IFS WORKED ON THE ANN BENDER CASE IN COSTA RICA AND PERFORMED A CRIME SCENE RECONSTRUCTION

‘He wanted to die’: Wife of Wall Street tycoon who ‘shot and killed himself in their Costa Rican compound’ says she woke up and saw him pull the trigger in bed as she faces her fourth murder trial. The Daily Mail of February 11, 2018 wrote this new article.

Investigators in Costa Rica ruled this incident a homicide. When looking over the scientific evidence if became clear that it did not support a scenario as described by the DA. In his scenario, movement of the victim after the shot was not included. Bloodstain evidence proved without a doubt that the victim’s body moved from postion. The bloodstain evidence showed his basic position when the shot went of. The location of the shell behind the bed could be explained by the postion of the gun in the hand of the victim when the shot went off, not by Ann Bender holding the gun while standing behind the bed shooting the victim in the head. The location of the gun left of the bed was explained by the DA as planted by Ann. Why she would plant a gun on a location which is not logical is unclear, the  same goes for the shell. The location of the gun is better explained by the initial postion of the victim’s body when he was holding the gun when it went off. For the third trial IFS conducted over 30 different experiments which supported a scenario of suicide much more than a scenario of homicide. Preparing the trial presented us with different challenges because of the judicial system in Costa Rica. New experts and reports are officially not allowed in a trial so it was problematic to present the evidence of the experiments performed by us. I was allowed to ask questions to the experts of the DA which is not a role I perform normally. My wife Selma could only testify in this case because an expert of the DA did not show up. After this third trial Ann Bender was acquitted. But as explained in the article above, the legal system in Costa Rica doesn’t know double jeopardy so the DA is preparing for a fourth trial.

CBS made a documentary about this case. See the documentary here

A short documentary with Richard and Selma Eikelenboom giving comments  about the case. After the initial investigations for CBS on the place of the incident and some of the evidence we conducted experiments to test the scenario’s of homicide and suicide.

To be continued…..

Tagged Ann Bender, Costa Rica, Crime scene reconstruction, IFS, Richard Eikelenboom, Selma Eikelenboom-Schieveld