55-year-old Willem P. from Kampen will not appeal against the one and a half year prison sentence imposed on him for perjury. As a key witness in the swimming pool murder case, P. lied under oath about his statements. The Public Prosecution Service demanded nine months in prison. The judge found that the sentence did not do justice to the seriousness of the case and was doubled.
P. lied to the examining magistrate in December 2020 about the authenticity of the text messages that he had previously submitted to the judiciary as evidence. These messages allegedly show that Marcel H. (41) from Nieuw-Roden was the ultimate perpetrator of the murder of Jan Elzinga in 2012. Elzinga was shot dead in front of the entrance to the swimming pool in Marum.
Marcel H.’s sister was Elzinga’s girlfriend at the time. Marcel, his sister and his mother were arrested in July 2021 after the revelations and P.’s text messages. P. himself was arrested shortly after Elzinga’s murder, together with Pascal E. from Zwolle who had pulled the trigger. Both men were sentenced in 2014 to almost twenty and fifteen years in prison.
The Kampenaar received a penalty discount for his revelations in 2019. P. tried again to maintain the lie under oath during the court hearing against the in-laws in February 2022. The messages were a conversation with P. from the cell with Marcel H. The latter is said to have confessed about his role as the perpetrator of the murder.
The in-laws’ defense team discovered that the messages were not real. The order of the messages had been tampered with. P. admitted that he texted with his now deceased brother-in-law, who passed for Marcel H. Yet in December the court saw sufficient other evidence to sentence the in-laws to 20 years in prison for provoking the murder of Jan Elzinga.
An appeal against this is now pending at the court in Leeuwarden.