Maurice de Hond (77) is being continued again for spreading libel and defamation around the Deventer murder case. The influential opinion poller is on trial on 23 September in Amsterdam for last year statements in which he again points to ‘De Klusjeman’ as the perpetrator of the murder. The Amsterdam District Court confirms this and is also apparent from the criminal file that has been viewed by NRC.
The dog was already in 2009 criminal Due to defamation and defamation towards Michaël de J. – alias ‘the handyman’. At the time, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal imposed him two months in prison with a probationary period of two years.
The civil court convicted him In addition, to pay an immaterial compensation of 25,000 euros to the J. and 10,000 euros to his then wife, who accused the dog of complicity.
Both the criminal and civil law conviction fought the dog in vain at the Supreme Court. The criminal file shows that the dog is now being prosecuted again due to defamation and defamation.
Tombstone
The Deventer Murder case is one of the country’s best -known and most controversial criminal cases and revolves around the murder of the sixty -year -old widow Jacqueline Wittenberg in 1999. She was strangled at home and killed with knife stabs. For the murder, her tax adviser Ernest Louwes was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
According to the dog, Louwes is innocent. In the years after the murder, the TV personality frequently caused doubts about the official reading around the murder case. In addition, he pointed to handyman Michaël de J. – who was also a suspect shortly after the murder – as the perpetrator.
In his quest, the dog left few resources unused. In 2006 he was convinced that De J., who collected knives, had hidden the murder weapon under the tombstone of the widow’s family grave and her husband. The dog then guarded the grave day and night. Via a summary proceedings filed by Louwes’ lawyer, it became obliged to open the grave. Under major media science, it was subsequently found that the murder weapon was not present. “No knife in Graf Wittenberg,” the newspapers headed en masse.
He says again that my client is a murderer and that is very unpleasant, especially when you see what he has gotten over in the last 20 years
After his convictions were irrevocable, the dog was on the plain for some time about the issue. In recent years, however, the Deventer murder case has become up -to -date again. The podcast series appeared in 2021 The Deventer Media case and also The conviction, The film adaptation of a book about the murder case of journalist Bas Haan.
Louwes’ lawyers Geert-Jan Knoops and Carry Knoops-Hamburger also submitted a new revision request to the Supreme Court in 2022. On the recommendation of the Advisory Committee concluded criminal cases (ACAS) in 2014, the Attorney General ordered the Supreme Court for investigation into the means of evidence that led to the conviction of Louwes. To this end, various experts and a ‘cold case team’ from the Amsterdam police were called in.
A report from 2018 by TNO/TU Delft, one of the experts, showed that the atmospheric conditions on the evening of the murder. This allowed connection to a telephone mast at a greater distance. Louwes’ statement that he, as the Court of Appeal assumed, called, shortly before the murder with the widow called from Deventer, but while he was driving over the A28, was therefore no longer technically excluded.
However, the Supreme Court set at the end of 2023 a line Due to the request for revision because there was no ‘novum’: a new fact that was unknown to the original court case and that, if known, could have leaded to a different ruling. According to the TNO/TU Delft research, the chance that Louwes’ mobile phone made contact with the mast in Deventer from the A28 was at most 5 percent. If the Court of Appeal had been known to that statistics, according to the Supreme Court, that would not have led to the acquittal of Louwes.
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Knife collection
In the declaration that lawyer Jan Vlug last year on behalf of De J., it can be read that the dog is again ‘on a warpath’ against his client since the rejection of the revision request and a lawsuit lost by the dog against the makers of The Correctg and The Deventer Media case – who would affect him in his good name.
The declaration states that the dog in a podcast, an autobiography (Who is afraid also gets blows), An interview on BLCKBX.TV and on the Maurice.nl De J. website “continues to be in connection with the Deventer Murder case”. It is also highlighted that last June the dog wrote an alarming letter to, among others, the Supreme Court, the Public Prosecution Service, the group leaders in the States General and various media. In it the dog sows doubts about, among other things, the Alibi of the J. and he points to his knife collection.
In the letter he states that “a former high official of justice” told him in 2019 that the J. was a police informant and that the early cessation of the investigation and “eliminating crucial information about the J. by the police team” would hang together.
The opinion poller wants to make Fred Teeven heard as a witness during his court case
“We are ready that despite all the additional research that has been done, the dog continues to continue to accuse my client,” explains lawyer Jan Vlug from his holiday address when asked. “He actually says again that my client is a murderer and that is very unpleasant, especially when you see what he has gotten over in the last twenty years.”
Against the police, De J. (64) declared last year that he was sleeping poorly due to the renewed statements of the dog. “It takes off my days and nights. It has a lot of influence on joy in my life,” learns an official report in which he strongly denies being a police informant.
De Hond does not yet tell by telephone of his persecution, but to welcome it: “The truth can come up during the court case.” According to him, there is no question of defamation and defamation. De Hond states that he only spread information that came from former public prosecutor and VVD State Secretary Fred Teeven.
De Hond engaged Teeven in 2019 to look at the Deventer Moordzaak file for a fee and inquire about it within the judiciary. The opinion poller wants to make Teeven – who did not respond to a request for commentary on Wednesday – as a witness during his court case. The dog says it is not to do him to tie the J., but to “expose abuses within the OM.”
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