Brother confessed to killing his own sister even though he didn’t do it | World | News
Andy van den Hurk told police he had killed his sister (Image: undefined)
On March 11 2011, Andy van den Hurk published a disturbing admission on his Facebook page: “I will be arrested today [for] the murder of my sister, I confessed.”
Sixteen years before, his cherished step-sister Nicole, 15, had disappeared whilst cycling to her workplace at a local shopping centre in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
However, she never turned up for her shift. That evening, police discovered her rucksack and bicycle in the vicinity.
A month afterwards, her body was discovered assaulted and viciously stabbed with a knife in the neighbouring woodland. No convictions were secured and, as time passed, the investigation stalled.
Van den Hurk’s murder became a nationwide phenomenon in the Netherlands. Hundreds participated in the search for her and thousands attended her funeral on November 20 1995, reports the Mirror.
Developments in the case frequently dominated national headlines.
Andy van den Hurk was determined to find out what had happened (Image: X)
In February 1996, police believed they had cracked the case when an acquaintance of the van den Hurk family was arrested for drug trafficking.
He maintained he had been coerced into smuggling heroin by the men responsible for the teenager’s killing. However, the police dismissed his account and the investigation stagnated.
As time passed, Nicole’s murder faded from public consciousness. Detectives moved onto other cases.
Those who remained committed relaunched a cold case review in 2004, but no fresh evidence emerged.
Observing this and exasperated, Andy resolved to intervene. By then living in the UK, he admitted to the murder and was detained by British police, who extradited him to the Netherlands.
Nicole van den Hurk was 15 when she was murdered (Image: Wiki Commons)
Five days afterwards, he was freed as no additional evidence connecting him to the offence could be discovered.
He subsequently retracted his confession, and explained: “I wanted to get [Nicole] exhumed and get DNA off her. I kind of set myself up and it could have gone horribly wrong.
“She is my sister. I miss her every day.”
Remarkably, Andy’s audacious strategy succeeded. In September 2011, with fresh attention on the unsolved case, police exhumed Nicole’s body and analysed the DNA.
They discovered traces belonging to two men – her boyfriend at the time and another that couldn’t be identified.
This was the DNA of a 46-year-old man known as Jos de G, a former psychiatric patient and convicted rapist.
One of his three previous convictions related to a case strikingly similar to Nicole’s. De G had previously attacked a young woman cycling in a neighbouring town and raped her at knifepoint.
In April 2014, charges for the rape and murder of Nicole were filed against de G. However, the defence argued that the semen, belonging to de G, discovered on Nicole and her coat could have resulted from a consensual encounter.
De G’s charges were downgraded to manslaughter, but even then – and following two years in court – he was acquitted and sentenced to just five years for rape.
His sentence was confirmed by the Dutch Supreme Court in June 2020.
