Bauke Vaatstra (85) from De Westereen became known for his struggle to find his daughter’s killer. Last Tuesday, Marianne’s father died of cancer.
“A person who has cancer only wants one thing……..CURE,” Bauke Vaatstra posted on his Facebook page on January 1, 2024. He had previously informed his friends that “due to circumstances” he would not send Christmas cards.
On February 14, an update about his health followed on social media. “I’m back home from the MCL for a while,” he wrote. “That doesn’t mean nothing is happening.”
Gift
Due to his illness, he stayed in the Brugchelencamp care center in his hometown. But Vaatstra, originally from Jistrum, previously lived alone in a terraced house in De Westereen.
Until May 1, 1999 he lived an ‘ordinary’ family life. He was a carpenter and foreman at various construction companies. He was like everyone else, he once said. Father of six children, married to Maaike. The youngest, Marianne, was the only one still living at home at the time. She was considered a gift. There were twelve years between her and number five.
But from that first May onwards, the Vaatstra’s lives were turned upside down. Their sixteen-year-old Marianne had not come home that night after a night out. The next morning, her naked, mutilated body was found in a meadow.
Heit Bauke was determined to track down the perpetrator. “I’ve always said, as long as they get him, as long as they get him,” he said. He also said he hoped he would find the man who did it. Then only one had to be convicted. ,,And that’s me.”
Shock
The teenager’s murder shocked not only the village, but the entire province, even the entire country. Arrests followed, but DNA acquitted the suspects.
He felt “obligated” to find his daughter’s killer, he told the newspaper in 2012. Leeuwarder Courant . He was her father, after all. A “terribly unimaginable” evil father.
In October 1999 he heard that if “they” did not have a perpetrator by December, the case would be shelved. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He continued to fight and sought publicity when the investigation threatened to collapse. Received clairvoyants, clairaudiences and clairsentients, kept the door open for tipsters. He wanted to know everything.
Arrest
The family had to wait thirteen years for the arrest. On November 18, 2012 the time had come. After a large-scale DNA investigation, for which 7,300 men from the area surrounding the murder scene were called in, a 44-year-old farmer, Jasper S., turned out to be responsible for Marianne’s death.
Machiavelli Prize
In February 2013, Vaatstra received the Machiavelli Prize for a “remarkable achievement in the field of public communication”. With his constant advocacy for large-scale DNA testing, he had achieved a breakthrough in legislation, the explanation said.
Jasper S. was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April 2013 for rape and murder. He had killed Marianne to prevent exposure, the judge said. “The family will have to live with the prospect that Marianne’s murderer will one day walk free,” Vaatstra said in front of a forest of cameras after the hearing.
The anger remained. He couldn’t get the name of the murderer out of his mouth. “The red rat, that’s what I call him.” He didn’t know him. He is said to have stood next to him once when he was playing football. But Vaatstra knew nothing about that anymore.
In a look back at the day of the arrest in the Leeuwarder Courant On November 19, 2022, Vaatstra said he was “waiting for him.” He was not interested in the fact that the prison remained.
‘All the best’
He will not live to see Jasper S.’s release. Although Vaatstra announced another check-up on Facebook, he already said goodbye to his friends on the social medium: “You are doing well.”
He died on March 5 in the presence of his children. “He passed away peacefully,” said son Freddy Vaatstra. Bauke Vaatstra was buried on Monday. At Marianne’s.