GUILTY Belgium - Els Van Doren, 37, killed by sabotaged parachute, 18 Nov 2006

[dark_shadows]

Belgian Police Suspect Female Skydiver Murdered Love Rival by Sabotaging Parachute

BRUSSELS, Belgium — A married woman who was having an affair with a fellow skydiver plunged 13,000 feet to her death after her love rival and best friend tampered with her parachute, police say.

Els Van Doren, 37, fell to earth in a garden in front of a group of onlookers. Els Clottemans, 22, has been charged with her murder.

Minutes earlier the pair had joined hands in a star formation with two other skydivers including Clottemans’ boyfriend, a Dutchman named only as Marcel, who police say was having an affair with Van Doren.

While he and Clottemans broke away at 4,000 feet when their parachutes inflated, Van Doren, a mother of two, was unable to open either her main parachute or the reserve and crashed to her death in the town of Opglabbeek, Belgium.

Her final moments were filmed by her own head-mounted camera

Respectfully,
dark_shadows

 

[Peter Hamilton]

Good Lord--how diabolical--What a horror to plunge 13,000 feet to your death--and how stupid for the killer to think she would get away with it--The killer attempted suicide when the police came to question her,too bad she didn't succeed

 

[SeriouslySearching]

Goes to show you...never mix jumping out of a plane with jumping into a bed unless you belong there.

 

[JanetElaine]

Not sure if it says in the article (can't get it to load due to computer issues) but the woman that was killed didn't know about the other woman. In fact, it is said the guy went to great lengths to keep them from finding out about eachother, but the younger Els
(pron. Eh-ls) found out. Having skydived myself, this story absolutely horrified me.

 

[Amraann]

They are keeping their lips tight on this...


From the media report they do not explain how they know it was the younger girl who did this...

Since he was having an affair with both I wonder why he is not suspect??

 

[Peter Hamilton]

good question

 

[OkieGranny]

From October 2010:

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2026870,00.html

Almost four years have passed since Van Doren's death. Since then, her involvement in a bizarre love triangle has come to light: a mother of two, married to an Antwerp jeweler, Van Doren was also sleeping with a Dutch member of the skydiving club, Marcel "Mars" Somers. And Somers was sleeping with another club member as well, Els "Babs" Clottemans, 26, a schoolteacher with a history of psychological trouble.

Clottemans was eventually arrested, but it took until Wednesday, Oct. 20, after a four-week trial in the northern Flemish town of Tongeren, for a jury to find her guilty of premeditated murder. On Thursday, the court sentenced Clottemans to a 30-year jail term...

Yet despite the emphatic sentence handed to Clottemans on Thursday — just one notch down from life imprisonment — some still doubt her guilt. Throughout 100 hours of interrogation by detectives, she maintained her innocence... And although the jury found her guilty, there was no hard evidence to convict her: no confession, no witnesses, no fingerprints or DNA. Not even an incriminating knife or pair of scissors.