Boy, 14, given maximum sentence for killing his parents at village home

A 14-year-old boy who has admitted stabbing his parents to death at the family farmhouse in last year, has been given the maximum sentence allowed under juvenile law.

This means the boy will spend a year in a juvenile prison, followed by indefinite treatment in a psychiatric prison.

The trial took place behind closed doors but the judge on Thursday gave a few more details about the circumstances of the murder.

According to the Telegraaf, the boy had planned his crime and had spoken about killing his parents with friends online. In addition, the youth has ‘deficiencies in his intellectual development, showed autistic tendencies and at the time of the murder was depressed’.

The Telegraaf said the boy wanted to escape from his family. ‘It was them or me,’ the paper quotes him as saying.

The bodies of the 63-year-old man and 62-year-old woman were found by neighbours who share the property and sounded the alarm. The boy was arrested 90 kilometres away, where he had cycled after the killing.

He had two bags with him, containing a tent, sandwiches, a laptop, atlas, sleeping bag and a torch, the Telegraaf said.

Katlijk, close to Heerenveen, is a small village of just 600 people and the double murder shocked locals. The family, who kept goats and sold organic products, were not known to be a problem and were not involved with social services, the town’s mayor told the Leeuwarder Courant.