Dichtbij en onbereikbaar
Close by and out of reach
It took twenty years for Jos Brech (55) to appear as the suspect of the murder of 11-year-old Nicky Verstappen from Heibloem. Yet he was close to the investigation all those years. On 8 June, he is identified finally by the DNA match, but has been untraceable for months. A scenario that nobody had foreseen. Except perhaps the man himself. A reconstruction based on interviews with the investigation team.
By Claire van Dyck
Night falls over the Brunssummerheide. The search for the disappeared Nicky Verstappen came to a dramatic end on 11 August 1998 at twilight. The 11-year-old boy, who was at the summer camp with friends of youth work, was found lifeless in a pine forest on the unpaved Schinvelderweg. The site is closed off with red and white ribbon. Marechaussees (Military Police) guard the crime scene.
A cyclist emerges in the moonlight. It is half past one at night. What does he do there at that time? The man says he is on his way home, in Simpelveld. He has been delivering mail from the scouting. He prefers the coolness of the late evening to the warmth of the day. It had been over thirty degrees that day. What is the name of the man? Jos Brech.
The military constabulary records this in an official report. That will prove to be the key to the solution 20 years later, in determining who is involved in Nicky's death. This death is so mysterious that for twenty years the police have been in the dark about it. A clear cause of death has not been determined. Sexual abuse is not a foregone conclusion. DNA on Nicky's clothing is not discovered until ten years after his death, thanks to advancing technological developments.
Brech's presence near the crime scene is no reason to investigate him further. The police consider him to be an accidental passer-by. Attention is mainly focused on the camp leadership of the youth work Heibloem - within the various sections sexual abuse appears to have occurred. And on the leaders of the Rolduc summer camp, who are also camping on the heath. It may also be an unknown person, from outside. Possible, but least likely. Nicky would never have gone out on his own into the heath, his parents and frieds describe. He is too scared. If so, would an unknown person have taken him out of the tent?
Brech comes into the picture in 2001 when the second opinion team checks whether any details of the case have been missed during an investigation that has reached a standstill. In search of new leads, all passers-by on the moors mentioned in the file who were addressed in the days after the discovery of Nicky's body, were approached for a new questioning of witnesses. This is also the case with Jos Brech. Two interrogations, on May 7th and 9th. Brech starts talking about the scouting mail again, the weather. He spontaneously starts speaking about an interrogation as a suspect of a sexual offence with minor children in 1985. He adds that he was treated for this by the Riagg [ Mental Health Service]. That has been settled and the case was dismissed. The police are surprised. A search in the judicial systems confirms this closure. It says that in 1985 he was suspected of a sexual offence: sexual abuse with three minors. Dismissed. The underlying file is gone. Destroyed in accordance with the Archives Act. Last night it became known that the Limburg Regional Historical Centre was able to retrieve a judicial document. This shows that Brech was given a probationary period of two years for these sex crimes.
Where was Brech on August 10th and August 11th, when Nicky went missing? He can't remember it exactly. At home, he suspects. His story is consistent in both interrogations. The cycle route is strange. He rides exactly on the desolate side of the moor, far from the logical route to Simpelveld. Where was he going to deliver mail? The police verifies Brech's story with the scouts. They describe him as a strange guy. He often cycles over the moor. Distributes letters to scouting members to save stamps. His story seems to be consistent with this. There is no information to support a concrete suspicion of involvement in the death of Nicky. But something is irking.
Brech will once again be in the picture in 2009, when the police and the judiciary prepare a DNA investigation. With new techniques, a DNA trail was found a year earlier on Nicky's clothing. This results in a partial DNA profile, which is sufficient for a one-to-one comparison. The group of candidates is well over one hundred. Jos Brech is one of them. But is removed from the list. The numbers are considered too many and the list is reduced to 107, still "really large" for a DNA investigation at the time, according to the investigation leaders of the police and the Public Prosecution Service. The new legislation enabling large-scale DNA sampling is not yet in place. Permission must always be requested from the ethics committee for each group of 5 or 10 persons. There are eleven categories, including sex offenders from the police district of Heerlen and Kerkrade. This does not include Simpelveld. Brech is in the category of passers-by. His name is deleted. Looking back, this is a missed opportunity, according to the Chief of Police of Limburg.
The current investigation management has reservations. Yes, if Brech had actually participated in the voluntary participation. Given his actual behavior, that chance does not seem likely. Rejectors - it turned out that there were seven of them - attracted attention, but are not formally named suspects.
In 2012, a new team will once again start searching in the deepest secrecy for that one clue. The file will be named Hei (Moor) and will be computerised. That year, large-scale DNA relationship investigation is also made legally possible and successfully used in the investigation into the murder of Marianne Vaatstra. Not possible in the file Hei, the DNA profile is not good enough. It will finally be in 2015, thanks to new techniques.
