ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, June 9 (UPI) -- A frail, 96-year-old Dutch woman confessed to killing a man 65 years ago who she wrongly thought was a Nazi spy, the mayor of the city where the man lived said.
Atie Visser of Rotterdam told Leiden Mayor Henri Lenferink in a letter and in two later meetings she shot and killed Felix H. Gulje in the doorway of his Leiden home March 1, 1946, because she'd been given bad information he'd collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, Lenferink said.
In fact, Gulje, a Dutch ministry candidate who ran an engineering company that dealt with Germany, had sheltered Jews and given money to hide Jews during the war, Lenferink said.
Visser was a member of the Dutch resistance to the Netherlands' Nazi occupation from 1940-1945, South Holland's provincial TV West said in reporting Lenferink's announcement.
Visser left the country in 1947, got married and moved back a few years later.
The guilt of her crime gnawed at her to the point that she confessed to a priest and wrote the letter, the TV station said. She met with two of Gulje's grandchildren last month to explain what happened.
The Gulje family -- especially Gulje's oldest son, who died two years ago -- had sought for decades to find the truth behind Gulje's assassination, the TV station said. They now want the matter to rest.
Lenferink, who condemned the vigilante killing even after 65 years, said he sent Visser's letter to the public prosecutor in The Hague, who decided not to prosecute.
