World3 min(s) read
Published 16:35 13 May 2026 GMT
A man shocked the Netherlands after publicly confessing to the murder of his own step-sister, only for it later to emerge that the confession was part of a desperate attempt to solve her cold case.
On March 11, 2011, Andy van den Hurk posted a chilling message on Facebook that immediately grabbed national attention.
“I will be arrested today [for] the murder of my sister, I confessed,” he wrote.
The post referred to the unsolved killing of his sibling, Nicole van den Hurk, who vanished 16 years earlier at the age of 15 while cycling to work in Eindhoven.
Nicole disappeared on her way to a shift at a nearby shopping centre in 1995 and never arrived at work.
Later that evening, police found her bike and backpack inexplicably abandoned nearby. A month later, her body was discovered in woodland close to the area. She had been sexually assaulted and fatally stabbed.
The murder horrified the Netherlands and became one of the country’s most closely followed criminal investigations. Hundreds joined the search for Nicole, while thousands attended her funeral in November 1995.
In the years that followed, investigators pursued several leads, but to no avail. In 1996, police thought they had made a breakthrough after arresting a man connected to the van den Hurk family on drug trafficking charges.
He claimed he had been forced to smuggle heroin by the people responsible for Nicole’s death, but investigators were unconvinced by his version of events, and the case stalled once again.
With the investigation gradually going cold, a frustrated Andy decided to take drastic action after moving to the UK.
By falsely confessing to the murder, he hoped authorities would reopen the case and reexamine the evidence.
After admitting to the crime, he was arrested by British police and extradited back to the Netherlands. However, just five days later, he was released because investigators found no evidence tying him to his sister's death.
Soon after, Andy withdrew the confession and revealed the real reason behind it.
“I wanted to get [Nicole] exhumed and get DNA off her,” he explained, per The Mirror. “I kind of set myself up and it could have gone horribly wrong. She is my sister. I miss her every day.”
However, the risky plan achieved exactly what he had hoped for. In September 2011, investigators exhumed Nicole’s body and carried out new DNA testing. The analysis uncovered DNA from two men, one belonging to Nicole’s boyfriend at the time, and another unidentified sample.
That second DNA profile eventually led police to Jos de G, a 46-year-old convicted rapist and former psychiatric patient.
One of his earlier convictions involved an attack with disturbing similarities to Nicole’s case. In a previous incident, he had assaulted and raped a young woman at knifepoint while she was cycling near a neighboring town.
In 2014, de G was charged with Nicole’s rape and murder. However, during the trial, his lawyers argued that semen found on Nicole and her clothing could have come from a consensual sexual encounter.
The murder charge was later reduced to manslaughter, but after a lengthy legal battle lasting two years, de G was acquitted of killing Nicole. He was ultimately sentenced to five years in prison for rape, and despite an appeal, the Dutch Supreme Court upheld the decision.
