Devilish Details

After the murder of volleyball star Ingrid Visser, local Spanish press published graphic details of the case. Accused of hurting her family and influencing the trial. Are the press too close to their police sources?

It was just the next morning after the murder when local newspaper La Verdad was able to publish an extremely detailed report about the find. So just where did this information come from? “That’s a million euro question that I will never answer”, retorts crime reporter, Ricardo Fernandez. The Spanish press and police have a notoriously close relationship. The lawyer of the main suspect claims that his client has already been convicted in the court of public opinion, and that a fair trial is now impossible. In Holland relatives of Ingrid Visser have been horrified by the intimate revelations about the case printed in La Verdad. Yet Fernandez remains defiant: “I have to protect my interests. And my interests are to inform society”.