“I wanted to cry and scream, but I thought I had to stay strong for my mother. I wanted to make the perpetrator pay for what he had done. And that perpetrator is my own father.” This was stated this afternoon by the daughter of Sophia Horbeek in court in Alkmaar. On September 5, 2020, the 58-year-old woman was killed in her home on Balistraat in Den Helder. Her husband is suspected of stabbing her to death that night.
The woman was lying in a large pool of blood when she was found the morning after the stabbing. She was found to have been stabbed 29 times, to have an additional 16 lacerations and the deepest wound was 23 centimeters deep. Investigators concluded that she had died between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.
Her son, from a previous relationship, found her. He immediately called 911. “My mother is no longer alive, she is completely cold. Mom, no!” Although he immediately pointed an accusing finger at his stepfather, her son was initially arrested because he was the only one in the house with his mother at the time. He spent two days in a police cell.
‘Lost everything’
It was hard for him, especially since he has autism. And it’s still spicy. “I can’t give the events a place. Not only have I lost my mother, but suddenly I no longer live in the same house with my sister. Everything that was known and trusted to me has been lost.”
His half-sister (now 20) felt devastated that day, she said at the hearing today. That night she slept with friends and heard in the morning that her mother had died as a result of a crime. With her father gone and suspected and her brother in jail, she had no one left. “Within a few hours I lost everything. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Now you’re in my head, but in a while you’ll be nothing more than a bad dream”
ES, 65, covered his eyes when his daughter made her statement. He sobbed as he listened to her speech. “You ruined my life. I think about my mother 24 hours a day and I’m always afraid that my father has my back. Daddy, you showed me a monster I used to fear. Now you’re still in my head, but in a while you’ll be out and you’ll be nothing more than a bad dream I’ve had.”
S., originally Turkish, but living in the Netherlands for 50 years, spoke through a Turkish interpreter this afternoon. Occasionally a Dutch word came in between. The man never admitted that he killed his partner two years ago. He did say he was “sorry”. Didn’t do it consciously. And if she hadn’t said “that,” it wouldn’t have happened.
‘Black to the eyes’
He thought she had had another for a few months. And she is said to have told him that night – when he indicated he was going to leave after an argument – that he wouldn’t get very far. Because she would go to the police and want to report him for raping his daughter. “Then everything went black before my eyes.”
He said he couldn’t remember what happened next. He also did not remember that he drove to his brother in Deventer that night and that he had bought new clothes that morning. Nor did he know where his old stained clothes were. What he did know was that on his way back he heard the news on the radio that a body had been found in Den Helder. “Then I thought, did I do that?” Shortly afterwards, thanks to license plate recognition, he was arrested by the police. According to him, the fact that he had previously stated a few things during police interrogations was not correct. That would be mistranslated.
“You have held everything in your hands all my life, made you live in fear and sorrow”
The relationship between S. and the victim, which has lasted 25 years, has ended several times. Yet they came back together every time, said S. But according to family and neighbors, he was violent towards her and the children. Local residents, for whom the woman’s death came as a great shock two years ago, feared that it was domestic violence. That’s what they said in 2020 NH News that Sophia was a “darling of a human being, but she was afraid to say anything because of her husband.” Moreover, she once lived with her children in a shelter for my body. Her son and daughter indicated that there was ‘terror’. He controlled his wife everywhere. She wanted to flee with them, they said. His daughter: “You have held everything in your hands all my life, made you live in fear and sorrow.”
Delusions
The public prosecutor demanded a prison sentence of six years against S., including the two years he has already been in pre-trial detention. If it is up to the Public Prosecution Service, he must also undergo TBS with compulsory treatment. In doing so, account was taken of the opinion that he should be considered to be of reduced accountability due to his mild intellectual disability and delusions. His lawyer pleaded to declare him completely insane.
It was clear to his children: he had to be punished for as long as possible. “So that we never have to be afraid again.”
The judge will rule on Monday 5 December.
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