Firefighter Hans Anchelon kills Annemarie Papelard in domestic violence murder-suicide
Annemarie Papelard was a well-educated business executive who worked for a raft of Australian companies. Yet her murder was swept under the carpet - until now. Read the exclusive story here.
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Annemarie Papelard was sitting at her desk in her home office on September 29, 2022. A Thursday.
She was working on her computer. She had headphones on, most likely listening to music as was her habit. Her back was to the door.
She did not see or hear the man come into the room. She could not have known he had a gun in his hands.
He shot her. Three times.
No one heard the weapon fire. No one came to help.
***
Christoffel Sneijders’ phone pinged as he walked his dog in the park.
It was 5pm on October 2, 2022. A Sunday.
“Please contact me as soon as possible,” his friend messaged.
“It’s urgent. Concerning Annemarie.”
Christoffel pauses, reflecting on the his mate’s words before telling me: “I was thinking, ‘oh f--k, something horrible’s happened. I was totally stunned. I was in extreme shock.
“I had a feeling I should call Annemarie days before – I never did because I knew he would go crazy.”
***
Annemarie was murdered in her home at Jarrahdale, Western Australia.
Her killer was her partner of 10 years, Hans Anchelon; a career firefighter and a gun club member licensed to own a firearm.
Annemarie was among the 67 women lost to alleged unlawful acts across the country in 2022.
My research for Australian Femicide Watch shows, on average, one woman died every 5.5 days around the nation last year.
Almost all the alleged perpetrators were male and more than 53 per cent of the women died from alleged domestic violence.
Six women died in murder-suicides in 2022 – Annemarie was one of these victims.
READ MORE: Alleged Australian femicide capital revealed as deaths sky-rocket
THE STRONG WOMAN AND THE COOL DUDE
A well-educated high profile executive, Annemarie forged a remarkable career ensuring the financial well-being of Australian businesses.
Her resume included Hatchd, CFO Centre, FinX Management Innovations, Niche Education Group, Communicare, Fratelle Group and Guardian Exercise Rehabilitation.
The 55-year-old loved animals, dedicating much of her spare time to helping rescue and rehabilitation organisations save injured native wildlife.
“She was a strong and decisive woman,” Christoffel says.
Christoffel and Annemarie met while working at the same company in the Netherlands some 20 years ago.
“We both felt we were soulmates,” the 3 Brains Training and Supervision owner recalls.
“We were really partners in crime – we were partners in a lot of things we did.
“We loved biking together, we had a lot of similarities, a lot of common interests and common passions.”
READ MORE: Killer identified in murder of devoted mum and her tiny baby
In 2011, their decade-old marriage seemed strong, with Christoffel believing they would weather any storms, including moving to Australia.
They spent the year previous working around the clock to gain the financial safety net they needed to start a new life in a different country.
They bought a block of land in Western Australia and began building their dream home.
The foundations of their partnership may have been solid, but cracks, nevertheless, appeared.
“It was an extremely painful, upsetting period,” Christoffel says.
“It was really a result of the last year before we immigrated when we were really working our butts off to save money, this squeezed our relationship quite a bit.
“When we came to Australia, I felt not really at home here.
“Annemarie connected a little better with Australia so our relationship was sometimes good, but also a little bit strange.”
It’s not clear how they met, but within months of arriving in Australia, handsome Netherlands ex-patriate Hans Anchelon entered Annemarie’s orbit.
The charismatic clean-cut adrenalin junkie swept Annemarie off her feet, their friendship quickly turning intimate.
“I was not the most happiest at that moment so when she connected with Hans, it became an exciting fling for her,” Christoffel says.
“He was a firefighter, he was really good looking. A kite surfer. He was the cool dude while I was distressed and sad and trying to work out what to do in Australia.”
READ MORE: ‘No justice for my sister’: Australia’s forgotten women and the killers set free
Annemarie and Christoffel’s divorce was bittersweet but they cared enough to remain close friends.
“We stayed connected because we both lived in Australia without anyone else,” he says.
“We had feelings for each other even though we didn’t fit with each other.”
Out of the blue, Annemarie confessed she was struggling with their separation, telling Christoffel: “Why on earth did we do this? Why did we separate? Why did we go so fast? Why did I have to put us through the whole divorce?”
