Transcript: 17. Sex, Drugs and Dismemberment (The Murders of Harry Roo and Antoinette Bont) | The Netherlands

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Our cases have been researched using open source and archive materials. It deals with true crimes and real people. Each episode is produced with the utmost respect to the victims, their families and loved ones. 

It was July 31st, in the city of Groningen in the northern Netherlands. Two men on a small boat were cruising a canal, Winschoterdiep, to the southeast of the city, when they saw a strange object floating in the water. It was a trash bag, tied up with red, nylon rope and taped up with brown tape. The bag was attached to a concrete block, used for paving.

Suspecting that the contents of the trash bag were something more sinister than rubbish, the men called police. When police arrived and opened the bags, the undeniable stench of death hung over the canal. Inside the bag was the torso of a woman.

They searched the immediate area, but could not find her remaining body parts. The torso had a recognisable tattoo on the left side of the chest, with the name Lucas and some artwork around it. It didn’t take long to identify the woman. A woman had been reported missing three days before by her boyfriend, Lucas. This woman was Antoinette Bont. 

Four days later, on the 3rd of August 1995, 15 miles (or 25 kilometres) from where Antoinette’s torso was found, a young man was riding his moped along a canal. It was late in the afternoon, around 5:30pm when he saw a sports bag, in the water, under a bridge. He was curious, so he went home to fetch his brother so they could check it out together.

Nothing could prepare them for what they were about to find. Inside the sports bag were two legs, arms with the hands chopped off and two severed hands with painted nails. It was what police were looking for – more remains of Antoinette Bont. The only missing part was her head.

What police did not know, was that earlier that same afternoon, over a hundred miles (or 180 kilometres) to the west, in the Ochtum river another body was discovered – well, parts of it anyway. In a sports bag, they found arms, legs and hands belonging to a man. The next day, police divers found another bag in the same vicinity as the first one, containing the man’s head.

The man’s fingerprints revealed that he had a criminal record with German police. He was Harry Roo, a Dutch national, from Groningen, the same city as Antoinette Bont. 

Strangely, after extensive investigation, till this day, police have not found a link between Harry and Antoinette. What happened to these two Groningen residents in the summer of 1995? How did they end up dead, dismembered and discarded in two different cities, one day apart? 

>>Intro Music

Antoinette Bont was a lost soul who fed her drug habit by working as a prostitute in the city of Groningen. She was born in Groningen in 1971 but didn’t have a very happy childhood. She was raised by her aunt until she was 7 years old, then moved back to her mom and stepdad.

This didn’t work out. Her mom worked the streets as a prostitute and wasn’t fit to care for a child. Antoinette’s stepdad was a drug dealer. Before long, Antoinette got caught up in the same world as her parents. At the age of 16, she was taken into a care home for children in the town of Almelo.

Antoinette was a rebellious teenager with no role models to look up to. She started using drugs, soon moved onto hard drugs and became addicted to heroin. This led her into a life of prostitution to feed her habit. Antoinette was scrappy and was known to have a short fuse. She had a hard life and she used hard drugs.

Police knew about Antoinette, because she was known to steal from her clients from time to time.

In 1993 Antoinette tried to get clean, even booked herself into a clinic, but when she met her boyfriend, Lucas, she went back to her old ways. Their relationship was complicated. He was her lover and her pimp and he was abusive and manipulative. She reported him when he hit her and Lucas spent some time in jail. However, once he was out, the couple rekindled their relationship. This was a pattern that repeated itself again and again.

Lucas usually kept an eye on her from a distance while she worked, taking note of the customers who picked her up and dropped her off. But on the night of 26th July, he dozed off just after 2am. He did not see the last person Antoinette left with, and she never returned. 

Three days later police found Antoinette’s severed body parts in a canal 9 miles, or 15 kilometres, from where she was last seen alive. The investigation into her murder started with a post mortem examination. It was found that she had taken a large amount of morphine shortly before her death. Examiners also found that she had taken methadone, amphetamines and cannabis. 

