Cold case team in search of Fiat 850 Coupe

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The Netherlands are under the spell of what could possibly be a murder that is too old to prosecute. A cold case team, never the less, works hard to find evidence in the shape of a 1969 Fiat 850 Coupe, which they think may be found hidden on the bottom of a lake.

On this Friday it will be 44 years ago that friends Hans Martens (20 years old at the time) and Piet Hölskens (21) disappeared from the radar. Or more: the village of Asten where they lived. For the first time since that day in March 1974, local police have now started a comprehensive search as they say they have suspicions the two men may have been murdered. This all thanks to the work of a private investigator.

The duo was last seen in a café named ZanziBar in Deurne. They left the place at around 3 o’clock in the morning never to be seen again. Piet’s brother Jan was in the ZanziBar café, too, that night and told the press: “He went to the back of the café, perhaps to meet somebody. When he came back he said: ‘I need to go now, but when I come back I’ll have more money than you.’” The brother added: “At the time the police wouldn’t do a thing. They were adults and had no criminal record, so they didn’t start a search. And so we tried ourselves. But where to look for them? We didn’t have a clue and we no idea whatsoever that they may even have been killed.”

New investigations led the police to think that Martens may have had an extra-marital relationship and was lured to a place by the husband, together with his friend Piet who owned a car, and killed at the spot. Being a road worker, the husband possibly buried them under a stretch of newly laid road between Straelen en Kerken just over the Dutch border in Germany and sank the car in a Dutch lake. Police are now dragging the lake to see if Hölksens’ car is there: a red Fiat Coupe 850 registered ‘15-82-JF’. So far no trace whatsoever has been found of the car.

(Words and imaging: editor) 
 

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