High On Crime

After years on the run, even using fake identities, the most wanted criminal in the Netherlands was finally tracked down to a luxury villa in a wealthy neighourhood in Dubai in December of 2019. His name is Ridouan Taghi (forgive me if I don't pronounce it correctly, it's actually not a Dutch name, he has joing Moroccan and Dutch nationality). His reign of terror spanned almost a decade and included accusations of multiple murders, grievous bodily harm and leading a drug syndicate and criminal gang called "The Angels of Death". He was so elusive that he had never been convicted of a major crime. In fact, the authorities were long unsure of where he was.

The people in today's episode had taken up a rather thrilling hobby, skydiving. So there are three main people involved in what you could actually call a love triangle. Els van Doren was a 38-year old mother of two, married to an Antwerp jeweller and was an experienced skydiver who had performed 2300 jumps. Els was friends with 26-year old Els Clottemans, who was a primary school teacher in Brussels. At one point, Els suggested that everyone in the skydiving club call her younger friend "Babs", so that there would be less confusion. Both women were having an affair with their Dutch skydiving instructor Marcel Somers, and all three of them belonged to the Zwartberg parachute club in eastern Flanders.

The police followed up on an early morning phone call and they found a black Mercedes, half submerged in the Stieltjeskanaal in Coevorden on the morning of Friday 31 March 2017. Authorities suspect someone had tried to push the car into the canal, but the towbar got stuck against the edge of the canal. The police conducted a research in and around the vehicle, when they opened the boot of the car, they made a gruesome discovery. It contained the badly battered, bundled up, dead body of a man. According to the police, it was clear that the man was murdered in a horrific way.

This episode is about a Dutch woman whose crimes were so horrible, she ended up being named the deadliest woman in the world in the Guinness Book of Records! Maria Catherina van der Linden - Swanenburg, quite a mouthful! was a Dutch serial killer who murdered at least 27 people and was suspected of killing more than 90 people in Leiden.

On the morning of 18 March 2019, three people were killed and seven others were injured in a mass shooting on a tram in Utrecht. One of the injured died of his injuries ten days later. Local authorities and the court of law confirmed it was a terrorist attack. The suspect, Gokmen Tanis, a 37-year old Turkish man, was arrested later that day following a major security operation and manhunt. He admitted carrying out the attack and was charged with "murder with terrorist intent".

Pim Fortuyn was a high profile politician who got assassinated in 2002. Listen to this episode for the full story.

Welcome to High on Crime, a new podcast that focuses on true crime in the Netherlands. This episode is a short introduction into the podcast and the host.