In 1995, DNA analysis was still in its infancy, but it was implemented to test hair samples found on Antoinette’s body. The DNA of four, unidentified male individuals were present. But as a sex worker, it wasn’t unusual to have DNA from multiple sources on her body at the end of a night. Police realised that the presence of DNA would not necessarily mean that the person had killed her. 

They found ten small bullet fragments from her torso. Antoinette was shot by a shotgun at close range. Her official cause of death was ruled to be gunshot wounds to the heart and lungs. 

Unfortunately, Antoinette did not die a quick death. Fractures and cuts on her limbs proved that she was tortured before she was shot. After her death, she was hacked up into pieces, evidently to make disposal of her body easier. 

It was a brutal way to die and police were baffled as to who could have a motive to end Antoinette’s life in such a brutal way. She had accused her boyfriend, Lucas, of physical abuse, but he was quickly ruled out as a suspect in her death. He was also the one who reported her missing and co-operated with police in any way he could. Also, Antoinette was his meal ticket, police did not believe he would have murdered the person who was essentially supporting him.

In the two years leading up to Antoinette’s murder, two other prostitutes were killed in the Groningen-area and police thought the cases could be related. The only thing was… The other two women were strangled to death and their bodies were not dismembered. It simply did not seem like the work of the same killer. 

On the 23rd of August, three weeks after Antoinette’s body was discovered, Groningen police received information from police in Bremen, Germany. They had found remains belonging to Groningen drug dealer, Harry Roo. 

When Groningen police learnt that Harry’s dismembered body parts were disposed of in a river, in sports bags – a day before Antoinette Bont’s body parts were discovered in the same way, they felt strongly that the cases were connected. 

The similarities between the cases were puzzling. Although Antoinette and Harry had been shot, it was concluded that Harry was shot with a pistol, not with a shotgun like Antoinette. 

Both their bodies were dismembered after death, in fact, their hands were chopped off at exactly the same spot. Both had similar cut marks on the backs of their hands. And interestingly, on their dismembered legs were cut marks that looked like practice cuts. The human butcher tested  the sharpness of a blade before commencing the grim task of dismemberment. The cut marks were inflicted with a sharp blade, like a big knife. To forensic technicians it looked like the killer had some prior experience in dismembering bodies. 

It was determined that the victims were killed around the same time – sometime during the last week of July. 

At this time, one month later, police had not found Antoinette’s head and Harry’s torso was still missing. 

Police were desperate to find a link between the two victims. They were aware of 36-year old Harry Roo, as he had had some brushes with the law in the past. Like Antoinette, Harry operated in the darker side of society. Harry was deeply entrenched in the world of drug trafficking. The two victims weren’t exactly what one would call ‘upstanding citizens’. A prostitute and a drug smuggler… But did they know each other?

Before we go further, we should perhaps have a quick look at drugs and prostitution in the Netherlands. It is true that the Netherlands is known for its open-minded approach to drug use. What many people don’t realise, is that drugs are – for the most part – illegal. It is illegal to produce, possess, sell, import or export drugs, as it is in most other neighbouring countries too. 

Marijuana, or hash as it is locally referred to, is legal under strict conditions. The thinking is to make soft drugs easily available in a controlled environment, while law enforcement can concentrate on keeping a handle on dealers of hard drugs and drug smugglers.

A controlled environment would be a coffee shop. There is a difference between a Dutch café and a Dutch coffee shop. Understanding this makes a trip to the country less awkward if you know which is which!

A café is what most of the world would call a coffee shop. Dutch cafés are places where people meet to have a cup of coffee with friends, moms take their kids for babycinos and there is a selection of pastries and light meals.

A Dutch coffee shop, on the other hand, is similar to a café, but you wouldn’t take the kids. Coffee shops are permitted to sell a strictly controlled minimum amount of soft drugs that should be used on the premises. Joints and baked goods laced with weed can be bought and enjoyed by people over 18 years of age. Smoking cigarettes and consuming alcohol are prohibited in coffee shops and customers are only allowed a maximum of five grams of ‘hash’ a day.

As for border checks – there aren’t any between the Netherlands and Germany. You can simply drive on a highway and at some point you realise: Oh, I’m in another country now. However, there is mobile security monitoring: law enforcement officers on motorbikes who patrol the highways and perform random checks. So smuggling drugs is perhaps easier, but it’s not without risk.

