Kim De Gelder was 20 years old when he killed four people in East Flanders in January 2009. On January 16 he got into the home of Elza Van Raemdonck, a 72-year-old woman in the village of Vrasene, near Beveren, by posing as an inspector from the water company, and stabbed her to death. A week later, on January 23, he cycled to the Fabeltjesland day nursery in Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde and attacked the staff and the babies inside. The childcare worker Marita Blindeman, 54, and two baby boys, Corneel and Leon, died. Several other children and two other caregivers were seriously hurt. He was arrested within about an hour.
The killings were two separate events a week apart, in different towns. He did not know any of the victims, and investigators found that he had chosen them at random. The facts were never disputed at trial. What divided the experts, the lawyers and the families for four years was his state of mind: whether he was so ill that he should be treated in a psychiatric institution, or responsible for what he did and liable to punishment. In March 2013 a jury in Ghent found him responsible and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The question did not end there. By 2019 his condition in prison had deteriorated so far that a court ordered his internment, and since 2022 he has been held in a forensic psychiatric center in Antwerp.
De Gelder came from Sinaai, a village that belongs to Sint-Niklaas in the Waasland region of East Flanders. His parents, named in court reports as Nic and Katia, testified at his trial. According to the defense statement read in court in February 2013, he was born into a loving family with two siblings and was a cheerful, open child. He described his childhood in court as happy, but said that his relationship with his parents became strained at about 15, when they opposed his plans to study psychology or law, AFP reported.
His lawyer's account of the years that followed was set out in detail at the trial. In 2004 he began to refuse family outings, grew his hair and started dressing in black. A psychologist diagnosed depression and prescribed medication, without improvement. In 2005 another psychologist concluded after a few weeks that he could stop treatment and that his mother was worrying too much. In 2007 he gave up nursing studies. His behavior grew stranger: he refused physical contact, stayed in his room, ate with his back to his family and spoke of suicide. He told his parents he would accept voluntary admission to a hospital.
His parents later said publicly that they had tried to have him admitted. In their first interview after the killings, given to Het Nieuwsblad in 2011 and reported by the German-language Belgian broadcaster BRF, they said that he had believed he worked for the police and that his food was poisoned, and that he once stood motionless and silent in their bedroom in the middle of the night. A psychiatrist they consulted found a behavioral disorder and judged that admission was not needed. His lawyer said in January 2009 that the admission had been considered when De Gelder was 18, and that at that time he had spoken of hearing voices.
In October 2008 he moved alone into an apartment in Sinaai, carrying his belongings there by bicycle and refusing help. Over the following weeks he cut contact with his family, his best friend and his colleagues, and by January 2009 he had stopped speaking to anyone, the defense said. His lawyer said in January 2009 that he kept in touch with his family only by occasional calls and text messages after the move.
The court-appointed psychiatrists concluded that he had prepared his crimes for at least five months. According to the indictment, which Het Nieuwsblad reviewed in December 2012 and VRT reported, he bought disguises, practiced stabbing and cutting on a wooden board, designed a coat with holders for knives and planned escape routes with Google Maps. He told investigators that he had bought a laminating machine to make false identity papers, a bulletproof vest, a mobile phone, a bicycle, a camera, hair dye and a set of pH test strips, the strips so that he could pass as a water inspector.
A computer crime specialist from the federal judicial police in Dendermonde told the court that the files on his computer were tidy and methodically organized. De Gelder had made a business card in a false name for a soil and water research center, with a matching voicemail message, and had downloaded police logos. On January 20, 2009, four days after the Vrasene killing, he researched three day nurseries in Dendermonde, Zonneschijn, Fabeltjesland and Peuterland, and saved a file with their routes, addresses and other details.
He explained to investigators how he had chosen the area. He used Google Maps to find a street at least 15 km from his home, reasoning that police searched most intensively within that radius of a crime scene. He said the choice of the Galgstraat in Vrasene, in the municipality of Beveren, was otherwise a matter of chance.
A few days before the first killing, he went to a house on the Galgstraat intending, he later told investigators, to kill the family who lived there. He wore glasses and a fake beauty spot as a disguise. The couple and their son were not at home. A 2010 VRT report said that he tried to get in and that the family's dogs chased him off. At his trial the defense argued that this was not a real attempt at murder, because nothing had begun and no one was in the house. The court rejected that argument and convicted him of attempting to kill the family, finding that his reconnaissance, disguise, false identity card and knife showed that the crime had clearly begun and that he had not given it up of his own accord. In interrogation he admitted that he had driven there meaning to kill everyone inside. The verdict report dates this attempt to January 14, 2009.
