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Wetenschappers kritisch over arrest zaak-Nicky Verstappen - Argos
Scientists critical of judgement in Nicky Verstappen case
'Evidences do not prove Jos B.'s guilt'
The elements of evidence used in the Nicky Verstappen criminal case to convict Jos B. do not prove that he is the culprit. They fit just as well with an alternative scenario in which Jos B. is innocent and the real culprit is to be found among the leaders of the summer camp at the time where Nicky died.
Other elements of evidence fit even better with that innocence scenario, but these have not or hardly been discussed during the criminal case against Jos B. This according to emeritus professor of legal psychology Peter van Koppen and former lawyer Leonie Ebbekink in Argos [ radio ] on Saturday. Van Koppen and Ebbekink studied the complete file in the Verstappen case together with Robert Horselenberg, associate professor of legal psychology.
They sharply criticise the public prosecutor's office and the judges who handled the criminal case against Jos B. 'We do not judge whether this man was rightly or wrongly convicted,' says Peter van Koppen. 'But we do have to ask the question: did you do your job as a judge? And the answer is: the court did not.'
At the beginning of this year Jos B. was sentenced in appeal by the court of appeal in Den Bosch to 16 years imprisonment for the deprivation of liberty, committing sexual abuse and manslaughter on Nicky. Earlier the Limburg court imposed 12.5 years' imprisonment on him.
Route unclear
According to the three experts, the prosecution did not make clear how the suspect managed to take Nicky away from the tent camp at the Brunssummerheide without being noticed, while camp leaders were walking around there during a large part of the night. Also alternative scenarios were not or hardly worked out. The court and the court of appeal have wrongly overlooked this, according to the researchers.
Van Koppen: 'The roadmap in the whole conviction is: the DNA of Jos B. is on Nicky's pants, the DNA is in places that are connected to the fact that he would have been abused, so that means that he must have abused him, and this boy will also not die for no good reason, so he is also responsible for his death.'
But how Jos B. took Nicky away, that's not what the court is discussing, but the prosecution is not discussing that either. And that is of course a crucial question. It must have been possible for Jos B. to take Nicky with him.
Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg think it unlikely that B., who only had a bicycle at his disposal, would have taken Nicky to the pine-wood plot more than a kilometre away on his own. The boy was found dead there in August 1998, two days after he went missing. Traces of an altercation or violence were not found anywhere.
DNA traces not adequately investigated
Although Jos B.'s DNA was discovered in many places in Nicky's pants, the prosecutors have drawn the conclusion that B. is guilty too quickly, according to the experts. Firstly, because there was also DNA from other persons on Nicky's clothes, which was not adequately investigated. Secondly, DNA traces by themselves are not proof of guilt.
The question is: how did the DNA of Jos B. get on Nicky's clothes? Did it get there because he abused him? Or did it get there in another way?
B. has a story for that other way. You can think all kinds of things about it, but he says: when I was cycling over the heath and stopped to pee, I saw a boy lying there, I touched him, I also touched his clothes, and then I left, it turned out he was dead. In that case, someone else is the culprit.
And then the next question is: does the DNA on that clothing make a distinction between the suspect's story and the prosecution's story? And the answer is: it does not make that distinction.'
According to Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg it is very well possible that the DNA of Jos B. was initially only on one spot of Nicky's underwear. Afterwards, those traces would have spread over the garment by 'internal contamination', because of the way evidence was treated at the end of the nineties.
'The pants were secured in 1998', says Van Koppen. 'By the standards of that time, we can assume that the pants were put in a paper bag. And these were subsequently removed a number of times. People touched them a number of times and they were packed again.
If we assume that it happened according to the standards of that time, then the research shows that because of the way those pants were treated, DNA traces are spread all over the pants. And that creates the possibility that if Jos B. has grabbed the pants at the edge of his trousers - that is also where the clearest DNA-trace was - that this has spread to all kinds of places on the pants.
The judges could have investigated this by having a so-called activity analysis made of the DNA. But neither the court nor the court of appeal found this necessary, the experts say. They call the 3D-presentation of the DNA traces given by the Public Prosecution Service during the hearing 'misleading'.
Chain of custody
The counsels of the court of appeal also get a slap in the face from the investigators. They have accepted the limited information of the Public Prosecution Service about the treatment of Nicky's clothes. 'It has not been made clear in any way how each time the pants have been bagged', Van Koppen says. There are no pictures of stamps that have been on the packaging. We do not know on what occasions it has been removed and how that investigation has been carried out. The police did not keep a record of that. The NFI did not keep records of that.