Prostitution is legal within the same, limited and controlled way. In Groningen in 1995, the tipplezone was a two mile or three and a half kilometre stretch in Bornholm Street, where prostitutes were allowed to sell their services legally. Prostitution in the Netherlands is  recognised as a legal profession. The ban on brothels and pimping was brought in in 2000 to reduce sex trafficking and ensure a safer environment for working girls. 

So our two victims, a drug smuggler and a prostitute existed in the underworld, but on two vastly different levels. Harry was a wealthy coffee shop owner who made most of his fortune thanks to his illegal drug activities. Antoinette was a prostitute and a drug-addict who spent her money as quickly as she made it – everything she earned was spent on drugs.

To investigate the murders of Harry and Antoinette, detectives pieced together a timeline of events leading up to their disappearances and murders. After interviewing other women who also worked in the tipplezone on the night of July 26th they were able to go through Antoinette’s last hours. 

At 10pm she arrived on a bicycle with her boyfriend, Lucas. As her pimp, Lucas stayed close-by, as he was concerned about Antoinette’s safety. In the course of the evening, she had a couple of clients. She also touched base with her dealer now and then, spending the money she had just made on drugs.

At 11:15pm, she was seen getting into a small red car with a blond man behind the wheel. She returned and topped up her drug supply at her dealer. 

Her next customer had a white car and she returned within the hour. The car had a man and a woman inside, and they had visited Antoinette in the past. In fact, Antoinette’s friends recalled her robbing them before, but there didn’t seem to be tensions on that night. They all sat and talked inside the car for a while, then Antoinette got out and waited for the next client. Around this time, Lucas saw her from a distance, but he fell asleep on a cardboard box and would not see her again. 

Antoinette’s friends recalled the man in the little red car returning. She left with him and returned 45 minutes later. She was excited as the man had given her much more money than the usual rate. Her dealer said that she went straight to him and bought more drugs, paying in Deutsche Mark and Dutch Guilder. This wasn’t unusual as Groningen is not far from the Dutch-German border.

After her encounter, she was upbeat and happy and shared her drugs with other women working on the street. This was unusual for her, as she wouldn’t typically share drugs. Shortly after this, she disappeared – never to be seen alive again.

Lucas woke up at 4am on the morning of July 27th and couldn’t find Antoinette anywhere. He searched everywhere, with no luck. He went to police on Friday the 28th to report her missing, three days before her body was found.

Knowing how Antoinette’s last night played out, police started looking into Harry Roo’s last movements too.

Harry Roo was 6 ft 5 (or 2 metres) tall with blond hair and a moustache. He was known to have a quick temper and his associates were somewhat weary of him. He lived comfortably as a coffee shop owner. He had two popular coffee shops in downtown Groningen: Deed in De Papengang and De Driemaster on Nieuweweg. His ex-partner, Marja Plas, managed both coffee shops. They had a 12-year-old daughter together, and although they had separated, they were still very much a part of each other’s lives.

But, as we’ve mentioned before, Harry’s wealth came from his illegal drug smuggling network that worked across North Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia. He owned a home in Groningen, a second home in sunny Portugal and drove around in luxury vehicles. 

Harry had purchased a farm not long before his death. It was located in Siddeburen, about a half an hour’s drive east of Groningen. The farm was supposed to be somewhat of a retirement treasure chest for Harry. The plan was to have a subterranean shipping container where they could store 10,000 kilograms of marijuana. The bulk of their stock would be supplied by Moroccan dealers. From the farm, they would supply the most of Northern Europe with a constant influx of drugs. That wasn’t all: for extra cash they started a weed nursery on the farm at the beginning of July 1995. 

When police learnt of Harry’s murder at the end of August, in fact, on the very same day German police informed them about it, Harry’s ex, Marja, walked into a Groningen police station with a strange story.

Marja told police that the last time she saw Harry was on Tuesday the 25th of July – a month before. According to Marja, one of Harry’s associates, a man called Henk, called her the next day and asked her to meet him on Harry’s farm that evening. Marja agreed, then tried to contact Harry, but could not reach him anywhere.

