New Yorker on trial for killing Amsterdammers in life insurance scheme

The trial against 25-year-old New York born Dominican George H. started in started in the court in Amsterdam on Monday. He is accused of killing two Amsterdam residents in an attempt to collect their life insurance, AT5 reports. The Public Prosecutor holds H. accountable for the murder of 22-year-old Alan Perez Gonzalez in August 2013 and 24-year-old Rafael Alfredo Fernandez in November of the same year. Both men died after being administered an overdose of succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant which is hard to detect in the bloodstream, according to the Prosecutor. H. took out life insurance policies for both men. H. told the court that he was the beneficiary on Gonzalez' policy because they were like brothers, and on Fernandez' policy because he did not have a citizen visa number. H. was in the room when Fernandez died. He stated that he saw injections in the room and feared that the man tried to commit suicide and called 112. He waited until they arrived, but did not try to resuscitate Fernandez. H. also somehow managed to have himself declared dead on two occasions, presumably also to collect life insurance money. In 2009 he was declared deceased in a sudden cardiac arrest in the Dominican Republic, where he had a life insurance policy worth 60 thousand euros. And in 2012 he died again in Amsterdam, this time with life insurance worth 1.5 million euros. It is unclear whether these amounts actually paid out. Manon Aalmoes, H.'s lawyer, wants the case to be declared inadmissible. According to her, several large mistakes were made in the investigation, including witness questioning occurring in violation to legal standards and transcriptions of the questioning disagreeing. But the court ruled that the case must continue.