“It started with an appeal in an international police magazine, but there were not many responses,” he says. “Then I got the tip to contact the Drenthe Archives. They posted a photo with the diploma on Facebook and Twitter and within two days we had found a surviving relative.”
Police DNA runs through the blood of the Karsten family. Son Ab also worked for the police for more than thirty years. He thinks it is special that his father’s diploma has been recovered, because it brings back many memories about his father.
“It comes to mind again. On Sundays I sometimes went to the police station with my father. We would listen to the police reports on the radio together, short wave. That’s how it was done back then. I knew he was in Hilversum went to the police academy and the nice thing is that he met my mother there.”
According to Kleefman, the police school in Hilversum is special, because it was the first of its kind. “In the 1920s, the police there started training officers. Hendrik Karsten’s diploma dates from 1930, so it is one of the first police diplomas in police life in the Netherlands.”
For Kleefman, it was one of his last wishes to solve the case, because he will soon retire. “My career is also over, but we are ending it very nicely in this way.”