“The only thing I know, that I dream about, is we will be together again in the future.”
Christoffel described the breakdown akin to her “having withdrawals from our relationship”.
Despite her regrets, Annemarie remained living with Anchelon.
As time passed, a disturbing pattern emerged.
Annemarie stopped calling and texting Christoffel. Her visits became fewer and fewer. Eventually, their only communication was via email.
Hans was monitoring Annemarie’s movements and her interactions with other people.
When she was away, he bombarded her with text messages demanding to know where she was, what she was doing and who she was with.
“Her partner was really controlling and demanding,” Christoffel says.
“He was really paranoid about me and he did not want her seeing me or talking to me.”
Anchelon also tried to control Annemarie’s family.
“One of her sisters came to visit two years after they got together and she wanted to see me as we are good friends,” Christoffel says.
“They (Annemarie and her sister) came in and said ‘we have one hour. Hans thinks we are doing shopping so we have to be back in one hour’.
“Even her sister was not allowed to see me – if they said my name he’d get totally crazy.”
For 10 years, Annemarie lived on edge. Staying in the relationship, Christoffel says, because she worried Anchelon would have no one to support him through periods of depression, for which he spent time in hospital.
The most dangerous time for any woman is when they are leaving their partner, research shows.
In fact, women are 500 more times at risk of murder when they walk away from a relationship.
It’s not known if Annemarie was aware of the connection between murder and separation but what’s obvious is the fact she had one foot out the door and her killer was already reaching for his weapon.
In the last 12 months of her life, Annemarie was sleeping in a separate room in their single-storey pale brown brick home.
The tide was turning for her though. She excitedly booked a trip to the Netherlands and was due to fly out in April this year. She reduced her client load and told people she was going alone and would not return for some time.
Eight weeks before she was killed, Annemarie sent Christoffel an email, reminiscing about the good times they had.
“She shared about the holidays we used to have and said she really destroyed our relationship by divorcing me,” he says.
“She was excited to be going to visit her sisters and she also wanted to visit my sister, with whom she was really good friends.
“She said to me, ‘I’m going back to Holland and I don’t know how long I will stay’.
“All the signs were there, that she was in the process of leaving.”
UNDER HIS CONTROL
John McDonald is the founder of Guardian Exercise Rehabilitation, which has offices across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
He worked with Annemarie for about five years, building a strong friendship with the woman he calls the “velvet sledgehammer”.
Annemarie managed the company’s finances, which involved planning, strategy, risk awareness, record keeping and compliance.
“I said to Annemarie; ‘Your job is to stop me going broke’,” John explains.
“She was not ruthless, but she was very direct and clear on her thought processes and was able to guide staff in a way that wasn’t dictatorial.
“She had the ability to facilitate the process without being overbearing.
“While she was a numbers person, she absolutely loved people. She was very compassionate.”
During the pandemic, Annemarie proved invaluable to John and his business.
They would spend “hours and hours” trying to navigate the economic, staffing and other challenges all Australian businesses faced during Covid.
“I’d speak to her on weekends more than I’d speak to my friends. She would often call me with an idea, something she’d want to catch up on or discuss” John says.
“I loved those phone calls.”
Anchelon often came into her home office while she was in the middle of video meetings with her business contacts.
“There was many times when we were on Zoom and her partner would wander into the room unexpectedly,” John says.
“We did speak about her home life. She didn’t go into great detail but I certainly knew there were struggles.”
Anchelon’s behaviour has all the hallmarks of coercive control.
Also known as psychological or emotional abuse, this behaviour can include monitoring a person’s daily activities, isolating them from friends and family, denying them autonomy, gas-lighting and name calling.
READ MORE: Four weeks of horror: 16 women killed across Australia
Domestic violence survivors often say coercive control can be worse than physical violence because of the mental scars they suffer.
It leaves people feeling isolated, unsure of themselves and fearful, Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre director Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon explains.
Australian policymakers are slowly recognising the damage emotional abusers do, with some states making coercive control a crime and other jurisdictions to follow suit.
“Through coercive and controlling behaviours, the barriers to leaving an abusive relationship can be significant,” Professor Fitz-Gibbon says.
