LEIDEN - Will a pedometer give a definitive answer about the death of 30-year-old Laura from Leiden? The Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) thinks so, but the lawyer of the victim's ex expects nothing from it, it emerged Monday morning during the fifth preliminary hearing against suspect Paul V.
V. (38) is suspected by the prosecution of strangling his ex-wife in their Leiden home on Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. The couple was already apart, and actually V. was supposed to leave that day from the residence, where he was still bivouacked in the attic.
Instead, he called emergency services early in the morning to report that Laura had hanged herself. The woman was alive at the time. She died a day later in the hospital. V. was shot a week after that arrested as a suspect.
With dog leash attached to heater
He has since maintained that Laura committed suicide, and that he found her in the morning when he got out of bed and walked down the stairs. She was tied to a heater with a dog leash. He took the dog leash that was around her neck still cut.
The prosecution wants to know for sure if it is possible that V. came from his bedroom into the attic. Therefore, the prosecutor wants to conduct tests in the house with a pedometer on the phone.
In the attic or not?
Normally, that phone recorded movement until after 10 p.m., according to an analysis of all the movements V. made in the months before that fateful morning. But on the night before Laura's death, the phone had been silent since just after 6 p.m.
The number of steps is important to determine whether V. was in his bedroom in the attic during the night, as he says himself. And thus indeed came downstairs in the morning, grabbed scissors in the kitchen and opened the door for emergency services, or whether he was downstairs all night.
Netflix
According to the prosecution, the latter could be the case. This would be evidenced by the fact that during the night Netflix was watched on the TV in the living room. That was still on the pay channel when emergency services arrived.
According to V.'s counsel, Jordi L'Homme, the Netflix viewing actually indicates that Laura watched TV downstairs at night. She also allegedly surfed the Internet downstairs at night.
L'Homme also argues that a pedometer is unreliable, especially on certain Samsung models. He therefore thinks the test in the house is pointless. And if it does take place, he wants to be there.
The lawyer for Laura's parents, Richard Korver, is asking to see the psychiatric report made on V. L'Homme is resisting, because he fears the report will be used by the relatives to speak ill of his client and keep the children away from him.
'Stories hurled into the world'
Korver points out that Laura's family has not tried that at all. 'It is precisely V. who hurls all kinds of stories into the world. Clients want things to go well with the children.' The couple's two young children also visit their father in the house of detention.
The court ruled that Korver may be allowed to inspect the psychiatric report in order to use it to prepare the survivors' victim impact statements.
Long-term case
Counsel L'Homme of V. again makes a plea for lifting his pre-trial detention, invoking the suicide story. Again, the court does not go along with this.
The next preliminary hearing is on Wednesday, June 4. When the case will be heard substantively is not yet clear.
