The arrest of Ryan Pieters- Rounding up the usual suspects

The arrest of Ryan Pieters, a suspect in the recent abduction of Bonaire based dutch pharmacy assistent Marlies van der Kouwe who was abducted on Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles saturday night 20 Sept is based on one fact and one fact alone: his rapsheet

Ryan Pieters has a prior arrest and conviction for rape and abduction of a Chech tourist in 2002 and he was recently released from Curaçao's Bon Futura prison and had returned to Bonaire. In reality that is not the only reason why he emerged on the radarscreen of Bonaire's finest. Another compelling reason was simply that they could not think of anybody else.

So imagine the state at Bonaires Police headquarters where police chief Jan Schagen only heard in the course of Monday 22nd of September that a girl had been abducted the fridaynight before and his constables only action was to pick up her lost slipper and shrug their shoulders.

When they could not find any leads and in a desperate move to avoid the Natalee Holloway disaster that plagued Bonaire's sister island a few years before they turned to the only thing the police is good at: Rounding up the usual suspects. Since Bonaire is aonly a small island, they only had one, which ofcourse makes it easier for the police. They do not have to decide by tossing a coin 'who dunnit' as they only have one suspect.

So after it was decided who must be the culprit, now Bonaire's finest is doing everything they can to prove that Ryan Pieters did it and refuse to be distracted by the facts.
Helped by the media tidbits of info are released that have a single goal: to convince everybody that Ryan did it. This strategy is not unknown in the Netherlands as is proven by many judicial errors in which people were convicted to long jailsentences while a child could see there was no evidence.
Obviuously this strategy is now also being adopted by Bonaire, by Dutch police chief Schagen.

So what is the incriminating evidence:

• A scooter 'similar to the one used in the abduction' was found mud covered and 'hidden' in a shed at Ryan's uncle's house. The mud was of a type that was identical to the mud at the scene of the crime. That is pure bogus. All scooters look basically alike and it is a popular mode of transport in Bonaire. Marlies was abducted on a public thruway, where Ryan or anybody else could have passed on that scooter any given day. Besides on small island like aruba chances are all the mud is basically the same.The scooter was not 'hidden', it was just parked in a shed. Nevertheless finding the scooter was reason for the arrest of Pieters. They might as well have arrested anybody occupying a house where a scooter was parked.
• Then last week suddenly a 'breakthrough' was claimed. There was a 'partial confession' whatever that may mean. Apparently according to the newspapers and many blogs on the subject. Ryan had admitted to have had contact with Marlies the night before and supposedly insinuated that 'something had happened' between the two. For one thing: Kralendijk, the main town on Bonaire is so small it would fit in Yankee stadium with room to spare and everybody runs into eachother when they go out in the towns only watering hole. More importantly however is the fact that yesterday it became clear that Pieters has not said this at all. He only has tolld investigators that he had seen Marlies around and about on the town. Well, as said, it is a small town.

Because the police already made up their mind who the culprit is, any evidence possibly leading to another conclusion or even another perpetrator must be strictly ignored. So ignored is the fact that it might be case of mistaken identity. Last week Wouter van Kouwen (a supposed criminal who turned state evidence) the father of Jaymelee van Kouwen - note the similarity in names with Marlies- a girl who is roughly the same age and has the same looks as Marlies and who works in a shop next to the bar where Marlies partied before her abduction, reported that he received a phonecall demanding a ransome for the release of his daugther Jayme. Even more: Van Kouwen's other daugther -8 year old Bo- fell victim to a failed abduction in Bonaire, on Wednesday 24 sept, only a few days after the abduction of Marlies.

The police however declare the two abductions to be unrelated and just 'coincidental'. Also, they have stated that the ransome phonecall 'did not happen'. Unfortunately they stated this without even investigating and did not even contact Wouter van Kouwen to ask about it. Until today he still is waiting for the police to ask him about it.

Another unfortunate mishap for the police that they are ignoring in order not to be confused by the facts is that Ryan has an alibi for that evening and a large part of the night: his girlfriend. Even though she cannot testify to his whereabouts 'every minute' of that evening and night, it hardly seems likely that Ryan left his girlfriend to go abduct and rape someone and had time enough to dispose of the body in a way that the police has been unable to find her: Bonaire is only 288 sq km.

None of us knows if Ryan indeed abducted and possibly raped and killed Marlies, but it seems that his arrest and the subsequent investigation is done out of a desire to produce results. Who cares if he did it, as long as he can be convicted. Anything to avoid receiving Natalee Holloway like criticism and see tourist numbers to the island dwindle.