When Marja arrived on the farm just before 8pm, the man called Henk told her that he had taken Harry captive and that she had to come up with ransom. He wanted One Million Guilder (about 650,000 US Dollar at the time) and a couple of hundred kilograms of marijuana. Once she’d paid, Henk would let Harry go.

Marja was shocked and confused and didn’t know what went wrong between Harry and his associate. Her first instinct was to kick back and refuse, but Henk intimidated her. He pointed out a man sitting in a small red car, watching them. He said that Marja would be followed until he got his money and drugs. 

A week later, Marja met with Henk again in Paterswolde, South of Groningen. The man in the red car was still following her and watching her every move. Marja refused to be intimidated and said she needed proof that Harry was still alive before she would pay. Henk simply said nothing, but he exchanged eye contact with the man observing the conversation from the red car.

By the next day, Marja was desperate to ensure Harry’s safety and decided to pay a portion of the ransom money to Henk. At this point she was concerned for her own safety and the safety of her daughter. The exchange was done on Lijnbaanstraat, a busy street in downtown Groningen. Marja had money in a bag, which she threw into Henk’s car as she walked past him. 

It was three weeks later and there was still no sign of Harry. That is when Marja decided to report the kidnapping and extortion to Groningen police. Police found the timing very co-incidental, too co-incidental to feel comfortable about it.  

On the same day German police informed them about the discovery of Harry’s body, before the news was made public, Marja decided to report him missing. Police knew they were dealing with a homicide case at this point and strangely, conveniently, they had their first suspect.

Forensic technicians started their search in Harry’s home in Groningen and then on his newly acquired farm. They could not find blood, or any evidence that a crime had been perpetrated on either of the premises. 

Because of the similarities of the two cases, detectives investigating Antoinette’s murder took the two hour drive to Bremen to compare notes with German police.

The cases were eerily similar: Harry’s body parts, like Antoinette’s were disposed of in water under a bridge in sports bags. In both cases, bricks were placed in the bags to weight them down. Both victims were shot and dismembered before they were disposed of. Both were from the drug world in Groningen. In the post mortem examiniation, technicians found hairs of a German Shepard on Antoinette’s body. When technicians visited Harry’s Roo’s farm in Siddeburen, they found two German Shephard dogs on the premises. But, despite all the similarities, police could not find definitive evidence linking the two cases. Everything seemed merely co-incidental. 

With information about Harry’s associate Henk, detectives also found that Henk had a friend called Johan. Johan had recently spent a lot of money. He had bought expensive furniture for his home and took his family to amusement parks, sparing no expense. At his home, they found a saw with human blood on the blade. 

On September 27th, two months after Harry Roo’s disappearance, police arrested both Henk and Johan. In Henk’s Father’s home in Amsterdam, police found a bag with 70,000 Guilder, it was left over from the partial ransom paid by Marja. The same night 44 year old Henk and 36 year old Johan were transported from Amsterdam to Groningen.

Both men refused to speak.

10 years prior to his arrest, Henk’s brother was killed after a man stabbed him during an argument about a woman. The murderer was only sentenced to five years in prison. Henk had no respect for police or the legal system and would not cooperate. 

Police realised they had to change their approach and implemented a controversial interrogation method that would make Dutch legal history – and not for good reasons. Because the interrogation took place at Zaandam, it was later referred to as the ‘Zaanish Interrogation Method’. 

It happened like this: about three officers interviewed Henk, throwing countless leading questions his way. Then everybody, including Henk was made to leave the room. Officers went back inside and stuck posters with photos taken by German police in Bremen on the walls. The photos were graphic photos of Harry Roo’s limbs and his head. The posters covered the walls, there were even some on the ceiling.

Amongst the photos, they inserted pictures of Henk’s wife and daughter. Next to a two week decomposed severed hand, was the photo of Henk’s daughter’s smiling face.

Officers taunted Henk about how his actions would cause suffering to his family. They told him he should imagine how his daughter would be teased at school. One officer started a menacing chant, singing like a schoolground bully:

“Your daddy’s a murderer. Your daddy’s a murderer. Your daddy’s a murderer.”

