Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
An intriguing criminal case, which had to be pieced together like a puzzle, unfolded on May 11, 2006. That night, a hemp plantation ready for harvest in Venray, north of the Dutch city of Venlo, was raided. A few hours later, the police discovered the plantation and found numerous bloodstains there, which, as it later turned out, belonged to two young Moroccans. The police assumed that during the raid on the plantation—which was monitored by video and temperature sensors—the two had been caught by the owners and likely killed. But there was no trace of the two Moroccans, 19-year-old Fouad B. and 23-year-old Karim F. A hot lead quickly pointed to the plantation’s operators. They were Lau G. and Geert G., who were already known to the police and had been traveling toward Venray that night, as proven by a photo from a speed camera. Two days after the raid on the plantation, the two men had fled first to Turkey, then to Croatia, and later to Germany. In June 2006, a forensic team searched Lau G.’s house in Arcen. Shortly thereafter, Geert G.’s house in Bracht-Heidhausen was subjected to a forensic examination. Although both men were arrested along with Lau G.’s 17-year-old son, the latter was released from pretrial detention due to lack of evidence. For years, there was no trace of the two Moroccans. Years later, a new arrest followed based on new findings by the SEK Dülken, but the evidence was again insufficient. Nevertheless, a trial date was set for November 6, 2013. However, this had to be postponed. On April 9, 2014, Lau G. was finally arrested again because, while he was in prison in Germany for another crime, he had described to a fellow inmate the murder of the two Moroccans, whom he had killed with five shots from his submachine gun and then, together with Geert G., buried wrapped in plastic tarps in a wooded area near his former apartment in Arcen. The police did indeed find the bodies of the two young Moroccans there. Both subsequently confessed in May 2014. In the spring of 2015, Lau G. was sentenced to life in prison for the double murder of the two Moroccans; his accomplice, Geert G., received a 30-year prison sentence. One week after the verdict, Lau G. took his own life in prison.