Elza Van Raemdonck was 72 and lived on the same street with her husband, Jozef (Jef) Heyrman. Neighbors and friends who testified at the trial described them as a happy, close couple and as hard workers. She was always ready to help her family; she had cared for her parents and was there for her children and grandchildren, and in her last years she had slowed down a little to spend more time with them. She had six daughters, VRT reported. Her husband was 76 at the time.
On Friday, January 16, 2009, her husband spent the day helping neighbors with odd jobs. He came home for lunch and went back to the neighbors at about one o'clock. While he was out, De Gelder came to the door dressed as a water company employee and said he needed to check the meter. Elza Van Raemdonck let him in. The water meter was in the bedroom, and there he attacked her with a knife. A forensic doctor told the court that she tried to get away and that she had fought for her life. De Gelder told investigators that he searched the house for anyone else, found no one, checked his clothes for blood and left. He removed his disguise on the way home.
Her husband found her when he came back in the late afternoon. Neighbors he telephoned said he sounded confused and panicked. The family doctor, Johan Strobbe, arrived first and saw at once that something was wrong. A robbery was ruled out early: nothing had been taken and there was no sign of a break-in.
Most of the police officers at first suspected her husband. The investigating judge, Evi Muylaert, told the court that she had never deprived him of his liberty and had treated him as an injured party, though she accepted that police had treated him differently; the family's lawyer, Jef Vermassen, read from police records to show that he had been pressed hard over small details. Friends said that being seen as a suspect devastated him. He was questioned at length and then cleared of suspicion, La Libre reported after De Gelder was charged. At the trial the investigating judge also criticized the family doctor, saying he had proposed a natural-death certificate; the doctor denied it, said the wounds made clear it was a killing, and filed a complaint against her.
De Gelder later told investigators that he felt bad afterward, sat for a long time on the edge of a bathtub and wondered whether anyone had seen him. He also said that the killing had not satisfied his wish for revenge, and that he began preparing his plan against day nurseries the next day. After the killing he searched for and saved news about it, and created an empty file that, the computer specialist said, appeared to be meant for details of the attacks still to come.
Fabeltjesland was a small day nursery in Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde, a part of the town of Dendermonde between Ghent and Brussels. On the morning of Friday, January 23, 2009, 18 children were there, cared for by a small staff.
De Gelder rode to Dendermonde by bicycle. According to the indictment, his first target that morning was another nursery, Zonneschijn, but he did not go in because too many people were outside; he told investigators that workmen at the entrance might have been able to identify him. About ten minutes later he arrived at Fabeltjesland. His face was whitened and his hair dyed a bright reddish color. At about ten o'clock he told the first caregiver he met, Rita Van Geyte, who was returning from a break, that he had come for information. He then attacked her.
Hilde De Bondt, another caregiver, heard her colleague scream and ran to the door. She fought him with a floor mop until it broke, she told the court, and she saw him attack the children. She said she had felt as strong as a thousand men. In interrogations De Gelder said that his plan had been to kill all the adults first and then all the children, and that attacking defenseless victims had been the plan from the start. In court he said instead that he had panicked inside and that people were in his way to the exit; a caregiver told police that he had attacked everything he saw moving. One of the staff alerted the police. He left the building and rode off at 10:24, about five minutes after that call, VRT reported.
Marita Blindeman, a 54-year-old childcare worker, died, as did two boys, Corneel Vermeir and Leon Garcia-Arbesu. Belgian press reports at the trial gave the boys' ages as nine months; early wire reports in 2009 gave one as six months. Twelve children were seriously injured, and two of the six caregivers, VRT reported in 2019. Six children were not hurt. The injured were taken to six hospitals. A forensic doctor told the court that the outcome could have been far worse. The surviving children are not named here.
Among the others in the building that morning were a 16-year-old intern on the last day of her placement, who told the court she had dreamed of working with children and never did so again, and a 20-year-old who said she left secondary school in the aftermath.
