Dutch police have arrested a suspect in a 13-year-old murder mystery after taking thousands of DNA samples in a bid to solve a cold case whose brutality shocked the country.
“A suspect has been detained in the case” of 16-year-old Marianne Vaatstra, who was raped and murdered in May 1999, the public prosecution service said in a press release.
Vaatstra's body was found in a meadow in the rural northern Friesland province after she cycled home alone at night. The brutal nature of her rape and murder shocked the Netherlands, and the case has remained a subject of intense media speculation.
Prosecutors declined to give more details on the suspect, but Dutch news agency ANP, quoting Vaatstra's father, said a 44-year-old man had been arrested on Sunday evening.
The arrest followed a last-ditch effort by Dutch detectives to solve the case by asking about 7 300 men in early September to donate DNA samples in the hope of establishing a link to the killer or his family.
The probe was reopened after changes in Dutch law in April which now allow police to identify a suspect by comparing DNA found on a crime scene with genetic material indicating a family relation.
Thousands of men in September reported to specially set-up DNA-testing stations around the Kollum municipality to have the inside of their cheeks swabbed.
Dutch media reported on Monday that genetic material given by one of the volunteers directly matched that found on Vaatstra's body, which was found in a field near the village of Veenklooster in Kollum.
The suspect, a local farmer, lives 2.5 kilometres from where Vaatstra's body was found, ANP reported.
At the time of the murder, fingers were pointed at two men from Iraq and Afghanistan who had shortly before left a nearby centre for asylum-seekers.
DNA tests after they were arrested proved them innocent, but rumours about the asylum centre persisted. - AFP