THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019 The Boston Globe TheWorld A
By Marc Santora
NEW YORK TIMES
The man immediately
struck the bartender as a bit off.
His beard was disheveled, he
was in a daze, and his clothes
seemed straight out of the
1980s. It was near closing time
at Chris Westerbeek’s small pub
in a rural Netherlands village,
Café De Kastelein, and he sent
the stranger away.
But a short time later, on
Sunday night, the man re-
turned and this time, Wester-
beek decided to find out his sto-
ry.
And what a story it was.
As the bearded man in the
dated outfit quickly gulped
down five beers, he said that for
the last nine years, he and his
siblings had barely seen the
outside world. Instead, they
were mostly confined to a small
room in a Dutch farmhouse ontheoutskirtsofthevillageof
Ruinerwold “waiting for the
end of days,” Westerbeek told
Dutch reporters.
“He said he was the oldest
and wanted to end the way they
were living,” Westerbeek said.
By Monday, after the police
went to the farmhouse and
found the family living in
strangely isolated conditions,
the bearded man’s story had
spread far and wide.The police cautioned that
much about the case remains
under investigation, including
why the family lived the way
they did. Many of the details
have come from Westerbeek,
who spoke to the local Dutch
television station RTV and the
national newspaper De
Telegraaf. He did not immedi-
ately respond to messages seek-
ing additional comment.
The farm where the beardedman lived had a small vegetable
garden and some livestock and
was set back from the nearest
road, shrouded from view by a
line of trees.
The police confirmed that
six adult siblings, between the
ages of 18 and 25, who had
been living on the farm were
now receiving care. Their moth-
er is believed to have died some
time ago, officials said.
The father, according to lo-cal authorities, had suffered a
stroke but was also living on the
farm. Authorities also con-
firmed that the bearded man
who fled the farm to seek help
was the eldest of the six sib-
lings.
A 58-year-old man, identi-
fied by local reports as a handy-
man connected to the property,
was taken into custody, but it
was unclear how he was in-
volved in the case.Family in secluded Dutch house was ‘waiting for end of days’
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