Marita Blindeman's son, Quinten, was the first relative to testify on the day the court heard the families of those killed at the nursery. He told the jury that his mother always put others first. She cared for her own mother, for her sister, who had learning difficulties, for an elderly former teacher who lived on her street, and for her son. In her last years, he said, she had been happier than ever. The day of the attack, he said, was the day a part of him died; the rest was trying to survive. At the end of his evidence he asked De Gelder how he would feel if he were told tomorrow that both his parents were dead. De Gelder said he thought his world would collapse.
Corneel and Leon were both babies in the nursery's care. Their parents sat through the four-week trial as civil parties, represented by Jef Vermassen. The court reporter Isabelle Dekeyzer, writing for VRT midway through the trial, named the parents of the young boys Leon and Corneel among the relatives who bore their grief bravely and calmly while trying to make sense of what had happened. The sources used for this account do not describe either boy beyond his name and age, and none is invented here.
He fled on his bicycle and police began searching the area; schools were closed during the search, The Brussels Times later recalled. About an hour after the attack a neighborhood police officer in Lebbeke, about 15 km away, stopped him. He refused to give his name and then gave a false one, Francis Verbeeck, with a false address in Grembergen. He was wearing a bulletproof vest under his clothes. In his backpack were a knife, a small axe and a fake pistol, and, according to the prosecutor, detailed plans of two other day nurseries in Dendermonde. He was injured as he was detained and taken to hospital. He was identified as Kim De Gelder.
That evening he was questioned on video. Wearing a white overall, he did not answer or move and stared ahead, though the investigator, Hans Neubourg, said it was clear he understood. In the first days he refused to speak, move, eat or drink. He was taken to the infirmary of Bruges prison. On the evening of Monday, January 26, he began eating again after three days without food.
On Saturday, January 24, he was charged over the nursery attack, on the strength of identifications by witnesses there. The Dendermonde prosecutor, Christian Du Four, said on Monday, January 26, that there were very clear indications of links between the nursery killings and the death of Elza Van Raemdonck. That evening De Gelder was charged with her murder. Du Four said that the situation could have been far worse if police had not caught him so quickly. He also said that nothing so far suggested that De Gelder had been inspired by the Joker character in the film The Dark Knight, a theory reported in the press, and that this line of inquiry looked like a dead end.
Because no local lawyer could be expected to act without knowing someone affected, the head of the Dendermonde bar appointed Jaak Haentjens, a lawyer from Lokeren with more than 30 years at the bar. On Tuesday, January 27, Haentjens said that his client had admitted the nursery attack and understood that he had done something inhuman, but denied any part in the Vrasene killing. He said the motive remained a mystery and that De Gelder had no specific memories of the hours in Dendermonde. That day the pretrial chamber in Dendermonde ordered him held in custody.
The town and the country reacted with grief and anxiety. Flowers and soft toys were left at the nursery. Many federal and regional politicians attended a memorial ceremony in Sint-Gillis on the evening of January 26. About 8,000 people joined a silent march in Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde several days after the attack, VRT reported. Day nurseries and schools reopened on Monday, January 26, but many parents stayed anxious and kept their babies at home. The city set up counseling for victims and witnesses at a nearby community center, and the Flemish welfare minister, Veerle Heeren, said she would examine security at the nursery.
The investigation was led by the investigating judge Paul De Bruecker. It established the planning described above, and what De Gelder had meant to do next. According to the indictment, he had planned attacks on the Peuterland and Zonneschijn nurseries and on doctors' practices in Harelbeke and other places, including nursing homes, clinics and police schools. In his apartment police found an eight-liter can of gasoline and three wine bottles filled with screws and a piece of T-shirt, which an officer told the court were materials for an incendiary device. De Gelder said in court that he had filled the bottles in case he ever needed them. Witnesses told the court they had seen a young man photographing Elza Van Raemdonck's home, and two care-home workers said they recognized him as a young man who had come to their home in November 2008 on a false pretext; he denied it.
His account changed several times, the investigating judge told the court. At first he denied everything. About a month later he said voices had ordered him to act; a week after that he denied the voices. He then spoke of illness and depression, and about a year after the crimes he spoke of revenge, before saying there was no motive. Five weeks after the attack, VRT has reported, he confessed to the nursery attack and to the killing of Elza Van Raemdonck. In May 2009 Haentjens said that De Gelder kept repeating that he had had to kill because of voices in his head, and argued that he was not criminally responsible.
