Question marks pop up over 2010 teen suicide

New details that are emerging about the death of 18-year-old Lesley Timmer whose body was found in Liège, Belgium in 2010, are showing that he likely did not take his own life.

According to Algemeen Dagblad a witness had said back then that he had seen the VWO student from Delft in the company of two other people under the Kennedy Bridge in Liège, where his body was also found. He was the last one to see the young man, but his statement was not made public until now.

AD quotes attorney Sébas Diekstra as saying that the statement hints that there is reason to question the Belgian authorities’ conclusion that Lesley had committed suicide. Diekstra is representing his parent’s in their quest to reopen the investigation. “There was something wrong with the investigation. They did not do a thing,” the paper quotes Rene Timmer, Lesley father.

Lesley had last been seen in Roosendaal in June 2010, where he had purchased a return train ticket to Eindhoven. He was found a few days later on the roadside in Liège under the Kennedy Bridge, barely alive, his hands and feet bound with his shoelaces.

Belgian police told TV program TROS Vermist that a witness had stated that they had seen Lesley alive where he was found. Some 20 meters further up there were two people that appeared to be waiting for him. It appeared like Lesley and the couple were in a familial conflict.

Lesley’s father Rene said that prior to his disappearance, his son had been acting afraid, like he felt threatened. He now accuses the Dutch and Belgian police of not doing enough to find out what happened to his son.

The family had been left in the dark about Lesley’s date after he vanished. After he passed away, his body stayed unidentified in a freezer in a morgue in Belgium for over a month, because authorities filed him in the wrong system.