Posted on 05/11/2002 7:04:41 PM PDT by Shermy
THREE days before Christmas 1996, Chris Van de Werken, an environment officer in the sleepy little town of Nunspeet, 40 miles east of Amsterdam, went jogging in the woods near his home. He never came back.
Alerted by gunshots, passers-by found Van de Werken's body on a cycle path. Although dozens of people were questioned, no motive was established and nobody was charged. In April 1997 the inquiry was closed. Five years later it has been reopened.
This weekend, as the Netherlands mourned Pim Fortuyn, the populist right-wing politician, police were investigating links between his assassination last Monday and what became known in Nunspeet as the "Christmas murder".
Volkert van der Graaf, 32, a militant animal rights campaigner who was arrested immediately after killing Fortuyn, had also come into conflict with Van de Werken.
Yesterday he was still refusing to give police any explanation for the shooting of Fortyun. His girlfriend Petra who gave birth to a daughter last autumn, has moved out of their small home in Harderwijk, eight miles from Nunspeet. His mother Anneke has been told by lawyers to say nothing.
The picture that has emerged from interviews with those who know van der Graaf, however, is of a gifted but obsessive man so fanatical about the rights of animals that he was prepared to take human life.
Why he chose to take Fortuyn's remains a puzzle as the Dutch prepare for elections on Wednesday. The latest polls predict that the party launched three months ago by the former sociology professor could become the second strongest in the new parliament, with almost 18% of the vote.
Van der Graaf's upbringing was typical of a middle-class provincial Dutchman. The second son of teacher, he grew up in Middelburg, a picturesque small town crisscrossed with canals in the windswept southwestern province of Zeeland. Bram Theune, who taught him mathematics at the local grammar school, remembers him as one of the quietest but cleverest of his classmates. "Volkert was very studious — in one exam he scored 99%, which was quite phenomenal," he said.
Fellow pupils remember a temper that could suddenly flare up. "I never got into quarrels at school," recalled Marcel Dellebeke, one of his classmates. "But he was different."
Passionately interested in biology, van der Graaf was already taking his first steps into the animal rights movement. He founded the Zeeland Animal Liberation Front, which daubed slogans on the facades of restaurants with frog's legs on the menu.
When van der Graaf was 17 his father Henk died. With his mother and older brother Roland, he moved a few miles south to the port of Vlissingen. There, he worked briefly at a bird sanctuary; former colleagues recall he objected when they used mousetraps.
Van der Graaf went on to study environmental hygiene at the agricultural university in Wageningen. He then moved to to a green commune, but in the early 1990s returned to Wageningen, renting a room from Richard Beumer, a former air force officer. They could not have been more different.
"He wasn't the type you could to talk to about football," Beumer recalled. "He was always worried about the environment, especially seals. He couldn't bear the idea that those dear little creatures were being clubbed to death."
Van der Graaf became a vegan and joined anti-vivisection and environmental groups. Then, in 1992, he founded Milieu Offensief (Environment Offensive), which was opposed to all animal farming. He set out to use every trick in the legal system to block permits needed by farmers to expand production.
He and his fellow activists split their areas: van der Graaf got Nunspeet and Harderwijk, and the surrounding region known as the Dutch Bible belt. Although little more than 90 minutes' drive from Amsterdam, it could be in another country. Some of its significant minority of Protestant fundamentalists put so much faith in God that they refuse medicine.
With his southern accent, van der Graaf remained an outsider, but neighbours said he was devoted to his baby girl, nicknamed Moppie. To the horror of others in the street he let his grass grow knee-high and kept chickens. Once a horse was tethered in the front garden.
Relations with farmers, many of them deeply conservative and resentful of a man they saw as a radical, deteriorated rapidly. To their fury his group fought more than 2,000 applications for farming licences, winning 70% of the cases.
