One Dutchman From Murder

One dutchman We’re headed overseas with this story to Amsterdam. It was February of 1991 when a man named Richard Klinkhamer went to the police to report that his wife, Hanny, had been missing for nearly a week. Hanny was short for Hannelore. He had been searching for her, but he had found no trace of her with friends or family. He had found her red bicycle at a nearby train station and feared she had left him, but wanted to report it just in case. Police are immediately suspicious of the man, mainly because he was her husband. Police began a hunt to try to find the man’s wife, searching the couple’s home, tried to find her with sniffer dogs and even did an aerial infrared scan with the Royal Dutch but came up without a single clue. Without a body or any sign of Hanny, police are stuck. Looking into Richard and Hanny could hold many clues though. Richard had grown up with a less than ideal childhood. He was a young child living in Austria at the beginning of WWII. His mother had carried on an affair with an SS officer and had been raped by a Nazi. When she had taken Richard back to Holland after the war, she was punished for her affair by the Dutch public who shaved her head in what they called an “ugly carnival.” Ugly Carnivals cropped up after World War II when the occupied countries were liberated from German forces. The citizens took a tactic out of how Nazi’s had treated their people and they would publicly humiliate women who had children with or collaborated with their German occupiers. Sometimes this mean publicly shaving their heads, and sometimes they were beaten as well. They would then be paraded through the streets, sometimes stripped naked, and covered in tar or painted with swastikas. I read this practice actually has it’s roots in the dark ages where the Visigoths would remove a woman’s hair to punish her for committing adultery as a show of power against women since women are known for their long, luxurious locks. It’s actually kinda crazy that the people freed from the Germans took up this practice as the Nazis themselves did the same thing during the war. They would take German women they thought had slept with non-Aryans or with foreigners and ordered their heads shaved. When he was just 5 he watched his aunt get raped and his uncle murdered. I couldn’t find much info on this, but I’m assuming it had to do with the war. Possibly Nazis attacking his aunt and uncle. After the war, his mother worked as a prostitute to get by in Holland and little Richard went in and out of foster care. At 19, Richard joined the French Foreign Legion which was described in writings as “a branch of the French Army made up of volunteer foreign misfits.” In the French Foreign Legion, Richard was taught how to kill and dispose of bodies. He turned out to be a damn good shot and was one of the best marksmen in his company. He deserted the legion later in 1960. He moved in with family and got a job as a beertender at a local pub. Not sure they used that term then, but our local breweries do now, so I’ll go with that. It was during this period that he met Leontien (lay-on-teen) van Emmerik who fell head-over-heels for Richard. As for Richard, he was a bit of a ladies man and wasn’t interested in a monogamous relationship. He tried to break things off twice with Leontien, but she just kept coming back and when she got pregnant, he dutifully married her as was expected. He was 25 and she was 22. Their wedding was followed by a reception at which, a very drunk Richard and his brothers belted out tunes, embarrassing his new in-laws. One girl in attendance, Leontien’s 15 year-old-stepsister, was instantly enamored with Richard. This girl’s name was Hannie Godfrinon. Leontien claimed that she overheard Hannie at the wedding vowing to destroy the marriage so she could have Richard for herself. Hannie had joined the Van Emmerick family – Leontien’s – 5 years before after her parents had a very violent argument. During their disagreement, the couple tumbled down a flight of stairs and crashed through a glass door after which, her dad grabbed a hammer and beat his wife to death. So, Hannie was just 10 when she witnessed this whole thing. So, since her mom was murdered, her dad went to jail and she and her brother went to live with the van Emmeriks. I’m not sure how or if they were actually related to the van Emmeriks, but they took the kids in. So, back to Richard and Leontien – just six months after their wedding, Leontien gave birth to their first child and a 2nd a year later. Richard did well as an entrepreneur, opening a few butcher shops in Amsterdam with his brothers. Eventually, he and Leontien decided to move up to North Holland where they opened a seaside hotel. Hannie lived near them and often came to help out with the kids. Being around Hannie often, Richard discovers he’s catching feeling for the now-19 year old. In 1966, while Hannie was over for Christmas dinner, Richard and she were washing dishes when Hannie told him she was free the next Monday and gave the age-old offer – “your place or mine?” Not one to miss an opportunity, Richard agrees and they begin an affair. They carry on for about a year before Leontien catches on, but she’s still so in love with Richard, she’s willing to do just about anything to keep him. Leontien suggests they try a three-way relationship, not as in a threesome, but more like the polygamist style, where Richard alternates between the two women. They tried it for a while, but when Richard was away, the step-sisters fought wildly. The arrangement only lasted about 3 months, and Hannie left town to live in Amsterdam. She didn’t stop her relationship with Richard though. Richard would visit her often after which, Hannie would call Leontien with explicit details of their sexual trysts. This kept going until 1975 – more than 10 years – when Hannie decided enough was enough and she left for Israel. Richard, being such a great guy, told Leontien he’d stick it out with her just until their two sons were older. However, before the kids were fully grown, the couple divorced, and Richard was denied contact with