A year ago, Peter Aaldering tipped the police off about the location of missing Sanne and Hebe. Together with his wife, he saw skid marks on the road surface where the car with both bodies was found a day later. His tip was not taken seriously enough, he remembers. “It’s very annoying to stand here. I still get shivers all over my body. It’s very deep.”
When Peter came home on the day of the disappearance, on October 17 last year, he decided to help look for Sanne and Hebe. “I had seen it on the signs along the highway. It touched me and I thought I should do something. I also have children.”
Together with other volunteers, he searched the entire route back from Raamsdonkveer, where Sanne and Hebe had left. “Also along that bend,” says the 43-year-old truck driver from Rosmalen.
“I just wasn’t taken seriously.”
Peter kept thinking about that bend. “It was kind of a gut feeling.” A day later, Peter and his wife drove through the bend again at the Empel junction and they saw skid marks.
“I was overtaken by the police and I told them. They then went back to watch for a few minutes, but didn’t get out.” He also called the police to pass on the tip. “I also called again on Wednesday morning. I was just not taken seriously. That feels very painful. Really.” According to the police, this was partly due to the many reports they received at the time.
“I kept thinking: that bend, that bend, that bend.”
On the Wednesday evening that Sanne and Hebe were found, Peter drove there again. “I saw the orange flashing lights and thought: it can’t be true, can it? The world falls away from under you. I kept thinking: that bend, that bend, that bend.” According to him, the police offered ‘some kind of apology’, but the victim assistance promised to Peter did not materialize. “I haven’t heard from them again.”
Peter is still having a hard time with it. “I still think about it quite often. It is still regularly in the news and then everything comes up again. I try to give it a place.” He will never take the bend at the Empel junction again. “No, still not. Even if I have to take a detour. I won’t go through that bend again.”
Read everything about the search for Sanne and Hebe here.
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