READ MORE‘The Van Tamelen File’. After lethally stabbing a man 72 times in 1989, John van Tamelen proceeded to undergo involuntary psychiatric treatment in the Netherlands’ TBS system for over 20 years. He was incarcerated in six different TBS clinics and managed to escape six times. His breakout from the maximum security Mesdagkliniek in Groningen in 1997 made national headlines. Accompanied by the dangerous German criminal Stefan Kröger, the pair’s escape prompted a manhunt that went on for days. In the wake of the entire incident, then-Minister of Justice Winifred Sorgdrager found herself on shaky ground and Van Tamelen became the object of intense scrutiny in The Hague. Now for the first time Van Tamelen explains how he made his escape. The report also clarifies whether his sectioning will be terminated under certain conditions. And whether one of the most notorious and longest detained TBS patients in the Netherlands will become a free man at last.