“In the early stages of a relationship this can include love bombing, mirroring and gaslighting – so even where a person knows the partner has been abusive previously they are led to believe (by the perpetrator) this could never happen again.”
THE GUNSHOTS NO-ONE HEARD
The home Annemarie shared with Anchelon sits at the end of a secluded street, just a few kilometres from the town’s gun club.
Dense scrub flanks the property’s boundary on one side and along the rear.
A neat garden of hardy natives blooms near the front porch and along the edges of the house.
There’s no green lawn here – just the deep reddish-brown earth this dry and arid stretch of Australia is known for.
Two neighbouring properties – one to the left and another across the road – are close enough for their occupants to hear a gun firing.
While West Australian Police will not provide information about what happened on that spring day in 2022, News Corp Australia has confirmed the details through alternate sources, including a person who handled their bodies.
Annemarie was - this publication learned - slumped over her desk in the home office.
After Anchelon shot her in the back and twice to her head, he then ended his own life.
It seems no one heard the gun firing as police were not contacted in the aftermath.
Annemarie was to attend a meeting with Guardian Exercise Rehabilitation on Friday, September 30, the day after she died.
Worried when she did not show up, John asked police to do a welfare check.
Officers attended the home.
They contacted John, who was in Bali, to let him know forensics police were on scene and Annemarie and Anchelon had died in what appeared to be a murder-suicide.
“It was an incredible and challenging 24 to 48 hours,” John says.
“A number of people in my organisation were very close to her and they were really affected.
“Since her passing, it would have been 30 or so times I’ve thought to give her a call to ask her a question and I haven’t been able to do that.”
THE MAN WITH TWO FACES
Born in the Netherlands in 1965, Hans Anchelon moved to Australia with his then partner about 2007.
A welder by trade, he made a huge career change in the years before he arrived to become a firefighter.
When he landed Down Under he undertook the study and assessments needed to be a qualified firey in Australia.
He spent the following years working with brigades around Western Australia, although he did not quite fit in.
“He thought the firefighters in Australia were stupid and he was much better than them,” Christoffel says.
A 2016 PerthNow article shows Anchelon, wearing his firefighter uniform, smiling between three young girls as they stand in front of a firetruck.
News Corp reached out to WA’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services about Anchelon’s employment with DFES but did not receive a response.
Anchelon was gregarious, charismatic, charming – the life of the party and the kind of guy everyone loved hanging with.
He was an adrenalin junkie who kitesurfed, snow-skied, rode motorbike, ocean fished and travelled.
Photographs show him laughing and having fun with large groups of friends and hanging out with beautiful women.
READ MORE: The secret social media groups tracking abusive Tinder dates
The gregarious nice guy persona was all a front.
This was a man with two faces – the one he showed his friends and the one he showed the women he had relationships with.
Anchelon had a history of violence, including hitting others when he did not get his own way when he was a child and teenager.
Those who know him well say he subjected at least two women to violent, controlling and intimidating behaviour before he met Annemarie.
When he arrived in Australia, Anchelon came close to strangling a woman to death.
The brutal attack on his then partner left her in hospital for five days.
She was lucky to survive what many women don’t, with analysis of femicide patterns showing non-fatal strangulation often precedes the violent deaths of women.
“Non-fatal strangulation is the ultimate statement of control in an abusive relationship; through strangulation the abuser is telling the victim that he holds her life in his hands,” Melbourne University strangulation expert Professor Heather Douglas says.
“He is telling her he is the one in control of her life.
“When a person has been strangled by a past or present partner, she is seven times more likely to be killed or suffer serious injury in the weeks afterwards.
“Some people have described strangulation as the last warning shot.”
All states and territories, except Victoria, have specific non-fatal strangulation offences in their criminal statutes.
An assault charge for this attack would have put Anchelon’s Australian visa at risk.
Anchelon and a police officer urged the victim to withdraw her complaint, this publication has learned, but it could not be officially verified.
Still, Anchelon was not charged and remained in the country.
The victim of that attack blames herself for the killing, saying had she resisted Anchelon’s pressure, Annemarie might still be alive.
In the wake of her death, some people close to Anchelon made a raft of excuses for his actions, even claiming it was an “act of mercy” because of a belief Annemarie had multiple sclerosis.
