On a square in the Kwinkelier shopping center in Bilthoven there is a large white frame, a kind of box, containing a life-size hologram of a grimy man in a blue track jacket. He moves and even blinks his eyes. It is a 3D composite drawing of the man who, on September 4, 2009, on the cycle path between Bilthoven and Bosch en Duin, pulled a fifteen-year-old girl off her bicycle and raped her. “The police hope that when people see this 3D model, they will wonder: could this be my neighbor, my colleague, my cousin?” says the flyers distributed by a team of five officers.
Passers-by are spoken to. Many of them had already heard about the projection. “But such a moving image is different. Come and take a closer look,” say the officers. They explain that the suspect does not have to appear “100 percent.” Given the fluidity of memories, some details may not add up – and the perpetrator is now sixteen years older. “So try to think out of the box a bit.”
The police urge you, even if in doubt, to always provide the name of the possible perpetrator
Thinking one step further, they call it in the press release and on the flyer. “Was the person you are thinking of in 2009 around 30 or 40 years old?” Did that person have a link with the Bilthoven area? “The police urgently ask you, even if in doubt, to always provide the name of the possible perpetrator.” In this case, police spokesperson Teddy Sonneveldt emphasizes, DNA material is available. “So no innocent person will ever be convicted on the basis of recognition alone.”
But then someone must first recognize the person. A student notes that he had not yet been born. “Maybe your parents? Take the flyer with you,” says the officer.
The police had in December Investigation Requested indicated that the perpetrator could report himself via “the new self-report form”. If he didn’t, a 3D composition would be distributed. The victim also wrote a letter. “I was an open-minded child, cycling home from school in the middle of the day and suddenly I was pulled off my bike and taken away,” she writes. “Now it is time for me to get justice.”
In that letter she also addresses the perpetrator: “I call on you to still take responsibility and report to the police.”
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Digital studio
This composition took months of work, says Lieke van der Pas, spokesperson for the Police National Expertise and Operations Unit. “A consent procedure must first be completed.” All other options must have been exhausted, the victim must be willing to cooperate and any recognition must be able to be verified with additional evidence – such as DNA in this case. “Then the model is built.” The Visualization and Reconstruction Expert Team uses a digital studio, says Van der Pas. “Similar to what games are built with.”
Why didn’t they actually age the perpetrator? “We don’t know how someone grows old, we can ask AI, but that is a generic aging tool. That will only make the picture further from reality.”
I think it’s so bad that as a woman you are told: why did you cycle there?
The police have previously used a hologram. At the end of last year, a hologram of nineteen-year-old sex worker Betty Szabó, who was murdered in 2009, was displayed in a window in the Red Light District in Amsterdam. Many tips came in, but the case has not yet been solved. A hologram was also used in a cold case sex case in Schiedam, which led to the arrest of the perpetrator.
‘The recognition‘, an episode of the police podcast Tipsters from last Sunday, is about the Schiedam case. In it, Iwan (surname remains unstated) says that he recognized a colleague. “A man was wanted who had assaulted and raped girls in a cellar.” He saw the 3D composition drawing and immediately thought of that colleague, but did nothing with it at first. “But the next day that post came back again. Each time I took a closer look. I saw details and thought: […] it doesn’t feel good […] I had the idea immediately that I know it is him and I don’t do anything with it. And he gets away with it.”
What if you think you recognize someone, asks the voice-over of the podcast. “Follow your feeling,” says Iwan. “If you have that voice in your head or you think: that’s the one, I recognize it. Do it.”
‘Cycling everywhere’
In the shopping center in Bilthoven, Yvette Gumbs (55) is sitting on a bench with a colleague. They work in the Emmaus thrift store and have just looked at the hologram. “I think it’s so bad that as a woman you are told: why did you cycle there? What nonsense. We should be able to cycle everywhere,” says Gumbs. She worked on a theater piece about abuse and femicide and spoke to many women who have experienced something. “They often feel they are not taken seriously. This is a good signal to them. Something is being done.”
The victim also wrote this in her letter. She wants clarification for herself, but also for “us, as women in the Netherlands. You stay away from us. No matter what. Whatever. Wherever.”
