The 52-year-old Jan Willem H. from Assen does not think there is anything wrong with him. The man confessed that he strangled his partner in March 2020 and then hid her body for two years. The man did not want to be examined psychologically: “There is nothing wrong with me, then I do not have to be examined,” the man told the court in Assen today.
The murder was discovered in February this year when a roof box floated around in the Oranjekanaal near Orvelte. Inside the suitcase was the body of a woman that had already been largely decomposed. A DNA test revealed that the body of the missing Eva Balogh was from Hungary. The tattoos on the forearm of the remains matched the tattoos of the missing woman.
H. was arrested on 11 February and has been detained ever since. The investigation into the disappearance of his partner ran from February 2021 after a request for legal assistance from Hungary. The woman’s family reported missing three months earlier. There were great concerns about her stay with H. in the Netherlands. Several people were interviewed during that investigation. They had not heard any sign of life from the woman from March 2020.
H. confessed that he had strangled his partner in their room on the Rolderstraat in early March 2020 after an argument. He felt attacked by her because she had a knife in her hands, he told the judge. When he realized she was dead, he wrapped her in a bedspread and placed her under their bed. The body lay there for several weeks. Then he hid it in a roof box.
His son from a previous relationship later told the police that after a hefty dose of cocaine, his father told him that he had killed Eva and hid it. His daughter, whom he has with Eva, also told the officers in April 2021 that she had once confronted her mother with a knife in his hand. The man shouted that he would ‘kill her once’. H. told the judge that this was not true.
He did not dare to go to the police, because he did not want to confront his children with this horrific fact: their mother had been murdered by him. The man refused to cooperate with an investigation by a psychiatrist. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) had him observed in the Pieter Baan Center. He didn’t want to cooperate there either. The PBC cannot therefore make a statement about a possible psychological disorder.
The Asser suspect has a criminal record and many reports about domestic violence. He puts all blame on himself, the experts reported. The man has traits of narcissism and borderline. He has no empathy for others, they said. The man with two faces: on the one hand a friendly man and on the other a man with a very short fuse.
The public prosecutor will come this afternoon with a sentence.