his children. Now in his 40’s Richard felt like Hannie was the perfect person to spend the rest of his life with. A few weeks after running off with Hannie, the two were married. Richard had begun writing some years before and he delved deeper into this passion for the written word. He wrote a handful of short stories, many of which were autobiographical. He did churn out a couple of novels as well. Hannie found work as a pediatric nurse. Richard built a shed on their property where he did his writing. He’d wake up between 3 and 4 every morning and go put all his thoughts on paper. This would go on until about 10 in the morning and after his writing was complete, he’d get hammered. Richard had also grown a bit overly fond of Grolsch beer, overdrinking constantly. Every time he finished a writing project, he’d treat himself to a crate of beer. I looked up how much this was – this is equal to what we call a case of beer, holding 24 beer cans. He would often dig holes around his property to hold his beer in. Apparently, keeping them in the ground kept them cool. He was so proud of this discovery, he’d show friends and bragged about how easy it would be to hid a body in one of his many holes. Money from his book sales began flowing in and to add to his good luck streak, Richard hit it big on the stock market. The couple were able to buy a 2nd home, this time in Portugal. However, in 1987, the stock market crashed and so did all of the couple’s savings. They had to sell their home in Portugal and the fights between the two began. All of this led to Richard drinking more and Hannie becoming unhappy. Neighbors and friends would see bruises on Hannie and had a feeling Richard had put them there. That’s when, in 1991, Hannie went missing. After no sign of Hannie for a week, Richard reported her missing. The police felt like she hadn’t just left of her own free will, but that something had probably happened to her. BREAK After Hannie went missing, neighbors felt like it was strange that Richard had taken a full week to report her missing. He was also acting nonchalant and wasn’t doing anything to try to find her. As for Hannie’s bike that was found at the train station – that was made even stranger by the fact that there were no trains coming or going the night she had disappeared and no one had reported seeing her on the train the next morning. Police felt like Richard had done something to Hannie. They questioned him over and over again, searched his house and the shed and they confiscated many of his items. They searched with sniffer dogs and the airforce infrared scanner, but were left with absolutely no clues. In Holland, if there’s no conclusive proof that a crime has been committed, you can’t arrest someone, so Richard was free to live his life. Richard waited 5 years, and on the 5th anniversary of Hannie’s disappearance, he had her declared dead and began collecting a widower’s pension. He sold their home and left for Amsterdam. He always claimed that he didn’t know what happened to Hannie, but would give mysterious answers when asked if he had murdered her. On a TV show, he was asked point blank if he killed her and he replied with, “the villagers say I cut her into pieces or put her in the pond or in the compost hill.” When confronted by friends, he would ask why the wanted to know or that now wasn’t the time to talk about it. Then, Richard approaches his publisher with a new book. It was called, “Wednesday, Mince Day.” The book played off of the press he’d gotten for his wife going missing. The novel was full of tales of ways in which he could have killed his wife. One of the 7 ways in which he described in his manuscript was that he could have destroyed Hannie’s body by mincing her corpse bit by bit through a meat grinder then feeding it to pigeons. The publisher was so appalled by the book that he rejected it. Soon, though, news of the manuscript got out the the public which got Richard more notoriety which he loved. Meanwhile, the new owners of Richard and Hannie’s prior home began a renovation project. They deconstructed the entire garden and that’s when workers came across a chunk of clay buried beneath the garden shed’s concrete floor. Inside of the clay, they found a human skull which was later determined by a forensic scientist to belong to Hannie. Richard was arrested and investigators are thrilled to have finally gotten the evidence to prove Richard had killed his wife. When he was arrested in February of 2000, he said, “I’ve been waiting 9 years for this.” According to Richard’s confession, Hannie had come home from a shopping excursion and one of their fights broke out. This fight was worse than the others, though, and Hannie ordered Richard to leave. The two began shoving and hitting one another. Hannie grabbed a crowbar off of the washing machine and started swinging at Richard. Richard wrestled the crowbar away from her and hit her a few times with it about the head. He said she screamed and he kept hitting her until the screaming stopped and she fell to the floor. He said he then dragged her body out to the shed and threw her into the hole that he’d used for his beer crates. The next day he covered the hole with dirt, a layer of compost to mask the smell, and a layer of concrete. Richard was sentenced to 7 years in prison, but only served 3. On January 21 or 2016, Richard Klinkhamer was found dead at the age of 78 from a single shot to the head. His death was determined to be a suicide. Richard’s book, Wednesday, Mince Day, was published and was by far his biggest seller, but not because he was uber-talented. Instead, it was well-read because of the fact that he had killed his wife then described it in the book. Even though he was a known murderer, Richard was actually very well liked by his neighbors and friends. They said he was eccentric but was a good person. After Hannie was gone and before he was jailed, Richard had even bagged a girlfriend 35 years younger than him. Sources: Allthatsinteresting.com, theguardian.com, narratively.com - Story by Tiffany R. Jansen called He Killed His Wife, Then Wrote a Novel About It, pictolic.com,