Killing of Nicole van den Hurk

Nicole van den Hurk was born on 4 July 1980 in Erkelenz, Germany, to a single mother. After Nicole's birth, her mother began a relationship with a Dutchman; the three later moved to the Netherlands together, where the couple then married. In 1989, Nicole's mother and stepfather divorced with the stepfather winning custody of Nicole.[10][11] In April 1995, the mother committed suicide in Tilburg.[11] At the time of her disappearance, Nicole was staying at her grandmother's house in Tongelre.[12]

On the morning of Friday, 6 October 1995, the fifteen-year-old began cycling towards Woensel shopping centre, where she was working a holiday job, failing to arrive.[13][14] At 18:00 that day, police found her bicycle in the river Dommel. Between then and 17 October, the police searched the river and a nearby forest, and on 19 October, her rucksack was found near Eindhoven's canal; the canal and its south bank were searched the following day. Between 28 and 29 October, these areas were searched again. Her stepfather denied the hypothesis that she had run away to Germany, where her extended family lived. By 20 November, police had received around 300 leads.[1]

On Wednesday, 22 November, a passerby found her body in the woods between Mierlo and Lierop.[11][15] Her funeral on 28 November was attended by some one thousand mourners.[16] Her post-mortem showed she had suffered two fractures to the jaw, other injuries to the head and fingers, and a rib injury caused by stabbing.[17]

On 24 October 1995, an anonymous man telephoned police saying he could identify the killer, but the call ended prematurely. The recording of the call was broadcast on national television in January 1996 in an attempt to trace the caller.[13] Later, the team of detectives was reduced to four.[1][13] In February, a friend of the Van den Hurk family arrested for drug trafficking claimed to have been forced to smuggle heroin by men involved in the killing.[1][18] The police said this testimony was flawed and was of no help. Meanwhile, Passie magazine offered a reward for details about the killer. Between May and June, the victim's stepbrother and stepfather were arrested in connection with the killing, and then cleared.[1][13]

In 2004, a cold case team investigated the killing to no avail.[19][20] By 2011, the victim's stepbrother Andy had moved to England. On 8 March, he confessed to the killing in a Facebook post, and was arrested by British police.[5][21] He was extradited to the Netherlands on 30 March,[22][23] but was released five days later[24] as the Facebook post was the only evidence against him.[25] Later, he retracted his confession, saying that he believed his father was the culprit;[26][27] in a 2016 interview, Andy claimed to have falsely confessed to the killing in order to revive attention to his stepsister's death and get her body exhumed for DNA testing.[6] Her remains were exhumed in September 2011 to allow DNA samples to be obtained,[28] while the reward for the killer's details was increased from 25,000 guilders to €15,000; within a week of this, the police announced that foreign DNA had been found on the remains[29] and that they had received more than twenty new leads.[30] In January 2014, the police arrested a 46-year-old man identified as Jos de G.[31] after his DNA matched samples found on the remains and at the crime scene.[20][32] De G. had previously been convicted of three rapes, being sentenced to three years preventive detention and compulsory treatment for one of them.[31][32] He was known to have left his ex-girlfriend's home after a fight hours before the victim's disappearance.[33]

When the case first came to court in April 2014, De G.'s lawyer disputed the DNA evidence, as DNA from other people, including Van den Hurk's ex-boyfriend, was also found on her remains;[33] the lawyer argued that Van den Hurk may have had consensual sex with De G., had had multiple sexual partners, and may have been pregnant when she died.[34][35] In July, the murder charge against De G. was dropped in favor of manslaughter and rape charges.[3][36] At another hearing in October 2015, De G. denied contact with Van den Hurk at the time of her disappearance, but said he may have had consensual sex with her a few days earlier.[37]

De G.'s trial began on 2 November 2015.[38] Prosecution experts testified to the DNA evidence.[39] Later in the month, the trial was suspended for two weeks during investigation into a witness's statement that De G. had confessed to killing a girl.[40][41] In a later interview, the witness and another person said De G. had made this confession while the three were in a mental institution together a decade earlier.[41] De G.'s attorney argued this testimony was motivated by the €15,000 reward.[42]

A trace of semen containing DNA from at least three people—believed by prosecution experts to be De G., Van den Hurk's then-boyfriend and her stepbrother—had been found on her remains.[6][43] With experts disagreeing on the reliability of the sample, it was announced in March 2016 that scientists would re-analyse the DNA results using new methods.[6] On 19 April, the court heard that it was 2.28 million times more likely than not that De G. was one of the people whose DNA was found on the remains.[44]

On 12 October 2016, the prosecution demanded that De G. receive fourteen years' imprisonment, asserting that he could not have had consensual sex with Van den Hurk, arguing that she had no time for a relationship.[45] On 21 November, De G. was found guilty of rape and sentenced to five years' imprisonment.[4] In determining the penalty, the court took into account the finding that he was legally insane at the time of the crime.[46] He was acquitted of manslaughter on the basis of the possibility that the person whose DNA was found on the remains who was not affirmatively identified was involved in Van den Hurk's death.[4]

• "Dossier Nicole van den Hurk (Eindhovens Dagblad)". Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 23 July 2017.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
• Timeline of Nicole van den Hurk murder case at Eindhovens Dagblad