They kept taunting him, saying the only way to fix the mess that he is in was to at least do the honourable thing and confess. Was keeping his mouth shut more important to him than his wife and daughter?

“You are literally screwing up your daughter right now.”

Henk remained stoic throughout the interrogation. 

Officers had one last ace to play. They dangled the promise, that should Henk confess, he would not only get a reduced sentence, but they would also not charge him with drug offences. He would only serve a couple of years after which he could resume his life as a husband and a father. 

After two days of interrogation, with little or no sleep Henk finally broke down and confessed. He signed a typed-up confession, which outlined the circumstances of Harry’s death. 

Henk said, that on Tuesday the 25th of July, he met Harry on his farm in Sideburren, together with another man called Renko. Harry and Henk then launched into an argument about money. According to Henk, Harry owed him 50,000 Guilder (that was about 30,000 Dollars US at the time) for a drug run Henk had done to Cadiz in Spain. Henk had financed the trip and Harry was supposed to reimburse him. But Harry wasn’t planning on paying him back - a stubborn decision that would end up costing him his life. 

The next morning, Harry left his home in Groningen in his blue BMW for the last time. Henk called Renko and told him to take the rest of the week off, as Harry had gone to Amsterdam. Henk needed to get Renko out of the way to execute his plan. 

Harry met Henk at the farm – it was only the two of them – and the argument resumed. Harry still refused to budge. Frustrated and angry, Henk picked up a steel rod that was lying on the ground and started hitting Harry over the head until he collapsed. 

While Harry was fighting to stay conscious, Henk went into the barn, where he knew there was a firearm. He fetched the pistol, rushed back to Harry and finished the job he had started. Fired two shots into Harry’s head.

Realising what he had done, he had to concoct a plan to dispose of Harry’s body. He rolled the tall Harry onto a canvas and dragged it out of sight so neighbours or passers-by wouldn’t see it. Then took Harry’s BMW and drove back to Groningen where he went to a hardware store. Henk purchased a large canvas and rope. He also stopped at home to pick up two suitcases.

On the way back to Sideburren, he picked up his friend, Johan. Johan was ready and waiting, because the two man had planned on kidnapping Harry that day. When Henk filled him in about what he had done to Harry, Johan was surprised, but assured him that he would help him dispose of Harry’s body.

Under the cover of night, the two men undressed Harry’s body and then proceeded to dismember him with a sword. Firstly, they meticulously removed his hands from his arms. Then they decapitated him. Then they removed his arms.

Henk and Johan burnt Harry’s clothes in a barrel, then loaded the eight pieces of Harry into the trunk of his own car. The pistol that killed Harry and the sword that severed his limbs from his torso were thrown on top.

In the middle of the night, Henk and Johan drove to Germany. They dumped the weapons en route to Bremen, which they reached after a two hour drive. First, they stopped next to the road and hid Harry’s torso under some bushes not far from the road. The sports bags containing Harry’s body parts were thrown into the river Ochtum.

With the mid-summer water temperature of 70 degrees (21 Celcius), decomposition was rapid and merciless. Harry’s final resting place was more than a hundred miles away from his hometown of Groningen. Henk and Johan thought law enforcement would never be able to trace him back to the Netherlands. If only they had not known about Harry’s criminal record in Germany, they might have committed the perfect murder.

With Henk’s confession, authorities finally located Harry’s torso, wrapped in blue trash bag, amongst some bushes, off the highway between Groningen and Bremen.

Police discovered that Johan had rented a red Ford Fiesta around the time of Harry’s disappearance. Marja Plas said that he was surveilling her from that red car. Police couldn’t help but wonder if it was Johan’s rented red car that was spotted in tippelzone picking Antoinette up, hours before her disappearance.

With many contradictory statements, police found the task of sifting through truths, half-truths and blatant lies impossible. Even just exploring the partial ransom Marja paid to Henk. Each one of them said it was a different amount. Marja told police that she had paid 125,000 Guilder, but she confessed to a friend that it was 300,000.

There was something else that made detectives uneasy about Marja. The detective that was assigned to protect her, had become her lover. At first officers thought their colleague Rob was deeply concerned about her safety, but it didn’t take rocket science to figure out the two were embroiled in a steamy love affair.

