienke Kleiss. He waited until the killer went away and ran out of the Beatrix Park in Schiedam straight into the arms of cyclist, Kees Borsboom, who would later be the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice.

"I've worked in a lot of other rapes/homicides where we did not find anything, but she was raped and later on she was she was strangled with the lace of Maikel's boots," Eikelenboom said. "In order to do that the perpetrator had to untie the laces; it had very long strings. The shoe-strings are pulled around the necks of both victims and they were pulled very, very strongly, so now you have the information to work on, fibre DNA. We were doing contact DNA from them."

Willebrand's boot-laces were therefore vitally important. The one around Kleiss' neck was more important than the one round Willebrand's as there was less blood on it, which made the attacker's DNA easier to obtain. It yielded the killer's DNA profile. That should have helped to prevent a miscarriage of justice as the police now had the killer's DNA to compare against the profiles of suspects. In fact it was elsewhere as well. And Willebrand had survived the attack; he could identify the killer. Willebrand described the killer – it fitted Haalmeijer, as did the DNA, but Borsboom was the suspect then and tunnel-vision took over.

Absurd
Before police 'discovered' Borsboom as a suspect, they thought that Willebrand was lying. He had been too smart by playing dead. His account did not fit the case-scenario, so they thought that he was the perpetrator. It was absurd on every level. Willebrand was a child and there was clear scientific evidence that proved that someone else had been involved.

"The perpetrator leaves the crime scene," Eikelenboom explains. "Maikel waits a couple of minutes and gets up and walks to the road. Borsboom is the one – Maikel walks into his hands. Borsboom is in the road, Maikel walks to him completely naked, but with one of his boots around his neck, so the perpetrator also tried to strangle him. Borsboom is the one who calls the police. How weird? Why would a perpetrator stay at a crime scene and then call the police."

Incredibly, this did not trouble police. Borsboom was interrogated and confessed. Most of his interviews were tape-recorded, but not the crucial one where he confessed, which is strange. Borsboom quickly retracted, but it counted for nothing. Nevertheless, he had one great hope. His confession contradicted Willebrand's account, but the treatment of Willebrand was a complete disgrace even after police moved on to Borsboom.

They still refused to believe their witness and tried to force him to support their case. Willebrand refused to budge and he was subsequently vindicated. The survivor was to all intents and purposes a defence witness, but Borsboom was convicted in nearby Rotterdam and lost his appeal. However, this was not the end of the story.

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