The man arrested for the fatal stabbing on Sunday evening in Sint Willebrord is known to the police. The Roosendaler was once convicted for taking a mother and a one-and-a-half-year-old child hostage. And he also came into the picture for the murder of Jelle Leemans, but without hard evidence.
On Sunday evening, emergency services found a seriously injured man (41) in a car in Kanariestraat in Sint Willebrord, who died shortly afterwards. The investigation is in full swing. All kinds of scenarios are examined, including an argument in the relationship.
“We quickly identified a suspect and immediately started looking for him. We arrested a 40-year-old Roosendaler in Wernhout. We indeed know him,” says police spokesman Willem van Hooijdonk. The suspect is called François van V. and he is 40 years old. The Roosendaler has been in the news before.
Mother and child hostage
After a report of a hostage situation in June 2011, an arrest team raided the Julianastraat in Roosendaal. His buddy Eduard F. lived there and François van V. was also inside.
There was also a Belgian mother and one-and-a-half-year-old child who had been taken hostage by the two. They were unharmed. Van V. and F. were each given fifteen months in prison for attempted extortion.
Disappearance of Jelle Leemans
After his sentence he was exposed again and again together with Eduard F. Now in the controversial disappearance case surrounding Jelle Leemans. The Belgian cannabis dealer disappeared on the morning of November 21, 2013.
Van V. had that day off from work in construction. A traffic camera near the Belgian town of Merksem photographed his car. Jelle Leemans’ Audi drove in front of him. But with someone else behind the wheel, although barely in the picture.
According to police and justice, Eduard F. was the driver of that Audi. He brought the car to Belgium and got a lift back from François van V. The striking thing was that both their phones were switched off for a while during that journey that same morning.
The police arrested both men on September 12, 2014 for the murder of Jelle Leemans. On September 18, 2014, an undercover operation was carried out around François van V., probably in the police station. Such secret police actions are often intended to ‘outsmart’ a suspect and get them to talk. It was never known exactly what the tactic was, but it failed.
François van V. goes free
Both men appeared in court in Breda on December 12 that year. He decided that there were insufficient reasons and evidence to keep them in pre-trial detention any longer. They were therefore released.
During the investigation it became clear that everything in Jelle Leemans’ murder case revolved around Eduard F. His buddy Van V. seemed to have had a supporting role. After a while it became clear that even complicity could not be proven. Due to a lack of evidence, he was not prosecuted for the murder of Leemans in February 2022. The case against his buddy F. was continued. He was sentenced to seventeen years in prison.
On Sunday night, Van V. was arrested for the third time in less than ten years, again on serious suspicion. A woman was also arrested later the same day. It is not known who she is and what her role would have been.
Watch the video about the case surrounding the disappearance of Jelle Leemans here:
Sint Willebrord mourns the stabbed man: