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Gerald Roethof, lawyer for the defendant in the Verstappen case, in front of the courthouse in Maastricht
Photo: MARCEL VAN HOORN / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
More than two decades after the murder of 11-year-old Nicky Verstappen near the German-Dutch border, the legal processing of the case begins in court.
The 57-year-old defendant Jos B. protested at the start of the trial in Maastricht that the boy was already dead when he found him.
He doesn't want anything to do with the crime.
The case is one of the most notorious criminal cases in recent Dutch history.
The eleven year old disappeared in August 1998 in the Brunssummerheide Nature Park between Maastricht and Aachen during a summer camp.
His body was found a day later.
Nicky Verstappen had been sexually assaulted and killed.
The investigators had no trace of a perpetrator for a long time.
But in 2018 Jos B. was arrested in Spain and extradited to the Netherlands.
The prosecution accuses him of kidnapping, sexually abusing and killing the boy.
At the beginning of the trial, the court was shown a video showing the defendant in his cell.
Jos B. claims he found Nicky lifeless in a wooded area the day after the crime.
He had checked whether the boy was still breathing and felt his pulse.
To do this, he turned it over and touched it.
When he noticed that the eleven-year-old was dead, he fled.
He could not have gone to the police because: "Who would believe me? I had a past," he said in the video.
In 1985, he was suspected of molesting two boys, but was not convicted.
27 DNA lanes
The investigators had found the defendant after a mass genetic test.
According to Dutch media reports, a total of 27 DNA traces were found on Nicky's body that match the DNA of Jos B. - including those from the boy's underpants.
The defense tries to refute this finding.
There are no sperm or blood traces, says the lawyer.
Jos B.'s DNA could also have got onto the body in other ways.
For example, it is conceivable that the man in the campground went to the toilet, dried his hands there and then Nicky happened next to come in and use the towel.
Jos B. was arrested in Spain two years ago and extradited to the Netherlands.
Since then he has been in custody.
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Berthie and Peter Verstappen, the victim's parents, at the court in Maastricht
Photo: MARCEL VAN HOORN / AFP
Shortly after the crime, he was the focus of the investigators because he was walking near the location of the body in the middle of the night.
He returned there last year accompanied by the police: Together with the judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and Nicky's parents, he took part in a crime scene inspection.
A complicated circumstantial process is expected in Maastricht over the next three weeks.
It is about the question of whether the judges consider the DNA traces to be sufficient to convict the accused against his assertions.
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jpz / dpa