Preparations for large-scale collection are being made. To start with 1500 men for a one-to-one comparison in 2017 and then another 21,500 for kinship investigation in 2018. Brech is in the first category. He is high on the list of people about whom the researchers have a 'feeling'. This list was drawn up on the basis of criteria such as the presence on the moor during the missing days, knowledge of the surrounding area, convicted sex offenders who are not in the DNA database and passers-by. Again Brech is in this group, but with him there are many 'coincidences' that arouse suspicion. He stands almost on top of the crime scene, shortly after finding Nicky, he has an - unknown - past history of sex abuse and a strange story. He also appears to meet the profile of a paedophile.
The 'more difficult figures' are personally visited by the police. In November 2017, agents call on Brech in Simpelveld to ask him to donate DNA. No response. It is unclear whether the house is inhabited. Two weeks later the same scene. They push a letter with a business card into the letterbox. The housing association will forward it to his new postal address. Brech signed out in October after his mother, with whom he lived, had moved a month earlier to a care home near her daughter in Groningen. The letter arrives at a sister's house, she calls the police at the beginning of December. Her brother is in the Vosges, she promises to send him the request by e-mail. Two weeks later she reports that he is on foot, that he will return to the Netherlands in mid-March and that he will then give up DNA.
He does not arrive. At the beginning of April, a policeman from the investigation team contacts the sister again. Then Brech turns out to be missing without a trace. Since mid-February there has been no more contact, the sister says. Brech does not respond to anything. She is in contact with his business partner - Erik van 't Padje. Also a bushcrafter, together they run a cabin in the woods. He alerts his friends and starts a search. The bushcrafters are worried, it is freezing 20 degrees in the Vosges. Would Brech have perished? The sister says she will report him missing. Her brother has not reacted to reports that their mother died on March 25. That is weird.
The investigation team is alarmed and decides, apart from the disappearance, to 'take its own technical path' as the sisters do not want to give up DNA. By means of genealogical research, two family members in the fourth or fifth degree are approached and found willing. When reporting a missing person in Veendam, the sister mentions that her brother is also being sought in connection with the Nicky Verstappen case. The team investigating the disappearance asks for personal belongings from Brech, in order to safeguard his DNA, as is customary in the case of missing persons. This will include a hard drive, which Brech's business partner sent to the sister with all kinds of other personal belongings at the beginning of this year. The investigation team learns that there are other things in a shed of Van 't Padje that he has taken out of the chalet. The 'Investigation Hei' has doubts if it can be established that the traces on the hard disk, sent to the Dutch Forensic Institute, really are from Brech. There may also have been someone else on the computer. They prefer to start with relatives, is there consensus, then you know that it is Brech and you can compare that with the tracks on the hard disk. They also approach Van 't Padje, inform him - under strict secrecy - and ask for personal belongings from Brech for a DNA comparison. The famous toothbrush and dirty laundry. He voluntarily gives them up, bewildered by the twist that his friend has come into the picture as a murder suspect.
On Friday morning, 8 June, one of the case officers receives a telephone call from the NFI. To his surprise, a fully usable hard disk profile has been developed. He immediately commissions to compare this with the DNA traces on Nicky's clothing. An hour later comes the match that was so intensively searched for and fervently hoped for. One hundred percent.
Surprise, excitement, but the team wants a double check. A colleague drives immediately with the belongings from Brech to the NFI. Can it be done quickly? The ball is rolling and can no longer be stopped. The parents are informed. A memorable and heartbreaking moment. From a thousand faces to one. The great unknown. What fear Nicky must have felt, his last moments with a man he didn't know, Berthie says.
The NFI reports that the DNA on the dirty laundry and the relationship results match. Brech has been definitively identified as the man who left multiple traces on suspicious spots on Nicky's underpants and pyjama pants.
The search for Brech by his bushcraft comrades reveals traces that seem to indicate that he has chosen a different path and does not want to be found. The police have indications that he erases traces, makes himself untraceable. Did he retreat into the wilderness? The area is too inhospitable to be scoured by people and equipment. The gendarmerie laughs at the Dutch when they ask them about these possibilities. The use of a helicopter with heat equipment is also an impossible task in a rough terrain with caverns, gorges and caves. How long do we keep the match secret, is the question. When all the traditional investigation possibilities have been exhausted, it is time this week to make a name and face known and to involve the public.
The evidence is not lying, but it does not tell the whole story. What has happened? Why? What has Nicky gone through? The Ministry of Justice is convinced that Brech can answer these questions and thus fill in the last few hours of Nicky's life. To do so, he has yet to be found, to be alive and to speak.
This reconstruction is based on interviews with research leader Ferdinand Schellinkhout and the public prosecutors Paul Emmen and Dave Mattheijs.
BBM
