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19 September 2006
BRUSSELS — An Antwerp jury took just one on hour on Tuesday to declare a mother and son guilty of murdering 18-year-old Stefanie De Mulder.
Maura Van Lommel, 46, and her son Andy Hermans, 24, attacked the victim with a baseball bat and strangled her with a belt on the night of 11 August 2004.
Stefanie was the 18-year-old daughter of Van Lommel’s boyfriend. She was killed in her bedroom in the attic of her father’s Mechelen home.
In fighting for her life, Stefanie was able to send her father a mobile phone text message, sending him the misspelled and grammatically incorrect words: ‘Ppa gelp maura doet dood’ (Dad help maura does death).
The case became known as the SMS murder. In Dutch, mobile phone text messaging is known as sending an SMS.
Van Lommel was jealous of the relationship between father and daughter and considered the girl a rival and wanted to remove her.
Hermans was disgruntled that the attractive young student rejected his sexual advances.
Both defendants were sentenced to life in jail on Wednesday.
[Copyright Expatica News 2006]
Subject: Belgian news