On 26 January 1934, 33-year-old B. K. of Aalten appeared before the district court in Zutphen. At the time he was being held in the remand prison there. K. was accused of stealing a box of cigars and several half-mark coins from the office of De Slinge chemical laundry on 3 December 1932, and of stealing butter, cigars, packets of cigarettes, cheese, sausages and three bags on 10 July 1933 from Te Brake’s shop on Kattenberg.
Aalten’s chief municipal constable, Mr Wijnants, gave evidence during the trial. He stated that on 4 December 1932 he had seen that a window in the office of De Slinge had been broken. The laundry’s director, Van de Kamp, had alerted him that a burglary had taken place, after which Wijnants carried out an investigation.
In July 1933, he was again called after a burglary, this time at Te Brake’s shop. A window had also been smashed there and various goods had been stolen. On one bottle, Wijnants found fingerprints.
The fingerprints were sent to the Amsterdam police for examination. Police commissioner Van IJsendijk compared them with the suspect’s known fingerprints and concluded that they must have come from K.
Even so, the suspect continued to insist that he had nothing to do with either burglary.
According to the public prosecutor, the legal and convincing evidence of K.’s guilt had been fully established. The defendant also had several previous offences to his name, so in the prosecutor’s view a substantial sentence was appropriate. He demanded eight months’ imprisonment.
The court ultimately sentenced K. to six months in prison.