He estimates that in 35 years of the Amsterdam police he was involved in some 1500 deaths at ‘crime scenes’. John Pel (1956) professionalized the technical investigation and led two missions to the crash site of MH17. He graduated with post-traumatic stress disorder, he writes in his book Tracks don’t lie.
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“I can be a stubborn asshole at times,” says John Pel. This led to a career full of conflicts within the Amsterdam forensic investigation, or ‘forensic investigation’ as it is known today. Above all, it resulted in numerous innovations that have considerably raised the standards, on which key figures from then and now within the Amsterdam police agree.
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It all starts in 1993, when after his early years as a doorman and detention officer (from 1983) he visits his first murder site. Tonnie van Maurik, gym owner in the Red Light District, was shot in his father’s Ford Escort at the then Altea Hotel near the Utrechtsebrug.
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A dry cigarette butt
His experienced colleagues are still talking when Pel, then a technical detective in training, determines that the crime scene is very tight. After three hours within the ribbon, he will look a bit further.
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,,Of course you have to be careful not to be seen as too smart, but I was still curious if there was anything to be found outside the ribbon. For such a liquidation, people are on the lookout, you can reason logically, and the shooter has been waiting somewhere inconspicuous.”
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Pel is allowed to ‘river out’ (systematically search) a dark corner near the coaches with his flashlight and finds a cigarette butt. Dry, even though it rained all day. ,,There is still a string of ash on it, so it had to be fresh. I know it will be a matter of time before we can do more with DNA, so I grab a special brown envelope from the box that keeps DNA well and secure the butt.”
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It was perhaps the first of what some colleagues will later scornfully refer to as an ‘OPA’, an Exaggerated Peel Action, which actually paid off.
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In mid-2017, more than 24 years later, in the large Amsterdam liquidation case Passage, the court still sentenced a suspect to 13.5 years in prison for the murder of Van Maurik, with the butt as the basis for the evidence. All those years later, as a manager, Pel, against the wishes of the management, linked a colleague to the Passage case for months. “As an annoying bastard, that cost me another bureaucratic twist, but we did it anyway.”
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Bodyguard and assassin
It is not Pel’s earliest anecdote. On October 4, 1992, a Boeing crashed into two flats in the Bijlmer. Without experience, he is allowed ‘as extra hands’ with the chef to ‘that oppressive, gaping hole between the flats, and those smoldering rubble’. Remove debris, slowly ‘unpack’ and photograph any traces and salvage. Especially looking. He and his colleagues guide a large piece of concrete that is being lifted by a crane. “Then unfolds the most bizarre scene I have ever seen. An entire family is completely taken by surprise by the disaster crushed in one go. My stomach turns. And that is my training period.”
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As a boy from the Kinkerbuurt, Pel knows the boys from the street. A half-brother, with whom he has broken up because of his choice for the criminal environment, is liquidated. His mother-in-law’s brother too, probably because he doesn’t like criminals not returning his rental cars. His karate trainer Alexander Marianovic, his great role model as a child, is being liquidated because he had defrauded mob boss Klaas Bruinsma, for whom he worked as a bodyguard and hit man. ,,I only heard about that role from my idol afterwards. I was shocked.”
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25 chapters
Where technical detectives normally learn the trade through burglaries, Pel is in his first week at a liquidation in a hemp plantation. And he can go on like this for a while. His book Tracks don’t lie now has 25 chapters, but: ,,That could have been 250.” In order not to get stuck in anecdotes, he has linked his chapters to novelties within the forensic investigation, developments in which his role is widely praised.
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“The technical investigation used to be supportive. In the 1990s, we became sidelined. Now we are leading. When Boris Boef is arrested, he says: ‘Call my lawyer, give me a cigarette and a cup of coffee and I will invoke my right to remain silent’. You can solve a case through technical traces.”
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Today, the wealth of information from telephones and car movements is added via millions of decrypted messages, but that is from more recent years.
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Securing tracks
Pel has a problem with ‘the SVCs’, or the Spore Destruction Commands. ,,Curious colleagues, commissioners or firefighters who talk about your pd (crime scene, red.) bust and ruin the tracks. Of course emergency aid comes first, but if someone is dead, they are dead and you have to freeze the murder site and let us get to work. I have been reprimanded for throwing the mayor of Diemen off my PD.”
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In the end, after a lot of arguing with a group of colleagues, Pel throws himself into ‘crime scene management’. Where regular officers had hardly any resources, the surveillance vehicles are now equipped with a set to secure tracks. Protective cups to put over bullet casings, ‘shooting sleeves’ to put on suspects’ hands to secure gunpowder traces, ‘swaps’ to pick up traces, a ‘dna-free sheet’ to put over a victim and green- white ribbons marking the ‘dna zone’ from which anyone without a role must stay away.
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That was not without hassle, because of course there was no budget, Pel says, but the equipment has become the standard in Amsterdam. “Unfortunately, this does not apply to the National Police, where it remains difficult to get all units to point in the same direction.”
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Scans
In October 2003 Pel again embarked on a new path. Criminal Jules Jie, another boy from the Kinkerbuurt, is on his way to the gym with his girlfriend when his Mercedes is riddled on Keizer Karelweg in Amstelveen. His girlfriend also eventually gets the final shot.
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For the first time, after begging the chief for 1000 euros, Pel orders a private company to have three-dimensional scans made of the spacious crime scene – while the victims are still in the car. Such scans are becoming commonplace. Pel: ,,The questions sometimes come three or four years after liquidations. Then we still have those scans on which everything can be checked meticulously.”
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Pel is asked to join the new National Team Forensic Investigation, which is called in to help in the event of major calamities. In 2009 he is busy when a Turkish Airlines plane crashes at Schiphol, Karst Tates drives into the public at full speed on Queen’s Day in Apeldoorn and police officers shoot deadly at a drunken crowd during beach riots near Hoek van Holland.
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A lot of work, in addition to his regular job.
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PTSD
Where Pel thinks he can handle all those corpses for a long time, in 2009 he starts to get complaints that he initially attributes to a burnout. “The idea is that only people in the military have post-traumatic stress disorder. But seeing 1500 corpses just isn’t good for anyone. And I was one of those idiots who always had his phone on.”
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He keeps his mouth shut, for fear that he will ‘be empty box chef in no time’. He has been on sick leave for a long time and takes a position in the lee for a while, but in 2011 he is back when Tristan van der Vlis has caused a massacre in a shopping center in Alphen aan den Rijn. In the summer of 2014, MH17 crashed in Ukraine. Against his wife’s will and actually against his better judgement, he embarks on two impressive but grueling missions.
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In 2016 Pel becomes dizzy in his second home in Spain. He has a leaking heart valve and undergoes a seven-hour surgery that saves his life. After a frustrating aftermath within the police, he leaves there in 2018 with a quiet drum.
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A therapist advises him to write everything off. ,,I started in a word document, but after forty pages I didn’t remember what I had written. There was no rope to tie. And it was all in a style like I was writing a police report. My colleague Bert Muns, whom I have known for thirty years, can write. It wasn’t my intention at all at first, but he was with a publisher who did want to publish it. Twenty months later, Tracks don’t lie I get red cheeks from the compliments.”
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