34-year-old Ruben, who was found dead on January 20 in his home on Zuidenveld in Assen, was poisoned by his 26-year-old girlfriend. That is what the Public Prosecution Service (OM) thinks, and says that there are sufficient indications for this. The Public Prosecution Service assumes murder.
Initially it was assumed a natural death, but the police remained suspicious and continued to investigate the circumstances. This led to the arrest of 26-year-old Assense on July 10. According to the public prosecutor, she murdered her boyfriend (34) with, among other things, an overdose of MDMA. She then allegedly wrote his suicide note on his phone to make it look like suicide.
The suspect did not appear at the first public preliminary hearing today. According to her lawyer Robert Eefting, the woman denies it. She was the one who discovered her boyfriend’s body in the house. The suicide letter initially led to the assumption that Ruben had committed suicide.
The woman told the police that she last saw her boyfriend on the morning of January 15. He was sick in bed at the time. She gave him another paracetamol and a thermometer. In the days that followed, she allegedly tried several times to contact her boyfriend. This didn’t work. She decided to take a look five days later and said she was shocked by what she found. She called for her parents’ help to check if her boyfriend was really dead.
When the medical examiner arrived, the family had to leave the house. The suspect took her deceased boyfriend’s phone with her. She later had to hand it in to the police. A check of the WhatsApp messages showed that the last message was from October 2024. According to the friend, Ruben would not have been much of a WhatsApper. The suicide scenario was questioned by a friend of Ruben two days after the body was found. He had texted with him on January 15.
Family members of the deceased man also said they exchanged messages with him as late as January. Ruben’s phone was searched again, the messages appeared to have been deleted.
The man appeared to text every day until January 15. Because there could now be a different scenario, Ruben’s blood, which had been secured, was examined. A huge amount of MDMA and the sleeping drug flubromazepam were found. The Public Prosecution Service assumes intoxication (poisoning).
The suspect’s telephone was also searched. Although she maintains that she last saw her boyfriend on the morning of January 15, she had baguette and herb butter delivered to her friend’s address that evening. Her telephone records also showed that she had bought MDMA in Enschede on January 13. The dealer has been tracked down and interviewed. He acknowledges the deal. The woman denies having bought drugs. “It seems like she lies a lot,” the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor believes that the suspect wants to keep the child, which she has with Ruben, for herself. “She spreads a lot of lies about the recognition of the child and denies much else,” the prosecutor said. He sees evidence that the suspect himself also wrote the suicide note. The woman is still being examined by a psychologist. If that is not sufficient, a psychiatrist will be called in.
The woman will remain in custody until the next preliminary hearing on January 8. The aim is for a substantive hearing on March 31, 2026.