Dave De Kock pleads guilty to murdering 4-year-old Dean, contests kidnapping charge

The guilty plea

Dave De Kock pleaded guilty on Thursday to the murder of Dean Verberckmoes, a four-year-old boy, at the assize court in East Flanders in Ghent, according to his lawyer Nick Heinen. He did not admit the kidnapping, and his lawyers said they would explain their challenge to that charge later in the week. Heinen told the jurors that their answer on the murder question would also determine the sentence, which can reach thirty years in prison. The prosecutor suggested that De Kock may have lost his temper in the car and then no longer knew what was happening, while De Kock himself said it was possible he harmed the boy but that he does not remember it.

What he did is unforgivable.

Heinen said the defence would not try to minimise the facts. The lawyers also accepted De Kock's responsibility for possessing images of child sexual abuse, which he received a year before the events.

Romy Wuytack's defence

Romy Wuytack, De Kock's former partner, is 29 and Dutch, and she maintains her innocence. Her lawyer Nina Van Eeckhaut rejects all blame for the kidnapping and for possessing the images. Van Eeckhaut argued that Wuytack's alcohol addiction left her unable to act as an accomplice.

That addiction is the thread running through her life.

Van Eeckhaut said Wuytack did not return Dean at the agreed moment because she shared a justified concern for the children's welfare. According to the indictment, Wuytack said in her first interviews that Dean was alive when he left the couple's apartment on 14 January 2022. Jef Vermassen, the lawyer for Dean's mother, argues that both De Kock and Wuytack are guilty of murder. He said that Wuytack can be an accomplice by doing nothing, and suggested that she needed forty pages to prove her innocence.

The indictment

The 120-page indictment read on Thursday sets out the prosecution's account. Both accused are charged with kidnapping that led to death, and De Kock is also charged with murder. Both are prosecuted for possessing child abuse images. De Kock's lawyers said he is not a paedophile, a view that court psychiatrists also share. De Kock had already served a ten-year sentence for the fatal mistreatment of a two-year-old boy. 7sur7 dates that case to 2008, while NOS says he received the sentence in 2010. According to AD, De Kock first told police that Dean had fallen down the stairs, a version the autopsy report contradicted. In May 2024 he admitted that he had killed the boy through violence in his car.

Timeline of the case

Dean was entrusted to the couple on 12 January 2022, and the boy was staying with them regularly. The key dates from the indictment and reporting are shown below.

Wuytack contacted police shortly before 17:30 on 15 January 2022 and said De Kock had left the previous evening with the boy, intending to take him to his grandparents in Antwerp, but he never arrived. Dean's mother reported him missing at 19:35 the same day. Cameras showed De Kock's Peugeot 206 passing the Westerschelde tunnel at 00:06 on 15 January. Dean's body was found on Neeltje Jans in Zeeland, in the Netherlands, on 17 January 2022. Police arrested De Kock at Meerkerk, also in the Netherlands, on the same day. Dean's mother, Elke Verberckmoes, sat in the courtroom with family and friends. She had voluntarily been treated for depression at a psychiatric hospital in Sint-Niklaas, and had agreed that the couple would look after Dean.

What comes next

The trial is expected to last eight days. The defendants will be questioned on Friday, and Dutch police officers involved in the investigation are scheduled to testify as witnesses. The jury of twelve citizens, selected by lot from those aged 28 to 65, will sit with judges to decide guilt. The court hopes to announce its verdict on 19 October.