THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150442
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
Eric VanPoortfliet was stoned on marijuana as he dragged his wife's body down the embankment behind their trailer. Rebecca had been dead for three weeks. He had strangled her during a fight in his auto-detailing shop.
He made one final gesture before laying her in the grave he'd dug with a neighbor's shovel: He kissed her goodbye.
Then he thought he saw her move.
``It scared the . . . hell out of me,'' he later told police. VanPoortfliet fled. He bought $200 worth of crack, some marijuana and a bottle of Jim Beam, then huddled in the corner of a van and got wasted.
Early the next morning, he returned to cover the body with a box spring and yard clippings. He then placed a television set by her feet as a makeshift gravestone.
Thus did Rebecca VanPoortfliet, 33, meet her bizarre and tragic end in the spring of 1991. But it would be nearly three years before authorities learned of the crime.
On Feb. 3, police pulled the body of Rebecca VanPoortfliet out of the marsh in Oconee Mobile Home Park. She was wrapped, cocoon-like, in plastic, trussed with a bright orange extension cord.
On Wednesday, Eric VanPoortfliet, 39, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Circuit Court. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 30.
Prosecutors did not feel there was enough evidence of premeditation for a first-degree murder charge, so VanPoortfliet was allowed to enter a plea to the lesser murder charge. He could besentenced to 20 years.
``He was intoxicated, they got into a fight and he lost his temper,'' Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Humphreys said. ``But certainly what he did to the body was reprehensible. I'm sure the judge will take that into account in sentencing.''
If not for VanPoortfliet's abuse of his daughters during the years after the murder, he might never have come to justice.
After killing his wife, he said he told his six daughters - the youngest was then 2, the oldest 14 - that their mother had run off with a sailor. He packed them into a battered station wagon and they left for Schenectady, N.Y., where he had relatives.
VanPoortfliet was convicted of abusing his daughters in New York state and lost custody. In January, he violated parole by trying to see the girls and was arrested and jailed in New York.
When authorities realized the girls had not seen their mother since May 27, 1991, they became suspicious and put out a missing-person bulletin.
Then VanPoortfliet confessed, giving directions to the body. He was brought back to Virginia Beach to face murder charges in March.
The following account of what happened is based on statements he made to police in New York state and Virginia Beach:
On May 27, 1991, VanPoortfliet was working in his detailing shop, Pro Glo, in the 4900 block of Virginia Beach Blvd. He was asked to help open a locked car, so he took his Slim Jim, a tool used to open locked cars, with him.
When he got back about 2 p.m., Rebecca was angry, accusing him of flirting with a customer. She slammed the garage door shut for privacy, picked up a can of engine degreaser and threw it at him. Then she picked up the Slim Jim and swung it at him ``like a machete,'' he said, cutting his right hand.
The 5-foot-5, 120-pound woman began choking him, VanPoortfliet said, and they fell to the floor, tripping over an extension cord, which put out the lights. He began choking her back, then passed out on the cement floor.
``I remember her hands were around my throat and she was saying `I'll kill you, you ---------.' Then I just snapped. I remember that I was leaned over backwards and she had me by the throat. Then I was squeezing her throat and we both fell over onto the floor. I really didn't mean to hurt her,'' VanPoortfliet told police in New York state in February.
When he came to, his daughters were banging on the door. VanPoortfliet was nervous, sweaty and upset when he cracked the door and told them to go home and make dinner, the daughters told police.
He said he left the shop, assuming his wife had left earlier. He cleaned himself up, picked up some vodka at the liquor store and went to the beach to drink.
When he got back, he hooked up the light and found his wife dead. ``There was Becky lying there face up on the floor. I shook her and told her she couldn't be dead. I beat on her chest and everything. She was gone. She didn't hit me or yell at me. She was cold. She wasn't Becky anymore.''
VanPoortfliet loaded her body into the passenger side of his unregistered black 1977 Oldsmobile and drove to Friendship Village, where he bought cocaine and marijuana.
``I took her back to the shop with me and sat in the car trying to talk to her, asking her what to do,'' VanPoortfliet told police.
``Becky was dead at this time, right?'' asked Virginia Beach detective Shawn Hoffman.
``Yeah, I guess,'' VanPoortfliet said.
``Well, I mean, was she breathing?'' Hoffman asked.
``No,'' VanPoortfliet said.
``OK. . . she was dead to your knowledge, correct?'' Hoffman asked.
``Yeah, I kept talking to her. I haven't been in the right frame of mind at all.''
For three days, VanPoortfliet moved his wife's body in and out of the car and propped her in the corner of his shop, hiding it behind stacks of boxes. When the body started to smell, he wrapped it head-to-toe in clear plastic, covering her face and head with a dark trash bag and tying up the plastic with the extension cord.
He left her hidden in the corner of the shop under boxes for about two weeks. Then he carried her out into a field near the shop, leaving her there for a few days while he drove his children to New York, celebrated Father's Day with them, then left them with relatives.
When he got back, he moved the body one more time - to their favorite spot for getting high, an old dead tree in the swamp behind their trailer. He left her propped on an embankment.
``I came back and talked to her,'' he said. ``I told her that the kids didn't want me to leave, and what should I do?''
Finally, after nearly three weeks, VanPoortfliet decided it was time to bury his wife.
It took police a week of digging to locate the body. The plastic had preserved her flowered peasant blouse, purple jeans and slip-on canvas sneakers.
VanPoortfliet remembered what she wore that day. ``I loved her,'' he told police. ``If you can understand that I loved this girl more than I love life itself. . . . It was not murder. It was the worst accident of my life.''
KEYWORDS: MURDER ARREST TRIAL by CNB