A book has gone on sale by a Dutch writer who murdered his wife and wrote a gruelling story about his deed. All but one major Dutch bookstores are selling the novel.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what people think”, the writer, Richard Klinkhamer, was quoted as saying by Dutch newspapers. “There is only one person that I need to justify this too. And she’s no longer with us,” he said, referring to the woman he killed, Hannie Godfrinon.
How to dispel such logic? Should a murderer be allowed to publish a first hand account of his deeds? Dutch publisher Jan Wieringa believes so. He says the book proves a good read. No one in the Dutch press is accusing him (as yet) of singing the praises of a murderer for financial gain, when he called Klinkhamer’s novel a ‘terrific book’.
Perhaps the lack of outrage is because it is so long ago that the writer committed his gruesome murderous act. It was in 1991 that he reported Hannie, his wife as missing. He had murdered her by hitting her on the head with a crow bar. It wasn’t before 2000 before police dug up her remains in his garden and Klinkhamer was sentenced to a 16 year prison term.
What’s even more astonishing is that the writer not only wrote a book about his murder, but that he repeatedly showed friends and journalists holes he had actually dug in his garden. “He used to say ‘nice hole, eh? You could bury a body here’”, Dutch newspaper De Dag wrote.
The writer developed a real knack for living his dual life. He even entitled his novel ‘Friday Minced Meat Day’ and said it was because police shortly after his wife had gone missing, had confiscated a minced meat grinder from his house.
Another bizarre twist in the story is that Hannie Godfrinon’s own father also killed her mother. That happened in 1957 and in exactly the same way; her father smashing her mother’s skull with a crow bar.
Klinkhamer’s publisher says the novel shows that the writer is full of remorse about his deed. But the writer says that ‘only 95%’ of the book is based on real fact. “I could not write everything about the murder in the first edition because I hadn’t been caught by then,” he said. What to say? If the writer was hinting at a sequel, the ethics issue might become somewhat relevant all of a sudden.
Angelique van Engelen is a freelance writer in Amsterdam. She participates in www.reporTwitters.com, a platform of Twittering Journalists.
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