Wien van den Brink, a pig farmer, fought in vain for more than five years for permission to build a new shed. Questions were asked about the financing of van der Graaf's organisation. In addition to about £100,000 in funding from the state lottery, some locals claim it was indirectly taking money from farmers in return for agreements not to block their licence applications.
Pieter Van der Camp, another farmer who fell foul of Milieu Offensief, said he managed to get the go-ahead after paying more than Ï20,000 to a broker. Milieu Offensief refused to comment last week.
In Harderwijk the local authority itself was taken to court by van der Graaf for wrongly issuing a licence that allowed a farmer to increase his livestock.
When Van der Graaf came into contact with Van de Werken, their relationship was tense. According to former colleagues, Van de Werken was willing to compromise in disputes and van der Graaf concluded he was on the side of the farmers. Then the official's body was found in the woods with two bullets in his back.
Like Fortuyn, Van de Werken was killed with 9mm silver-tip hollow-point bullets, a rare form of ammunition similar to dumdum bullets. Both men were shot in cold blood at extremely close range.
Police confirmed that van der Graaf was among those questioned at the time. Documents found on the hard disk of a computer seized from his home also point to a possible link with arson attacks in November 1999 on a plant in Milheeze, a few miles to the south, that produces feed for minks, and a series of incidents at a local poultry farm that started in 1995.
The rights and wrongs of intensive farming were never much of an issue for Fortuyn, however. If he thought about the countryside at all, it was probably the area around Provesano, in northeast Italy, where he bought a holiday home and where, as stipulated in his will, his remains will be buried.
Fortuyn's political preoccupations were largely urban. His first triumph in March came in local elections in Rotterdam, where his supporters won more than a third of the vote. His chief concern was immigration, especially from Muslim countries, and the problems he claimed it caused. "Holland is not a country, it is a city state," he said five days before his murder in an interview with The Sunday Times in his opulent Rotterdam home, filled with a mix of antiques and modern art.
Fortuyn was dismissive of the green movement, which he found humourless and tedious. In an interview last December with a Dutch environmental magazine, he sneered at worries about global warming. He was also known to favour easing restrictions on farming, especially on the rearing of mink. There could be no stronger symbol of everything van der Graaf so passionately opposed.
A police search of van der Graaf's home turned up plans of Fortuyn's house and the homes of three other prospective MPs on his party's list, including Jim Janssen van Raay, a prominent former Christian Democrat MEP. All three have been given 24-hour protection.
Police are examining claims that van der Graaf may also have stalked his prey on the morning of the assassination, following Fortuyn to a hotel in the southern town of Breda. Several witnesses claimed yesterday to have seen a man in a red baseball cap who strongly resembled van der Graaf. Whatever the motive for the killing, there is little doubt of its impact on the Netherlands. Political violence is a rarity in a country long ruled by consensus. When Fortuyn's body lay in state in Rotterdam's Laurentius cathedral on Thursday, tens of thousands queued in the baking sun to file past his coffin.
If yesterday's poll findings are confirmed on election day, the Pim Fortuyn List could pick up 27 of the 150 seats in parliament, one more than the Labour party of Wim Kok, the outgoing prime minister, and only two fewer than the Christian Democrats. Analysts expect it to join a centre-right coalition.
The party may not be a force for long, however, and some question whether it should continue at all. Fortuyn's brother Marten said it should be dissolved. "Pim is the party and the party is Pim," he said.
But the people arent' allowed to own guns like in the US. We let te government take away our rights. They now removed the right of safety of the consitution (thank socialists/liberals) and self defence is more punishable than the crime the criminal was going to do. The only time police were quick to arrest anyone was the Fortuyn killer.
Absolutely correct.
Maybe.
With most semi-auto weapons, the gun 'likes' some ammo and does not 'like' other ammo. What that means is that if you are firing 5-round strings at a target (say 25 yards,) the 'likeable' ammo will group more tightly than the 'not-likeable' ammo. So you practice with various brands, weights, etc., of ammo until you find the one which is 'likeable' for your weapon.
Another thing: 9mm ammo comes in all different weights (measured by grains of lead in the bullet,) from 90 grains up to 147.
The heavier rounds tend to fire higher on the target. So if your ammo is firing low, go up a weight class until you find the weight which fires dead-on point of aim.
Does it take practice to shoot someone at close range? Not really, depending on the meaning of 'close.'
Out to 10 yards or so, you have to really be a bozo to miss a human being. At 25 yards, you may miss point of aim by up to 6" (on the target,) depending on the typical factors: hurry, adrenaline, etc.
If the victims were 5 to 10 feet away (1.5 to 3.0 meters) killing them is not difficult.
This does presume that one has practiced--say a thousand rounds a year (not too much practice, BTW; Olympians and the professionals do around 2,000 rounds/week.)
Regarding posts #10 and the info from the start about witnesses saying they saw "militant types" in the area before Fortuyn was shot: I was thinking others may have known of his plan and helped him with target surveillance on the day of the hit and possibly at other times. I realize all of these greenie types wouldn't want to physically kill themselves, but I hear a lot of them wish death on their "enemies" and the enemies of animals and it is documented that they work in a loosely associated network- particularly ALF and ELF and openly advocate criminal activity.
I figure the shooter probably realized he needed help (lookouts etc) and had a few of the ones who agreed with the shooting posted around the site of the Fortuyn assassination in this lookout capacity. They could have helped tail him to that location as well. It would be so easy if they all had cell phones. Just before the shooting the shooter could have given them a heads up, they could have used these extra moments to flee- lessening the chances of their own detection- the shooter does his deed and then tries to get away on his own.
It also wouldn't surprise me at all that via this ELF/ALF system the arsonists and monkeywrenchers (and lately assassins) have some method of anonymously reporting their deeds so ELF/ALF knows that someone from the "revolution" is the one that has done the deed. They like to post these little victories on their website- it's good for morale. The USA is a big place as is Europe- hard to keep up with every little chicken house fire. Surely, someone is telling someone else- somehow.
I am surprised Mr.Fortuyn's murderer didn't use a rifle from a distance that would have allowed his escape.Up close and personal with a pistol he had to know an escape wasn't likely.
Someone being paid to kill would do whatever it took not to get caught,I would think.
That's a good point. I wonder what else this character has done in the past (assuming they succeed in hanging the other murder on him as well)? If he indeed figured he would get caught, he was in effect "giving himself up for the cause". He would have viewed this as the "ultimate" contribution, I suppose, for whatever it is he stands for. Perhaps hoping to spur on the next guy to "martyr" themselves as well.
It makes me angry that Gerhard Schroeder and Tony Blair are now thumping their pulpits saying we (Europe) need to quell the "Rise of the Right". What you would think they'd be concerned with is the rise in extremism of other types. Here they've had a politician get murdered and they basically say they agree idealistically with the assassin by saying the "Right must be put down".
With the election so near,maybe the murderer just had to take his best shot when he got the chance and the heck with the consequences.
The older 9MM Largo is 9x23 also but not as high pressure as the 9x23 Winchester so it doesn't pack as much punch.I believe both will use the same reloading dies but the Largo would have to have a lighter load.
I haven't used the 9x23 Winchester myself and am going from what I've heard and my memory on this.
My hope had been that it would provide a good clue so as to trace the killer's past movements. I'm sure he could have bought the bullets on the black market with no trace but if he did buy them legitimately, maybe the people that sold him the ammo will remember seeing someone else with him and then the police could round them up. I bet there's a nest of these little extremists somewhere. They may not all be guilty of murder, but there's still arson, extortion and other things they may have done or will do in the future.
Plus, too, I had been thinking they got the ammo sent to them from some extremists in the States who could get hold of the ammo easier. If there's a connection there it'd be great to expose it.
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