Frank Vick sits next to his wife in the courtroom of the Hague court and looks tensely from the counselor to the interpreter. When it is said that he “must be acquitted because of the lack of legal and convincing evidence,” tears flow. Frank Vick then folds both hands in front of his face, and takes a deep breath. †thank you”, he then says. He hugs his wife, his lawyer hands him a glass of water.
Frank Vick was acquitted of the Pettense camping murder on Wednesday. As a result, after 28 years it has become clear what Vick has been saying for years: he was wrongly convicted for stabbing his father-in-law in Petten in North Holland in 1994. Afterwards, emotions dominate with Vick, who came from Germany especially for the half hour in which the court finally established his innocence. “Finally,” he says. “I am so happy. I can finally let go of the case after all these years.”
Intensive interrogations
On July 2, 1994, 42-year-old German Peter Teschke is stabbed to death at a campsite in the Pettense dunes. Frank Vick, the husband of Teschke’s stepdaughter, tells the police shortly afterwards that he is the perpetrator. He later retracts that confession. The Amsterdam court sentenced him to five years in prison in the mid-1990s. Crucial in the case are the confessional statements of Vick, otherwise there is hardly any evidence against him. The statements, in which the German tells anything but a consistent story, were made in intensive, sometimes hours-long interrogations, often without a lawyer being present.
Vick has maintained for years that he is innocent and that his statements were false, but only after lawyer Niels van Schaik gets into the case, things start to move. In 2020, legal psychologist Melanie Sauerland concludes that there are strong indications that Frank Vick’s statements are false, partly because he constantly adapts his story to facts that the police tell him. Witnesses also state that someone else would be the perpetrator: the now deceased German Gunther L.
Also read: ‘Forever I am a different Frank than before the murder case†
Compensation
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that this was a novelty, a new fact, and that the case must be restarted, a rare judgment. Two weeks ago, the Public Prosecution Service asked for acquittal, because Frank Vick’s confessions could not simply serve as evidence. So now the court agrees, because it endorses the conclusion of the legal psychologist. According to the court, Vick’s confessions do not show any knowledge of the perpetrator.
The court says that from the moment the suspect made a confessional statement, the police investigation team “failed to investigate further the involvement of another person in the death of the victim.” Also, insufficient additional research has been conducted into the correctness of Vick’s statements. According to press councilor Yolande Wijnnobel, the Amsterdam court in the 1990s was convinced that there was legal and convincing evidence, partly because the conclusions of the legal psychologist were not yet known at the time.
Lawyer Niels van Schaik says that the next step is to request compensation. This will probably be done through an amicable settlement with the state. Based on previous cases, it is obvious that this amount will run into the thousands. Van Schaik says that the court’s ruling also gives him enormous satisfaction. “I’ve worked on Frank’s case for years, with this as a result. That is really what you do it for.”
#years #acquittal #Pettense #camping #murder