Suspicions

Before police investigating the rape and murder of Nienke Kleiss and attempted murder of Maikel Willebrand ‘discovered’ Kees Borsboom as a suspect, they believed that Willebrand was lying. The children had been playing in Beatrix Park in Schiedam. They were viciously attacked by a man. Kleiss tried to fight back, but the ten-year-old girl was no match for a homicidal Wik Haalmeijer.

Nor was the eleven-year-old Willebrand. He played dead and waited for Haalmeijer to go. Eventually he did and Willebrand sought help, which he received from passing cyclist Kees Borsboom – the man who called the police. The police did not believe Willebrand. The survivor – the crucial witness – was treated as their prime suspect. They thought that he had been too smart by playing dead.

His account did not fit the case-scenario that they had developed – a ridiculous one – so they thought that he was the perpetrator. It was absurd on every level. Willebrand was a child. There was no evidence that he had attacked his friend and there was clear scientific evidence that proved that someone else had been involved.

It was even thought by police that his injuries were self-inflicted. But then a coincidence occurred. Police discovered that their star witness Borsboom had exposed himself to a child – the child of a police officer. They decided that could not be coincidence. He becomes their prime suspect, but it was exactly that – a coincidence – a wretched one at that.

Miracle

The survivor was to all intents and purposes a defence witness, but Willebrand was marginalised. The surviving victim and therefore a key witness did not support the case hypothesis. Rather than admit that the hypothesis was the nonsense that it was subsequently proved to be, the victim/witness was marginalised and Borsboom was convicted in nearby Rotterdam.

Borsboom subsequently lost his appeal, but this was not the end of the story. Despite the indisputable evidence of innocence, he could have maintained his innocence to his dying day without being believed. It required a miracle and unusually it got one.

Both he and Willebrand would be vindicated by it. Wik Haalmeijer was arrested for two unconnected rapes. He not only admitted to those offences, but confessed to the Schiedammer Park crimes and insisted on DNA tests to prove his guilt. Nothing would induce him to withdraw his request. The DNA testing proved his guilt and also Borsboom’s innocence.

Outrage

Before police investigating the June 22^nd 2000 rape and murder of ten-year-old Nienke Kleiss and attempted murder of her eleven-year-old friend Maikel Willebrand ‘discovered’ Kees Borsboom as a suspect, they believed that Willebrand was not only lying about the terrible events, but was also responsible for them. They thought that he his account of playing dead to survive did not and could not ring true.

The investigators could not understand how a brutal killer could fail to kill him after brutally murdering Kleiss and also how an eleven-year-old child could be that cool under such pressure to outsmart the killer, but that is exactly what Willebrand did. He knew that he could not fight off a fully grown and vicious Wik Haalmeijer. He did as he was told while being attacked and then played dead.

It saved his life as Haalmeijer, believing Willebrand was dead, attacked Kleiss. After satisfying his bestial urges he left the Beatrix Park in the town of Schiedam – near Rotterdam – and allowed an innocent man to be wrongly convicted. Dutch society was shocked to the core by these crimes, but insult would soon be added to terrible injury.

Shocking

Willebrand’s account did not fit the case-scenario that the police had developed – a ridiculous one. They could not believe that the perpetrator that Willebrand described could have been so careless as to leave a witness to tell the tale. They also thought that no child could think that quickly and rationally in such horrific conditions, so Willebrand had to be lying and if he was lying, then he had to be the perpetrator.

But that was absurd on every level. Willebrand was just eleven-years-old. There was no evidence that he was capable of such depravity and brutality or was anything other than a normal child, whose childhood was ruined by the Schiedammer Park attacks and wretched investigation of those crimes.

There was no evidence that he had attacked his friend and there was clear scientific evidence that proved that someone else had been involved, but that was not enough to persuade police that their ridiculous belief that Willebrand’s injuries were self-inflicted was wrong. That required another unfortunate coincidence. Police discovered that their star witness Borsboom had exposed himself to a child – the child of a police officer.

They decided that could not be coincidence, so he became their prime suspect – another tunnel had opened, which led investigators away from the real perpetrator, Wik Haalmeijer.