And what does the court say? The chain of custody - so: what happened to the clothes? - It is in perfect order, it is top of the bill. And I thought, when I read that bit in the judgment: guys, you made that up! The court has just made up a piece of the judgment! Because the chain of custody is completely unclear.
Camp leader
Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg argue that the evidence from the criminal file against Jos B. actually fits better with an alternative scenario. A scenario in which one of the camp leaders is the perpetrator, and Jos B. the discoverer of Nicky's body.
'Nicky's parents have stated that Nicky was very homesick,' Leonie Ebbekink says. But his parents had reassured him: hey, if you want to go home, talk to a camp leader. They had promised to pick him up immediately. Well, the night before the disappearance Nicky had a big fight with his tent mates. And then he also told his tent mates that he wanted to leave.
If on the one hand you look at the scenario in which an unknown man enters a full camp and abducts a child on the back of his bicycle. And then you look at the other scenario, in which Nicky has a fight with his friends, wants to go home, goes outside to pee, or in any case sees a camp leader with a gas lamp pass by, and he says to him: I want to go home - after which things have happened that the camp leader did not really intend. You may then ask yourself: which of these two scenarios is more plausible?
If you look purely at the situation at the camp, it simply fits better with the scenario of, for example, the camp leader as the perpetrator, and Jos B. only as the discoverer of the body. In any case, the scenario that he was taken out of the tent by the perpetrator is very unlikely. It is much more likely that he left the tent himself, either because he saw someone walking, or because he had to pee against the tree behind the tent. And that that is when the meeting with the perpetrator took place.'
'It is very important that judges look seriously at evidence before they make a decision,' Van Koppen says. 'And if the court's ruling is a good reflection of the thought process the judges went through, then this is an extremely worrying ruling.'
The investigation by Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg will be published in book form on Saturday, under the title The cyclist on the heath. Neither the Public Prosecution Service nor the Court of Appeal in Den Bosch wishes to comment on the three experts' criticism.
Gerald Roethof, Jos B.'s lawyer, reacts in the Argos broadcast on Saturday.
B. does not resign himself to the sixteen year sentence and will appeal to the court of cassation.
Family reaction
Royce de Vries, lawyer and confidant of the parents of Nicky Verstappen, says on behalf of the family: 'The family does not feel the need to respond. In the meantime there is a clear judgment of the court of appeal, in which Jos B. - just like in the first instance - is found guilty. For the family, the book on the evidence is closed.
BBM
Scientists critical of judgement in Nicky Verstappen case
'Evidences do not prove Jos B.'s guilt'
The elements of evidence used in the Nicky Verstappen criminal case to convict Jos B. do not prove that he is the culprit. They fit just as well with an alternative scenario in which Jos B. is innocent and the real culprit is to be found among the leaders of the summer camp at the time where Nicky died.
Other elements of evidence fit even better with that innocence scenario, but these have not or hardly been discussed during the criminal case against Jos B. This according to emeritus professor of legal psychology Peter van Koppen and former lawyer Leonie Ebbekink in Argos [ radio ] on Saturday. Van Koppen and Ebbekink studied the complete file in the Verstappen case together with Robert Horselenberg, associate professor of legal psychology.
They sharply criticise the public prosecutor's office and the judges who handled the criminal case against Jos B. 'We do not judge whether this man was rightly or wrongly convicted,' says Peter van Koppen. 'But we do have to ask the question: did you do your job as a judge? And the answer is: the court did not.'
At the beginning of this year Jos B. was sentenced in appeal by the court of appeal in Den Bosch to 16 years imprisonment for the deprivation of liberty, committing sexual abuse and manslaughter on Nicky. Earlier the Limburg court imposed 12.5 years' imprisonment on him.
Route unclear
According to the three experts, the prosecution did not make clear how the suspect managed to take Nicky away from the tent camp at the Brunssummerheide without being noticed, while camp leaders were walking around there during a large part of the night. Also alternative scenarios were not or hardly worked out. The court and the court of appeal have wrongly overlooked this, according to the researchers.
Van Koppen: 'The roadmap in the whole conviction is: the DNA of Jos B. is on Nicky's pants, the DNA is in places that are connected to the fact that he would have been abused, so that means that he must have abused him, and this boy will also not die for no good reason, so he is also responsible for his death.'
But how Jos B. took Nicky away, that's not what the court is discussing, but the prosecution is not discussing that either. And that is of course a crucial question. It must have been possible for Jos B. to take Nicky with him.
Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg think it unlikely that B., who only had a bicycle at his disposal, would have taken Nicky to the pine-wood plot more than a kilometre away on his own. The boy was found dead there in August 1998, two days after he went missing. Traces of an altercation or violence were not found anywhere.
