SHE is the sister of a serial killer and the perpetrator of number of her own chilling crimes, but is Belinda van Krevel as scary as she seems?
Shopping at the markets, van Krevel comes across as a “warm and engaging” character,60 Minutes reporter Allison Langdon told news.com.au, ahead of her story tonight on Channel 9 at 8:30pm.
“I found her such a compelling character ... I surprised myself that I actually enjoyed her company but then there was a switch, and there were times when her eyes would go really black and I would think ‘this is a scary person, someone capable of real evil’.”
Van Krevel, dubbed “Belinda Van Evil” and the “death plot daughter” has just been released from prison after serving a two-year sentence for stabbing her former partner Marshall Gould five times in the neck, leg and arm.
Gould, who originally claimed he was mugged by three men, stood by his troubled girlfriend because he loved her, testament to the compelling power that she can have over others.
She cast a similar spell over another former lover, Keith Shreiber, who she manipulated into killing her father Jack van Krevel with a tomahawk in their Wollongong home in 2001. Shreiber is currently serving a minimum 12 year jail sentence for the murder.
“She laid in her bed, covering her four-year-old daughter’s ears as next door her father was hacked to death,” Langdon said.
“You can meet her and think she’s quite a nice person ... but she’s got a very, very dark side and I saw glimpses of that.”
That dark side runs in her family, with her brother Mark Valera serving a life sentence for the gruesome 1998 murders of former Wollongong mayor Frank Arkell and shopkeeper David O’Hearn.
Arkell had his head smashed in with a beside lamp and an electric cord wrapped tightly around his neck. Tie pins were stuck in his eyes and cheeks. While O’Hearn had his head smashed with a wine decanter, he was decapitated, had his hand cut off, penis mutilated and was partially disembowelled.
“I was running through with Belinda all the things that her brother did,” Langdon said.
“O’Hearn was a thrill kill, I ran through the fact that he was decapitated, disembowelled. She was very matter of fact, she showed no emotion at all. When I asked whether she was scared of her brother, she looked at me and said ‘why would he scare me’?”
“Everything she has done is because of her love for her brother, she thinks he’s innocent, not in the sense that he didn’t kill the men, but that he was driven to do it.”
Van Krevel was physically and sexually abused by her father, and her brother has suggested that he was also raped, an allegation that was rejected by police, judge and jury at his trial.
“But Belinda held on to that and that set her on to her own evil path,” Langdon said.
“She has this incredibly close relationship to her brother, she has these blinkers when it comes to these monstrous things he has done, and blames her father Jack for these very violent things.”
But during the 60 Minutes interview, Van Krevel is confronted with a piece of police evidence that she has never seen before, a book that listed her brother’s kill list, which included the names of his victims Arkell and O’Hearn.
“What Belinda didn’t know was that she was on that list,” Langdon said.
She is shown the book for the first time and Langdon said her reaction was “quite chilling”, “it’s all in the eyes”.
But Langdon said she didn’t think anything would change van Krevel’s opinion of her brother, that he is a victim. With tears in her eyes, van Krevel told Langdon during their interview: “I know my brother and I know he’s a good person”.
“I think it’s easier for her to believe that than the truth, that he is a sociopath and a serial killer,” Langdon said.
It was also interesting that van Krevel seemed to show no remorse for her own violent crimes.
“When she talks about the man who killed her father, the fact that he did that and went to jail, she shows no remorse that her father is dead,” Langdon said.
During the interview, van Krevel did not take on any responsibility for her role in the attack saying her ex-boyfriend “didn’t have to carry out my wishes, he chose to do that”.
To this day, she also has no memory of her own brutal attack on another former partner, or remorse for stabbing him.
When Langdon asked van Krevel whether people should feel safe around her, she seemed shocked at the question.
“She said ‘why not? Of course people can people feel safe, if people don’t do the wrong thing, bad things won’t happen to them’.”
Van Krevel is now living in a women’s refuge, trying to get her life together.
“She wants to get a job, and to get a job, I think she realises it’s very unlikely she will get her son back but she will be able to visit him,” Langdon said.
“Everyone deserves another chance but surely this is her last chance, she has been to prison twice already, if she doesn’t turn her life around this time I don’t think she will ever be able to.”
Langdon spent a few weeks with van Krevel and said she seemed to have good days and bad.
“There are days when she is upset at the way she looks or her circumstances, times she is very angry and irrational, and other times when she is engaging and keen to put her demons behind her and get on with life. She’s a complicated character,” Langdon said.
“I think she’s got a strong personality, and I think she’ll make a go of the last chance she’s got and I hope she does for her own sake and for the community’s sake. She’s older and wiser now.
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