10 Frightening Details Surrounding Nicole Van Den Hurk’s Murder, Whose Case Went Cold So Her Stepbrother Falsely Confessed

6 /10 Early Suspects

Post-mortem analysis discovered that she had been raped and murdered. A stab wound to the rib caused internal bleeding, the most likely cause of death.

Her jaw was fractured too. No less than a thousand mourners attended her funeral on November 28.

A local woman named Celine Hartogs gave the police some obscure clues about the individuals responsible for the crime.

She told investigators about being detained in Miami for a drug case and that the men she had worked for could have been involved in Nicole’s murder. Police determined the tip was unrelated to the topic.

5 /10 False Confession

After the discovery of her body, the case pretty much went nowhere. The police received numerous tips from informants and examined most of them, but each one led to a dead end.

Nicole’s stepfather and stepbrother were also arrested then cleared between May and June 1996.

Andy van der Hook, the stepbrother, made a shocking confession in January 2011 that he was the murderer everyone had been searching for.

He was arrested in England in March then transferred to Netherland that same month. Andy was released in April due to the lack of evidence.

4 /10 Hidden Intent

The stepbrother claimed to have confessed only to encourage the authorities to exhume Nicole’s body to obtain a DNA sample from her remains. It worked because Nicole’s body was eventually disinterred in September 2011.

Scientists at the Netherlands Forensic Institute collected a single trace of sperm of the remains.

Analysis revealed that the sample belonged to three individuals, including her boyfriend at the time, her stepbrother, and an unidentified person later identified as Jos de G., a convicted rapist.

3 /10 An Arrest

The case was once again the center of public attention toward the end of 2012 after the individuals connected to the DNA had been identified. Andy claimed to not knowing why his DNA had been identified from the sample collected.

Police arrested Jos de G. in Helmond in January 2014. He had been previously convicted of three rapes and sentenced to three years prevention detention, including compulsory treatment for at least one charge.

At the time of his arrest, the 46-year-old man was in a secure psychiatric hospital.

2 /10 DNA Re-Analysis

The trial began in November 2015. The most vigorous evidence prosecutors had against Jos de G. was the DNA sample.

However, at least three experts questioned the reliability of the evidence and, therefore, the subsequent identification process.

In March 2016, the court ordered a re-analysis of the DNA sample using new methods.

A month later, the result suggested that Jos de G. contributed to the sample collected from Nicole’s remains. Court decided that he had sexually assaulted Nicole van der Hurk.

1 /10 Conviction

The defendant denied raping her, claiming Jos de G. might have had consensual sex with Nicole instead. Prosecutor argued that they could not have had consensual sex, and Nicole couldn’t possibly have the time for the relationship with the defendant.

Jos de G. was found guilty of rape (but not manslaughter) and sentenced to five years imprisonment on November 21, 2016. To determine the penalty, the court had to consider him being legally insane at the crime time.

He was first acquitted of manslaughter because there was no way to prove that he had been involved in the murder of Nicole van der Hurk.

Assuming he had a role in the murder, it would still be impossible to determine whether or not he had acted alone, especially with the presence of DNA traces belonging to other individuals, including the stepbrothers.

The prosecution appeal case began on August 28, 2018. The acquittal was eventually overturned on October 9, finding Jos de G. guilty of rape and manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.