In early 2010 he was in very poor condition, the investigating judge said: unkempt, in a foul-smelling cell and close to a vegetative state, so that he could not be questioned until February. On February 15, 2010, he asked to see the judge and said he wanted to give every detail, on condition that he was listened to. The judge described the two long interrogations that followed as monologues without structure, in bombastic language, in which De Gelder said he was cleverer than others. He kept saying he had no motive and that a depressive state was the cause, and in several interrogations said that everyone had to die. In a later interrogation he admitted that he had invented the voices, saying he had wanted to try to be interned. He also told investigators that he had pretended in the first days after his arrest to be unable to move or speak, because he did not know what would happen to him.
The central question was whether he was "toerekeningsvatbaar," criminally responsible. Under Belgian law at the time, a person found not responsible because of a serious mental disorder is not punished but interned: held in psychiatric care for as long as the courts judge necessary. A person found responsible is tried and, if convicted, sentenced. There is no middle category.
A college of five court-appointed psychiatrists and psychologists examined him and produced a report of about 160 pages finding him responsible. They based their findings on 26 interviews with him, interviews with his parents and his medical files. They ruled out schizophrenia, finding that the signs pointing to it came mainly from his relatives and had not been confirmed by any doctor who had examined him. They diagnosed a serious personality disorder of the schizotypal type, with narcissistic and antisocial traits, and said he sometimes feigned psychosis. They concluded that his long, many-sided preparation could not be explained by a lasting delusional state; that he could tell right from wrong on the day; that he acted coldly and was free to stop. They described him as frustrated, narcissistic and embittered, as seeing himself as all-powerful during the investigation, and as an extreme danger to society.
His family commissioned a second opinion. In July 2010 the psychiatrist Karel Ringoet concluded that De Gelder suffered from a schizophrenic psychosis, was not responsible and belonged in a psychiatric clinic, and told De Morgen that De Gelder had never really trusted the first team and had told them almost nothing. The psychologists Nathalie Laceur and Geert Hoornaert also worked for the defense. A defense counter-assessment concluded that he was not responsible and was unfit to stand trial. They reported serious psychopathology seen in prison, including talk of spirits and reincarnation and a view of himself as a messianic figure.
On May 4, 2012, the pretrial chamber in Dendermonde declared him criminally responsible and refused the defense request for internment. It found a serious personality disorder but held that he knew what he was doing, could tell what was permitted from what was not, and had been able to reconsider and hesitate over his plans for months. On June 28, 2012, the indictment chamber in Ghent upheld that finding and sent him for trial before the assize court on four counts of murder and 25 of attempted murder. Haentjens said he was disappointed and that there was no clear consensus on responsibility. One victim said that internment would have been too easy.
The same chamber ruled that his former psychiatrist would not be prosecuted. His parents had filed a complaint of negligence, arguing that the psychiatrist could have prevented the crimes by admitting their son about two years before them.
The trial opened before the East Flanders assize court in Ghent on February 19, 2013, with the selection of the jury, and sat in full from February 22 for about four and a half weeks. The jury of eight men and four women, with six reserves, was presided over by Judge Koen Defoort. The advocate general, Yves Van Den Berge, prosecuted, and Jaak Haentjens defended. Some 27 civil parties were represented, by lawyers including Jef Vermassen for the families of Elza Van Raemdonck, Corneel and Leon; Filip Van Hende for the relatives of Marita Blindeman and for Rita Van Geyte; Ann Van De Steen for four of the surviving caregivers; Walter Damen for the Galgstraat family; and Raphaël Van Roeyen, Nadine Maes and Kris Luyckx. The court reporter Philip Heymans counted 29 separate cases within the trial: the Vrasene murder, the attempt on the Galgstraat family, the three murders at Fabeltjesland and the attempted murders of the 22 other children and caregivers there.
De Gelder did not dispute the facts. When the indictment and the defense statement had been read, he said he had neither heard nor listened to the defense. Questioned on February 25, he admitted going to the nursery to kill everyone but said he changed his mind inside and panicked. Asked about witnesses who described him as calm, he said it was a technique to relax the body. He admitted telling stories to stay in control of the investigation, said he had used sarcasm with the psychiatrists, and answered yes when asked whether he thought he had psychopathic traits. He refused to give his motive, saying he would explain it at the end of the trial or at another trial. He told the court that killing was wrong but that he had seen no other choice, and when the judge suggested he could have looked for a job, he blamed the economic crisis. Asked why he chose strangers, he said he did not kill people he knew or liked.
