It is one of the most remarkable murder cases in Tilburg history. Marietje Kessels, 11 years old, went to post a letter on August 22, 1900 and never came home again. She was found abused and murdered in the Noordhoek church. More has now become clear about this controversial murder, a volunteer happened to find hundreds of new pieces of evidence.
It has never become clear who murdered Marietje Kessels. The sexton and the painter who were working in the church on August 22 have both been suspects, but no one has ever been convicted. Ultimately, many researchers mainly pointed to the pastor of the Noordhoek, George van Zinnicq Bergmann.
New evidence such as witness statements, letters and notes were located at the Brabant Historical Information Center (BHIC) in Den Bosch. “The archive documents show that his statements were indeed quite contradictory,” says Christian van der Ven, archivist at the BHIC. He is making a podcast about the remarkable find together with Marilou Nillesen.
A volunteer happened to find the documents in the court file of a drifter, a former soldier from Oisterwijk who had confessed to Marietje’s murder 18 years later. Christian van der Ven: “It quickly became apparent that he did not have them all in a row. He has not been convicted either. During that time they requested the old documents from 1900, statements and witness interviews, but they were never returned to the court where they came from. That explains why the pieces were not found for a long time. We are therefore very happy that we now have them again.”
“We have a handwritten statement from the pastor”
The most special find was the statement by Pastor Van De Noordhoek himself. Van der Ven: “Most of what we knew about him came mainly from statements by others. We had a lot about him, but not from him. That has now changed. We have a handwritten statement from the pastor.” Van der Ven does not want to say what it says: “We would of course also encourage people to listen to the podcast.”
You could say that the murder of Marietje Kessels is the most famous and perhaps also the oldest cold case in Brabant. According to Van der Ven, there is still a lot of uncertainty. “The case is still not resolved, a lot of questions were still open. A lot of those questions are now answered in this file.”
“The pastor’s own statements certainly do not exonerate him”
But even with those hundreds of new archive documents, a real perpetrator cannot immediately be identified, Van der Ven admits: “The statements of the pastor himself certainly do not exonerate him. The image becomes slightly sharper again. But I’m an archivist, we’re not lawyers, so whether it’s all legal and convincing evidence remains to be seen.”
Van der Ven is surprised about the thorough investigation conducted by the police in the Marietje Kessels case. “It is said about the research that it was quite amateurish, shoddy work was done. But documents from this file show that that is not the whole truth. That careful research has indeed been done. “
The podcast ‘The Murder of Marietje Kessels: new witnesses to an old cold case’ can be listened to from Monday February 26 via all podcast apps and bhic.nl/podcast.