DNA traces not adequately investigated
Although Jos B.'s DNA was discovered in many places in Nicky's pants, the prosecutors have drawn the conclusion that B. is guilty too quickly, according to the experts. Firstly, because there was also DNA from other persons on Nicky's clothes, which was not adequately investigated. Secondly, DNA traces by themselves are not proof of guilt.
The question is: how did the DNA of Jos B. get on Nicky's clothes? Did it get there because he abused him? Or did it get there in another way?
B. has a story for that other way. You can think all kinds of things about it, but he says: when I was cycling over the heath and stopped to pee, I saw a boy lying there, I touched him, I also touched his clothes, and then I left, it turned out he was dead. In that case, someone else is the culprit.
And then the next question is: does the DNA on that clothing make a distinction between the suspect's story and the prosecution's story? And the answer is: it does not make that distinction.'
According to Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg it is very well possible that the DNA of Jos B. was initially only on one spot of Nicky's underwear. Afterwards, those traces would have spread over the garment by 'internal contamination', because of the way evidence was treated at the end of the nineties.
'The pants were secured in 1998', says Van Koppen. 'By the standards of that time, we can assume that the pants were put in a paper bag. And these were subsequently removed a number of times. People touched them a number of times and they were packed again.
If we assume that it happened according to the standards of that time, then the research shows that because of the way those pants were treated, DNA traces are spread all over the pants. And that creates the possibility that if Jos B. has grabbed the pants at the edge of his trousers - that is also where the clearest DNA-trace was - that this has spread to all kinds of places on the pants.
The judges could have investigated this by having a so-called activity analysis made of the DNA. But neither the court nor the court of appeal found this necessary, the experts say. They call the 3D-presentation of the DNA traces given by the Public Prosecution Service during the hearing 'misleading'.
Chain of custody
The counsels of the court of appeal also get a slap in the face from the investigators. They have accepted the limited information of the Public Prosecution Service about the treatment of Nicky's clothes. 'It has not been made clear in any way how each time the pants have been bagged', Van Koppen says. There are no pictures of stamps that have been on the packaging. We do not know on what occasions it has been removed and how that investigation has been carried out. The police did not keep a record of that. The NFI did not keep records of that.
And what does the court say? The chain of custody - so: what happened to the clothes? - It is in perfect order, it is top of the bill. And I thought, when I read that bit in the judgment: guys, you made that up! The court has just made up a piece of the judgment! Because the chain of custody is completely unclear.
Camp leader
Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg argue that the evidence from the criminal file against Jos B. actually fits better with an alternative scenario. A scenario in which one of the camp leaders is the perpetrator, and Jos B. the discoverer of Nicky's body.
'Nicky's parents have stated that Nicky was very homesick,' Leonie Ebbekink says. But his parents had reassured him: hey, if you want to go home, talk to a camp leader. They had promised to pick him up immediately. Well, the night before the disappearance Nicky had a big fight with his tent mates. And then he also told his tent mates that he wanted to leave.
If on the one hand you look at the scenario in which an unknown man enters a full camp and abducts a child on the back of his bicycle. And then you look at the other scenario, in which Nicky has a fight with his friends, wants to go home, goes outside to pee, or in any case sees a camp leader with a gas lamp pass by, and he says to him: I want to go home - after which things have happened that the camp leader did not really intend. You may then ask yourself: which of these two scenarios is more plausible?
If you look purely at the situation at the camp, it simply fits better with the scenario of, for example, the camp leader as the perpetrator, and Jos B. only as the discoverer of the body. In any case, the scenario that he was taken out of the tent by the perpetrator is very unlikely. It is much more likely that he left the tent himself, either because he saw someone walking, or because he had to pee against the tree behind the tent. And that that is when the meeting with the perpetrator took place.'
'It is very important that judges look seriously at evidence before they make a decision,' Van Koppen says. 'And if the court's ruling is a good reflection of the thought process the judges went through, then this is an extremely worrying ruling.'
The investigation by Van Koppen, Ebbekink and Horselenberg will be published in book form on Saturday, under the title The cyclist on the heath. Neither the Public Prosecution Service nor the Court of Appeal in Den Bosch wishes to comment on the three experts' criticism.
Gerald Roethof, Jos B.'s lawyer, reacts in the Argos broadcast on Saturday.
B. does not resign himself to the sixteen year sentence and will appeal to the court of cassation.
Family reaction
Royce de Vries, lawyer and confidant of the parents of Nicky Verstappen, says on behalf of the family: 'The family does not feel the need to respond. In the meantime there is a clear judgment of the court of appeal, in which Jos B. - just like in the first instance - is found guilty. For the family, the book on the evidence is closed.
BBM