Over the following weeks he challenged the judge, cut off his own microphone, refused to answer questions out of what he called respect for the civil parties, and at one point said his lawyer would answer for him from then on. He clashed repeatedly with Haentjens, telling him not to put on a show. On February 28 he apologized to the relatives, hesitantly, and told his lawyer that he was not ill and that Haentjens knew his motives. When the investigating judge testified, he called out "nonsense." He agreed after the first week to be filmed without his face blurred.
The jury watched the video of his early interrogations. In one he spent the session discussing the investigating judge's vegetable garden, then said he knew he would spend the rest of his life in prison and accepted it. Victims and relatives testified for about a week. Hilde De Bondt asked De Gelder why the staff had had to go through this, and then asked him to look her in the eyes. He did, for dozens of seconds, in complete silence. At the end of her evidence she called what he had done extremely cowardly. Rita Van Geyte told the court that she still had pain, could work only part-time and no longer wanted to leave her home. A third caregiver could not attend because she had been readmitted to a psychiatric hospital, and her statement was read aloud.
The experts gave evidence in mid-March. The court-appointed panel, including Paul Cosyns, said the victims had been chosen entirely at random and that anyone could have been a victim. Questioned by the advocate general, they agreed he showed some psychopathic traits, but held that the schizotypal disorder was more prominent. They kept their position through about an hour of questioning by Haentjens. The defense experts said he had a biochemical brain disorder, that the only motive was the illness, and that two weeks earlier he had told them he did not understand why killing was wrong. Filip Van Hende said afterward that the trial turned when the defense psychiatrists testified, and that one of them, Guido Stellamans, had damaged the defense by telling the court De Gelder was schizophrenic after telling the investigating judge something different.
In closing, the civil parties' lawyers argued that he was responsible. Van Hende pointed to the extreme preparation, his self-control, his lies and the court experts' reports, and noted that a convicted prisoner can later be moved to psychiatric care, while the reverse is not possible. Ann Van De Steen contrasted the caregivers going to work with bags full of kindness with De Gelder going to work with a bag of knives, an axe and hatred. The advocate general said that on January 23, 2009, he had at first believed the attack was the work of a madman, but that De Gelder's behavior on the hidden interrogation video that evening changed his mind. He said he would not change a word of the indictment, called De Gelder a psychopath and described his preparation as a training program, which he called "Start to Kill" after a popular beginners' running scheme. Haentjens pleaded on the Thursday before the verdict that his client was a paranoid schizophrenic who should not be punished.
The jury began deliberating at ten o'clock on Friday, March 22, 2013, on 109 questions, and reached agreement shortly after two in the afternoon. It found De Gelder guilty of all four murders and of the attempted murders, including the attempt on the Galgstraat family, and found that he had been criminally responsible both at the time of the crimes and at trial. The court said the jurors had found "not the least bit of doubt" that he could be held accountable, the Associated Press reported. In the reasoning read by Judge Defoort, the jury followed the court experts' diagnosis of a severe schizotypal personality disorder with narcissistic and antisocial traits. It cited his thorough preparation and ability to make choices, the cold and calculated way the nursery attack was carried out, his retreat from the first nursery because people were nearby and his own admission that he had hesitated. The reasoning described him as a serial and mass murderer and as extremely dangerous to society. He showed no reaction.
Later that day the court sentenced him to life imprisonment, the maximum penalty. Judge Defoort said the trial had had a great influence on forensic psychiatry in Belgium and that the field had ample room for improvement.
The families were relieved. Vermassen said common sense had prevailed. Elza Van Raemdonck's sister said justice had been done, and that if he had been interned he might have been released after six months by pretending to be cured. One of her daughters said the family had hoped for this outcome without expecting it. Corneel's parents said they were mainly glad the "circus" was over. Leon's parents said his apologies meant nothing to them. Quinten Blindeman said he hoped to find a little peace. Hilde De Bondt said the verdict would not bring back her colleague or Elza, but that she would tell their graves about it. The parents of a seriously injured child left the courtroom holding leaflets showing his photograph behind bars with the words "Moordenaar, nooit meer vrij!" ("Murderer, never free again!"). The mayor of Dendermonde, Piet Buyse, said justice had been served and the legal chapter closed.
