The court in Amsterdam has sentenced Sebastiaan M. to 12 years in prison for the murder of Jane Johnson. M. killed his roommate during an argument, and then hid her in a coffin. The body was not found until weeks later.
By Joost van der Wegen
Chest
The body of the 65-year-old woman, which was already in an advanced state of decomposition, was found on October 4 in the house of the two in the Jonge Roelensteeg, in the center of Amsterdam. The body was wrapped in plastic and found in a metal box. Traces of strangulation were found on her remains.
Row
According to the justice department, 55-year-old M. had an argument with Johnson on September 2, 2022, as she discovered through a witness. He then lied about the fact that she had gone abroad. When Johnson no longer showed up as a cleaner for a neighbor from September 7 and he could not contact her, he called the police. During a first visit, they found her passport, which indicated that she could not have left the Netherlands, and during the second visit they found her decomposed remains in the coffin.
Panic
M.’s defense consisted of stating that he had found M.’s already cold body after she had apparently fallen, and that he had then panicked and wrapped her body up and put it in a coffin in a room. laid that was used for growing cannabis.
Circumstance
The pathologist’s examination showed that Johnson had been strangled and her ribs had been broken. The judge therefore found the story of the fall not credible based on the examination of her body, and was intended to conceal the true circumstances. Namely that of Johnson’s murder.
Disrespectful
The court found that premeditated murder was not proven and sentenced M. to 12 years in prison for manslaughter and for hiding a corpse to conceal the cause of death. She took into account that the victim’s relatives had lived in uncertainty for weeks about Johnson’s disappearance, and that hiding Johnson in the coffin was disrespectful and that she was thus denied a dignified funeral.
