Vaatstra, then sixteen years old, was last seen alive cycling from Kollum to her parents' house in De Westereen.

The center's security was upgraded, and riot police were readied in the weeks following the murder, to intervene in the case of fighting between locals and refugees.

[5] At a municipal information meeting in October 1999, about the opening of a new center in the town, locals rioted, with Kollumer youth egging the mayor.

[1] A first suspect, a 32-year-old man from De Westereen, was arrested in late May 1999, but was subsequently released because his DNA did not match that found at the crime scene.

[5] From August 1999, police investigation of Vaatstra's murder focused on the asylum seekers' center near Kollum.

[7] In 2002, a final decision was made to open an asylum seekers' refuge at the planned location, without drawing local protests.

The following year, investigators published a psychological profile of the perpetrator, who they suspected to be a white, Western European male, living less than 15 km from the crime scene.

In a packed courtroom in Leeuwarden, Steringa described how he grabbed Vaatstra as she walked along a path in Feankleaster on the night of April 30, 1999.

Steringa, now 45, said he was hit by the sudden thought: “You’re mine.” He pulled out a pocket knife, seized the girl and raped her before strangling her with her own bra.

The only clue was a cigarette lighter found at the scene, which had been bought locally and contained a trace of the killer's DNA.

He told the court he had chosen to keep quiet to save his young children from the experience of growing up with a father in prison.

When police finally gained permission for the unprecedented large-scale DNA sweep,[10] Jasper Steringa consented to give a sample, knowing that he would otherwise be identified through his close relatives.

Instead he waited six months for the results to confirm what he knew and the moment that came on the night of November 18, 2012, when police arrived at his farm in Aldwâld to arrest him for Vaatstra's murder.

On 19 April 2013 the court in Leeuwarden sentenced Steringa to a term of 18 years in prison for the rape and murder of Vaatstra.

[12] The award became controversial after the director the NGO VluchtelingenWerk, which looks after the interests of refugees, filed a complaint against Vaatstra, who allegedly had made death threats against him in 1999.