No appeal in cassation was lodged, and the judgment became final, a spokesman for the Ghent court, Martin Minnaert, said on April 25, 2013. He was answering Karel Ringoet, who had told the magazine Knack that the court was prejudiced. Minnaert said the court's long reasoned judgment had considered the defense report, and that it had found it could not be said with certainty that De Gelder had been so mentally unbalanced that he could not control his actions.
De Gelder served his sentence first in ordinary prisons. In August 2016, VRT later reported, he stopped taking his medication and his condition worsened. He attacked and threatened prison staff, spat at them, wrote on his body, lay on the floor for hours and spoke incoherently. Forced medication helped only in part, leaving him lethargic and withdrawn. In January 2017 the management of Oudenaarde prison concluded that internment was desirable because the prison could not give him adequate care, and its director applied for it under a 2016 law. In 2017 he spent about six months in Bruges prison and was then moved to Ghent prison, because Oudenaarde had no specialized psychiatric ward. Haentjens said in 2017 that his condition had not improved. In January 2019 he told La Libre that De Gelder was held in Ghent in complete isolation, because of how other prisoners reacted to him, and that his parents visited him every week and supported his internment.
Four experts observed him for months and reached a unanimous conclusion, Haentjens said: that De Gelder was seriously mentally ill and not responsible for his actions. They found no sign that he was feigning, and judged the risk of new offenses to be high. The prosecution did not oppose internment. On May 24, 2019, the chamber for the protection of society of the sentence enforcement court in Ghent, presided over by Judge Rob Perriëns, ordered his internment, finding a lasting disorder. He was then 30.
The court stressed that the ruling concerned only his condition at that time. It did not reopen the question of his responsibility at the time of the crimes or at trial, and the conviction stands. If his condition ever stabilizes, he must return to prison to serve the rest of his life sentence; if not, he stays in psychiatric care. Vermassen, for the families, called internment logical and the best solution for everyone. Haentjens said his client should have been treated years earlier and doubted he would ever recover.
He was moved first to the psychiatric wing of Ghent prison and then, according to VRT, to the social-protection institution at Merksplas. After waiting more than a year for a place, he was transferred in January 2022 to the Forensic Psychiatric Center in Antwerp, a high-security psychiatric hospital. "It's a shame it took so long to realize that my client doesn't belong in prison," Haentjens told The Brussels Times, adding that he wondered whether irreversible damage had been done.
As of January 2024, the latest reporting found for this account, De Gelder was held at a forensic psychiatric center. The sentence enforcement court reviews a yearly report on his condition. The most recent report Haentjens had seen, from early 2023, said he was still under observation, with his diagnosis and therapy not yet settled. Haentjens, who had represented him for 15 years, said he had never seen him change in any fundamental way, that he remained apathetic and disconnected, and that he doubted De Gelder had been emotionally touched by what he had done. VRT's reporters judged his chance of ever being released to be very small. No later court decision or report on his status was found when this was checked in October 2026.
The families' lives were changed for good. A year after the attack the Fabeltjesland caregivers had not yet returned to work, and some firefighters who had been at the scene had volunteered to support colleagues through similar experiences. One of the affected families had welcomed a newborn. Elza Van Raemdonck's husband, the family doctor said, was deeply depressed for a long time and recovered partly by moving house. VRT's court reporter noted that hearing in court that they were heroes helped the caregivers, who had carried guilt for not doing more.
Later reports refer to the building as the former nursery. A memorial wall stands there. For about ten years the city of Dendermonde held a public commemoration there each January 23, with relatives, survivors, city officials, police and firefighters laying flowers. From 2020 it became a private gathering without press. The COVID-19 pandemic prevented it for two years, and when the city asked those affected whether they still wanted it, most said they no longer needed it. In January 2023 Mayor Buyse announced that there would be no more commemoration on January 23; the attack is remembered instead each year on November 11 during Vier Vrede, the town's peace event linked to Armistice Day.
The attack also changed childcare in Flanders. Before 2009 it was generally easy to walk into a nursery or a childminder's home. In 2009 the Flemish government introduced minimum security requirements focused on entrances and set aside 6.6 million euros, giving each center about 500 euros toward access control such as intercoms, gates or badge systems. No similar crime has happened in Belgium since, VRT reported in 2024.
The case also fed a debate on Belgian forensic psychiatry. Psychiatrists, including Paul Cosyns, and the Flemish Psychiatry Association argued after the trial for a graded scale of responsibility, as in the Netherlands, and for a long-term observation center like the Dutch one; a 2007 law provided for such a center but it had not been funded. When De Gelder was interned in 2019, VRT asked whether the prison staff who had observed him for years simply saw more than the court experts had in 2013.
Proven by final conviction: the murders of Elza Van Raemdonck, Marita Blindeman, Corneel Vermeir and Leon Garcia-Arbesu, the attempted murders at Fabeltjesland and the attempt on the Galgstraat family, and his criminal responsibility at the time of the crimes and at trial.
Decided later and separately: in 2019 a court found him not responsible at that time and ordered internment. That ruling expressly did not revisit the 2013 findings. His lawyer, his parents and the defense experts maintain that he was ill, and specifically schizophrenic, all along; the court experts and the jury found otherwise.
Motive: never established. He spoke at various times of voices (later admitted as invented), depression, revenge on society, jealousy and obsessive thoughts, and said there was no motive. A lawyer for the civil parties regretted that the verdict did not address it, and Haentjens said in 2024 that it had never become clear.
The Joker comparison: AFP and others described his whitened face and dyed hair as resembling the Joker in The Dark Knight, and the case is still sometimes known by that name. The prosecutor said in January 2009 that nothing suggested he had been inspired by the film.
Other targets: the indictment lists planned attacks on two other nurseries and on doctors' practices, nursing homes, clinics and police schools. AFP reported in 2013 that police said he also intended to attack a police academy and the king; that claim was not found in the Belgian reports used here.
Details that vary between sources: the number of attempted-murder counts (22, 23, 24 or 25); the number injured (12 seriously injured children and two caregivers in VRT's 2019 account, ten children and two adults in others); the babies' ages (both nine months in Belgian trial reports, six and nine months in early wire reports); Elza Van Raemdonck's age (72 in most Belgian reports, 73 in early reports); whether the first killing is placed in Vrasene or in Beveren, the municipality to which Vrasene belongs; when he first confessed (his lawyer said on January 27, 2009 that he admitted the nursery attack, while VRT dates the confession to both killings five weeks after the attack); and whether he was moved to the Antwerp center from Merksplas or directly from Ghent prison.
2004: withdraws from family life; a psychologist diagnoses depression.
2005: another psychologist ends treatment.
2007: gives up nursing studies; his behavior grows stranger.
Some two years before the killings (per VRT; his lawyer said at 18): his parents ask a psychiatrist to admit him; the psychiatrist declines.
October 2008: moves alone into an apartment in Sinaai.
January 2009, a few days before January 16: fails to find anyone at home at a family's house on the Galgstraat in Vrasene (dated January 14 in the verdict report).
January 16, 2009: kills Elza Van Raemdonck, 72, in her home on the same street.
January 20, 2009: researches three Dendermonde nurseries.
January 23, 2009, about 10:00: attacks the Fabeltjesland day nursery in Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde, killing Marita Blindeman, Corneel and Leon; arrested in Lebbeke about an hour later.
January 24, 2009: charged over the nursery attack.
January 26, 2009: charged with the murder of Elza Van Raemdonck; memorial ceremony in Sint-Gillis.
January 27, 2009: his lawyer says he admits the nursery attack; held in custody.
May 12, 2009: custody extended; lawyer says he speaks of voices.
February 15, 2010: asks to speak to the investigating judge.
July 2010: defense psychiatrist Karel Ringoet finds him not responsible; the court panel had found him responsible.
2011: his parents speak publicly; a complaint is filed against his former psychiatrist.
May 4, 2012: Dendermonde pretrial chamber finds him criminally responsible.
June 28, 2012: Ghent indictment chamber sends him for trial; the psychiatrist is not prosecuted.
February 19, 2013: trial opens in Ghent.
March 22, 2013: jury finds him responsible and guilty; sentenced to life imprisonment.
April 25, 2013: no appeal in cassation; the judgment is final.
January 23, 2014: first commemoration since the trial.
August 2016: stops taking medication; his condition worsens.
January 2017: Oudenaarde prison seeks his internment.
2017: six months in Bruges prison, then moved to Ghent prison.
May 24, 2019: internment ordered in Ghent.
January 2020: commemoration becomes private.
January 2022: transferred to the Forensic Psychiatric Center in Antwerp.
January 2023: Dendermonde ends the January 23 commemoration.
January 2024: still at a forensic psychiatric center, 15 years after the attack.