A body washed ashore on the coast of Terschelling in 1967 has been identified by the The Hague police cold case team using DNA testing.

The unknown man turned out to be 22-year-old Kees van Rijn from Katwijk who was part of the crew of the KW37 Orion which sank in heavy seas on October 1967 off  the coast of the Wadden island.

Another member of the KW37 Orion, 26-year-old Arie van de Plas, was identified using the technique in 2018. Of the six man crew, only captain Jan Nijgh has not yet been found.

Project

The cases are part of a project to identify sailors and fishermen lost at sea in which the The Hague cold case team, the missing persons department LBVP and Dutch forensic institute NFI are working together. So far the DNA of 150 people whose relatives never returned from the sea has been included in a DNA databank.

DNA samples have been taken from all unidentified bodies washed ashore going back as far as 1920. Older cases may never be solved, the LBVP said, because the DNA of first-degree relatives is needed, such as parents, siblings and children and time is running out.

Relatives of Van Rijn, who was buried locally, decided to provide the police with DNA when they heard of an earlier case involving the identification of Andries Penning after 66 years through DNA.

Penning was the captain of the Westland which had been on its way from Germany to England in the night of the 1953 storm. Penning, too, was washed up on the shore of Terschelling.