A 33-year-old man from Delft has been arrested in connection with the rape and murder of an air hostess in 1994, bringing one of the most controversial legal cases in recent Dutch history closer to a conclusion.

Police told a news conference on Tuesday that the man’s DNA matched that of sperm found on the body of Christel Ambrosius, murdered in her grandmother’s home on the edge of woods in Putten in Gelderland 14 years ago. Two men from the village, Wilco Viets and Herman du Bois, completed seven years of a 10-year jail sentence for the crime and were released in 2002. Their convictions were largely based on confessions, which they later withdrew. In 2002 the convictions were overturned as scientists reviewed the DNA evidence.
‘They are still seen as murderers in Putten,’ the men’s lawyer said on Tuesday. ‘This is the first step in their rehabilitation.’
Police said the new suspect, who was 18 at the time of the murder and has not been named, lived in Putten in 1994 but there had been nothing to suggest he knew the victim.
Asked by tv crime reporter Peter R de Vries if the man had any previous convictions, police said he had been convicted of beating up his former wife in 2005. De Vries, who recently hit the international headlines with his revelations about the Natalee Holloway disappearance, has devoted a number of tv shows to trying to solve the murder.