The 31-year-old man arrested for the death of a 75-year-old woman in Halsteren has been charged with murder or manslaughter. The Public Prosecution Service in Breda announced this on Tuesday.
Earlier this afternoon, the suspect, who is a client of a mental health institution at the Vrederust Estate in Halsteren, was brought before the court in Breda. It determined that the man will remain in custody for at least another two weeks.
According to BN DeStem the suspect is Elias M., a convicted sex offender. Last year, the court in Amsterdam sentenced him to TBS with compulsory treatment, including for a rape in February 2021.
The woman from Halsteren was reported missing by her family on Tuesday evening last week. She hadn’t come home after a walk. She was found on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, a few hundred meters from the entrance to the site of the mental health institution. On Friday, an autopsy revealed that the woman had died as a result of violence.
Family in Amsterdam
Later that day, the police wanted to arrest him, but he had just left the premises of the institution. The police then searched for his family in Amsterdam, among others. The man was eventually arrested on the street in the capital around half past five on Saturday afternoon.
The police currently assume that the suspect and the victim did not know each other. A police spokesperson said: “It was quite a difficult investigation because we were confronted with a victim in a forest area and all scenarios were open.”
The involvement of a mental health care client in the violent death of the woman from Halsteren has hit the staff hard. The victim’s relatives have asked for peace.
In this video, crime reporter Willem-Jan Joachems explains what we know so far about the woman’s death:
After the woman was found, part of the forest area at ‘t Wasven was investigated: