Survival expert arrested over death of boy 20 years ago following biggest DNA harvesting operation in Dutch history
Jos Brech set to be extradited from Spain to Netherlands following manhunt
A survival expert has been arrested over the murder of a schoolboy 20 years ago, following the biggest DNA harvesting operation in Dutch history.
After a Europe-wide manhunt, Jos Brech, 55, was detained by Spanish police on Sunday afternoon and held in a police cell pending his transfer back to the Netherlands.
Dutch officers announced last week that Mr Brech’s DNA was a 100 per cent match with samples taken from the clothes of the boy, Nicky Verstappen, who was killed while on a summer camp in 1998.
After distributing images of Mr Brech, a Dutchman living in Spain recognised the man and sent a tip-off to police.
“He’d been living in a tent in the woods, close to a house that several people have visited for years. It’s a sort of commune where I had lived for ages too,” the man told the Telegraaf newspaper.
The cold case has gripped the Netherlands ever since Nicky’s body was discovered in a forest close to the youth camp in Limburg province where he had been reported missing the previous day.
The 11-year-old had been sexually assaulted before his death.
Despite a high-profile manhunt, no arrest was ever made. Mr Brech was questioned three times during the inquiry, including just two days after the murder when he was stopped by police while walking near the scene late at night.
Last year, in a bid to track down the killer, police launched an appeal asking more than 20,000 men in the region to provide DNA samples.
Nearly 15,000 came forward, one of whom was a relative of Mr Brech. The match flagged Mr Brech as a suspect, and DNA later taken from his pyjamas confirmed him as a “one-on-one match”, chief prosecutor Jan Eland said.
Mr Brech left the Netherlands in October, and told his family in February he was hiking in eastern France. He was known to be an expert in surviving in the wilderness for long periods at a time.
But after the tip-off to Spanish police, Mr Brech was arrested in Catalonia, around an hour’s drive north of Barcelona.