Police also decided to keep an eye on the charismatic Rob. He was always dressed in the best clothes and drove a flashy sportscar. Some said he was quite the womaniser. When it came out that Rob and Marja had known each other before Harry’s murder, detectives started questioning Marja (and perhaps even Rob’s) involvement in Harry’s death.

Rob had a good work record in the police force. In the 1980’s he was tasked with overseeing Groningens drug-licensed coffee shops. He became a trusted figure by the coffee shop community and he was well-liked. This is also where he met Marja, who managed Harry’s coffee shops.

About a year before his murder, Harry had caused a scene at the police station where Rob was based. Harry burst through the doors and darted straight to Rob’s desk. He warned Rob to stay away from Marja. 

“If this assh*le detective doesn’t keep his paws off my girl, I’ll break his neck,” he shouted as he was escorted out of the police station.

At the time, both Rob and Marja swore that there was nothing between them. Marja claimed that Harry got the wrong impression after seeing Rob talking to her at the coffee shop she managed. Harry’s reaction at the time was irrational and unfounded.

In 1995, in the course of the investigation into Harry’s murder, Rob and Marja declared that they had had no contact in the year before Harry’s murder. And that their affair had only started after Harry went missing.

Marja had called the police station and asked to speak to Rob specifically, because she knew him from before. She told him about the kidnapping and about Henk’s extortion and asked for advice. Rob supported her through the whole ordeal. 

It was a fair assumption that it was Rob that had told Marja that German police found Harry’s body. Marja stated emphatically that she only learnt about Harry’s murder once she was at the police station to report the kidnapping. It was all a big coincidence. Nothing more.

After investigating the matter thoroughly, police found no evidence that the Marja-Rob connection contributed to Harry’s death whatsoever. Rob remained in service, but was quietly and swiftly transferred to foreign service in a town called Scheemda, near the German border.

Rob and Marja eventually married. His bosses in the police force warned him, because Marja had drug connections. They were concerned that his connection with her was a conflict of interest. Rob didn’t care.

Police had to let it go. They had a signed confession from Henk and they knew how Harry Roo was killed. The case was solved and prosecution was ready to take Henk and Johan to court.

But Henk’s defence lawyer, Louis De Leon, made a big noise about the manner in which he was interrogated. To cross psychological boundaries like they did was unethical and inhumane. When Henk went to trial a year later, the judge had to agree with the defence that the interrogation was done in poor taste, it was pure torture.

Later in the same year, the Minister of Justice placed a ban on what became known as the ‘Zaanish Interrogation Method.’ It was declared psychologically intrusive and unlawful. 

Despite all the evidence against him and his own signed confession, Henk was acquitted of Harry Roo’s murder in 1996. His confession was deemed to have been coerced and was inadmissible in court. He only received a five year prison sentence for extortion and kidnapping. His accomplice, Johan, only received a three year prison sentence for his part in the extortion and intimidation of Marja.

But the fight wasn’t over. Two prison guards testified that Henk confessed to Harry’s murder while he was incarcerated. The case was brought to court again in the summer of 1997. This time, Henk was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of Harry Roo. 

Still, there were doubts about Henk’s story. After his confession, a witness came forward and said that he saw Harry on Tuesday the 26th of July 1995. This was the day that Harry was believed to have been murdered. According to the witness, Harry was in a car with two other men and looked scared, like he needed help. Perhaps there was some truth to Harry being kidnapped before he was murdered?

Another witness said that a day before Harry’s murder was made public in the newspaper, he had heard someone say that Harry was murdered in Germany. The question was: was Harry’s murder a premeditated plan after all?  And not the result of a heated argument as Henk had confessed? Were more people involved than police had originally thought?

There was another man on police radar: a guy who went by the name of Stip. He had no steady address, but lived around Groningen. He worked at a butcher shop and was a frequent customer of prostitutes. His name had come up in the Antoinette Bont investigation too. But there wasn’t enough evidence to link him to either of the murders. 

