Andy van den Hurk falsely confessed to killing his step-sister Nicole to force police to reopen the cold case. His daring plan led to a DNA breakthrough that identified the real killer
(Image: Wiki Commons)
On March 11, 2011, Andy van den Hurk shared a bone-chilling admission on his Facebook page: “I will be arrested today [for] the murder of my sister, I confessed.”
Sixteen years before, his cherished step-sister Nicole, 15, had disappeared whilst cycling to work at a local shopping centre in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
She never made it to her shift that day, and that evening officers discovered her rucksack and bike abandoned close by.
A month on, her body was discovered in nearby woodland – she had been sexually assaulted and savagely knifed to death, yet no one was ever convicted and the case eventually turned cold.
Nicole’s killing became a nationwide story across the Netherlands, with hundreds joining search efforts and thousands mourning at her funeral on November 20, 1995, whilst case developments regularly dominated headlines, reports the Mirror.
In February 1996, investigators believed they’d cracked the case when a family acquaintance was arrested for drug trafficking.
The suspect insisted he’d been coerced into trafficking heroin by Nicole’s killers, but officers weren’t convinced and the investigation stalled.
As time passed, Nicole’s murder faded from public memory whilst detectives moved onto other cases, though some reopened the cold case in 2004 without uncovering fresh leads.
Witnessing this and growing increasingly exasperated, Andy chose to act, and whilst living in the UK, he admitted to the killing and was detained by British authorities before being sent back to the Netherlands. Five days on, he walked free as investigators couldn’t uncover any additional evidence tying him to the offence.
He quickly withdrew his confession, explaining: “I wanted to get [Nicole] exhumed and get DNA off her. I kind of set myself up and it could have gone horribly wrong.
“She is my sister. I miss her every day.”
Against all odds, Andy’s bold gambit paid off.
In September 2011, with fresh focus on the cold case, officers exhumed Nicole’s remains for DNA analysis.
They discovered genetic material from two males – her then-boyfriend and another unidentified individual.
This belonged to Jos de G, a 46-year-old former mental health patient with a history of sexual assault convictions.
One of his three previous offences bore striking similarities to Nicole’s case – de G had previously attacked a young woman cycling in a neighbouring town, sexually assaulting her at knifepoint.
In April 2014, de G faced charges for Nicole’s rape and murder.
However, the defence argued that de G’s genetic material found on Nicole and her clothing could have resulted from a consensual encounter.
De G’s charges were downgraded to manslaughter, yet even then – following two years of legal proceedings – he was cleared and received merely five years for rape.
The Dutch Supreme Court confirmed his sentence in June 2020.
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