Police suspected that – in the murder of Harry Roo – Stip was the one who was responsible for dismembering the body. His experience as a butcher would have come in handy, as dismembering a body is not a simple task. Rumours were doing the rounds that Stip took his part of the extortion cash paid by Marja and fled to Brazil. Stip has since died, and perhaps took the truth of what happened to Harry and Antoinette to his grave.

If Stip was involved, he could be the missing link between Antoinette, Harry, Henk and Johan. Henk knew the area where Antoinette’s body was dumped very well, he had worked as a barman in a sex club. 

The theory is that Harry’s murderer or murderers decided to celebrate the accomplishment by spending their newfound cash on a night with a prostitute. Perhaps in the course of the amorous session, the murder was mentioned, and as Antoinette knew about it they had to tie up loose ends. She had to die before she could talk about Harry’s murder.

All of the evidence was circumstantial and there was no way of proving it. Police asked the public for help, if anyone witnessed anything regarding the abductions and murders of Harry Roo and Antoinette Bont, police would follow up. 

In the meantime, all they could do was go with the evidence they had. Concrete evidence. Like the bricks that were in the sports bags in Groningen and Bremen to weight it down. With Antoinette’s limbs, there were four bricks in the bag. The bricks were from a batch of nine million locally manufactured bricks. It would be impossible to trace the origin.

Police had better luck with the sports bags, however. They realised the bags were quite unique, in fact, none were ever sold in retail. Employees at a power company called Edom, were given the bags for Christmas. In total, 4000 green sports bags were handed out. Police asked all registered workers to bring their bags in, so as to exclude them as possible suspects.

In the end, there were only about 70 bags unaccounted for. Some had lost them or given them away… So although the search had narrowed down some possible suspects, police still didn’t quite have anything more than before. It was a gigantic task to compile all the data regarding the bags, and they could still not prove that one of the Edom employees had murdered Antoinette Bont.

What was interesting, is that the Edom building was situated in the tipplezone where Antoinette had worked. Shortly after Antoinette’s body parts were found, a witness came forward. He said that he was walking along the canal with his wife in the days before the sports bag was discovered. They saw a white van parked right on the edge of the water. The van was marked with ‘EGD’, which is a subsidiary of the power company, Edom. The witness could not recall seeing anyone.

EDG company records showed that a truck like that one, was booked out on the day in question. But the person who normally drove it, had another work obligation that day. The keys to the truck was accessible to anyone working in the building.

There was also another man, who lived on a farm in the area where Antoinette’s limbs were disposed of. Three months after her death, he went to police and told them that he saw a man carrying a sports bag, clutched to his chest, walking towards the water. The witness was on his tractor at the time and had a good look at the man who stopped, so the tractor could pass him.

When the witness worked with a sketch artist something strange happened. In a twist of events, the man the witness described, turned out to be a spitting image of the witness himself. Was this a veiled confession? The witness denied having anything to do with the murder. Police kept an eye on the man, as he was known to have a temper that would cause trouble from time to time. He was mentioned earlier in their investigation, so they felt very uneasy about him. They took a DNA sample, but didn’t fit any of the four samples found on Antoinette. And after further investigation, he too, was ruled out as a suspect.

In 2001, the murders of two Groningen prostitutes who died in the two years before Antoinette’s murder were solved. Serial killer, Willem van Eijk was charged and denied having had anything to do with Antoinette Bont’s murder. Van Eijk would typically rape and mutilate his victims, but he never dismembered them. This led police to conclude that he wasn’t responsible for Antoinette’s death.

Bizarrely, in 2003, eight years after Antoinette was killed, information reached police that a Groningen man who frequented sex clubs had preserved Antoinette’s severed head in his freezer. Police arrested the man, but after searching his home and interrogating him, the 52-year-old was released. He did not have any information about the whereabouts of Antoinette’s head. His DNA also didn’t match any of the samples taken from Antoinette’s body.

Forward to 2005, 10 years after Harry and Antoinette’s murders… Harry’s ex, Marja Plas and her daughter walked into a Groningen police station, accompanied by a lawyer. Marja said she was being extorted yet again. And again, by Henk who, by this time, had been released from prison.

Henk threatened to go to police to tell them the ‘real’ truth about Harry’s death if she did not pay him. He would tell the police that it was Marja who had hired him to murder Harry. In her statement to police Marja denies any involvement whatsoever in Harry – the father of her daughter’s – death.

Shortly after Marja’s report, Henk was arrested. Henk told police that he hadn’t threatened Marja, but that he did pursue the money from all those years ago. He said that in 1995 he didn’t extort her, he simply demanded to be paid what was due to him for killing Harry. That’s why he went to her again, to get the money. He also implicated Marja’s cop-husband, Rob in the murder-for-hire plan. But Henk didn’t want to elaborate.

Without concrete evidence to support either party’s version of events, Henk was released. 

But it wouldn’t be long before he was in custody again. He was arrested at the airport in Paris with three kilograms of cocaine in his possession. Groningen Police went to Paris to see if they could convince him to talk about Marja’s accusation of extortion.

Henk said that he would tell them everything if he could be transferred to a Dutch prison. Prosecutors could not promise that, so Henk didn’t want to talk. They asked him directly: did he conspire with Marja and Rob to have Harry killed? Henk said: that’s about 90% of it.

Through his lawyer, Henk’s revised story came out. Louis De Leon handed the statement in, which revealed that Harry’s death was the result of a murder-for-hire, ordered by Marja and that she still owed him the money.

According to Henk, he was very close to Marja before Harry’s murder. He said:

“Her relationship with Harry was very bad. I was her confidant. Marja asked me about a year before the murder if I knew how to get rid of Harry. I said that it would cost her and mentioned the amount of 1 Million Guilder or a couple of hundred kilos of marijuana. Marja considered it.”

Henk claimed that once he had committed the murder, finished the job so to speak, it became clear that Marja had no intention of paying him. She thought if she could report him to police as the man who was extorting her, police would go after him, figure out that he had killed Harry and she wouldn’t have to pay. This way both Harry and Henk were out of the way and she didn’t have to pay one single Guilder.

When Marja heard about Henks’ new statement, she was shocked and vehemently denied the allegations against her. She said that she was never close to Henk and was appalled that he was throwing her under the bus like this. She always found him to be a strange man. She was scared of him and feared for her and her daughter’s safety as he had threatened to harm her daughter in the past.

Rob, who by this time had been separated from Marja, supported her statement and said – on the record – that their relationship only developed AFTER the murder. They had not planned Harry’s murder.

Rob’s colleagues didn’t quite know what to believe anymore. For years Rob had a perpetual cloud of suspicion hanging over him. Fellow officers suspected that he was involved in the drug trade, but an investigation yielded no evidence. They did eventually caught him with four kilograms of marijuana in his possession. After this incident he was kindly asked to resign from the police force.

This didn’t solve anything. Henk had been to prison for Harry’s murder, but police still felt that they did not have the whole story. To this day, there is the distinct feeling that the main characters in this tragic story are not saying everything there is to say. 

Antoinette’s head has never been found – and neither has the pistol that killed Harry nor the sword that Henk and Johan allegedly used to dismember Harry’s body. With cases so similar, how can the one be solved and the other one remain unsolved?

A cold case team in Groningen have re-opened both cases in 2012 and are still trying to piece together this mystery. The elements of these two murders are all too similar to be dismissed as co-incidental.

There are many loose threads, like all the links leading police to the power company. Was it all carefully staged to put them on the wrong path? That seems unlikely. That being said, none of Edom’s employees have ever been declared as suspects in either of the murders. Was there perhaps a connection between Harry and Antoinette that no one else was aware of? More than 20 years after the murders, the cold case team surely has their job cut out for them. Witnesses forget, move on or pass away. Physical evidence deteriorates. But the memory remains.

Antoinette’s cousin wrote a letter to investigative journalist Peter De Vries. She says that, to many people Antoinette was just a drug addict and a prostitute, but to her family she was a daughter, a sister and friend.

Whether you are a drug dealer or a prostitute, no one deserves to be killed, dismembered and thrown out like trash. These two cases will haunt the people of Groningen until the book can be closed on Antoinette Bont’s murder forever.

If you’d like to read more about this case, have a look at the resources used for this episode in the show notes. 

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