Flatly rejecting this, Christoffel says: “It was a cold-blooded murder. It was his decision to get his gun, walk into her office and shoot her three times.
“He made the decision to not live anymore and he’s decided to not allow Annemarie to be happy or to live anymore or to have her life – this was all about him and his f---ing life.”
KILLER HAD GUN PERMIT
Anchelon’s mental health problems included PTSD and depression. He gave away his firefighting career because of trauma from the job.
Around the time he stopped working, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, undergoing life-changing surgery, the impacts of which he struggled to accept.
He tried to end his own life and was hospitalised.
Despite the domestic violence history and the psychological impairments, Anchelon was obtained a gun permit and joined Jarrahdale Sporting Shooters club.
Annemarie was a joint holder of the firearm permit and also a member of the club.
It’s not known if she owned any weapons herself, but sources say Anchelon had five guns he routinely “carried in the boot of his car”.
The gun club was asked to take part in the article but president Trevor Gent’s only response was: “Jarrahdale Sporting Shooters Inc does not comment on its members”.
READ MORE: ‘No justice’: Australia’s forgotten women and the killers set free
Western Australian gun laws have not been updated significantly for decades, making it hard for authorities to deny permits to people with mental health problems or criminal pasts but work is under way to change this.
About a month before Anchelon murdered Annemarie, the WA government rolled out new firearm prohibition orders to disarm domestic violence offenders, outlaw motorcycle gang members and organised crime figures.
Individuals served with an FPO are banned from having a gun or being in the presence of a firearm and they can be searched without a warrant.
The maximum penalty for breaching an FPO is 14 years’ jail and a $75,000 fine.
In the first few months of operation, 20 organised crime figures and serious domestic violence offenders were banned from having a weapon.
Had Anchelon been placed on a domestic violence order in Western Australia, his access to guns could have removed via an FPO.
The West Australian government will soon overhaul the outdated gun laws, with the state to be the first in Australia to force gun owners to prove they are mentally fit to hold a firearm.
KILLER FALLS THROUGH THE SAFETY NET
Australia has recorded many family murders involving perpetrators with permits for guns.
In the Northern Territory in July of 2022, Bernard John Alice murdered Alena Kukla and her 14-week-old baby at 16-Mile Camp outside of Alice Springs.
He ended his own life.
Alice had access to the gun despite previous violent offending, because he was a landholder.
On July 5, 2018, Sydney man John Edwards murdered his teenage children Jack and Jennifer Edwards at the children’s home in West Pennant Hills.
Edwards and the children’s mum, Olga, separated two years earlier after the repeat domestic violence offender subjected Olga, 15-year-old Jack and 13-year-old Jennifer to abuse.
He had a long history of violence against women, but was able to join St Marys Pistol Club.
The club failed to do due diligence and background checks because it was not legally required.
Edwards ended his own life.
He killed himself.
Miles had a licence for three firearms.
The West Australian Police and Domestic Violence ministers were sent a set of questions relating to Anchelon’s weapon permit and gun club membership.
Neither provided a direct response to the media request, but this publication was given a statement attributed to the WA Government.
“The sad reality is family and domestic violence is occurring in homes throughout Australia every day,” the statement reads.
“All violence, in whatever form it comes, is unacceptable and every loss of life at the hands of violence is a tragedy.
“As this death is before the WA Coroner, it is not appropriate to comment on the specifics of this case.”
It’s clear, even though Anchelon was known to be abusive and to suffer PTSD and depression, the risk of him taking Annemarie’s life was not picked up by people who could have made a difference - including those who treated him for self-harm when he was hospitalised.
The ability of domestic violence perpetrators to fly under the radar is not at all unusual in Australia.
The Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre’s researchers, in their latest study, found mental health, alcohol and other drug services, corrections and child protection services routinely identify people who use violence.
The research, led by led by Griffith University’s Silke Meyer, says every contact with a service - for example mental health providers - is an opportunity for practitioners to screen for violent tendencies and to ensure the safety of victims.
This can only be done if governments provide extra funding to ensure service providers can put in place the resources to take on this extra work, the report says.
“Everybody’s under the pump, and you just see people ... meeting just the bare minimum to cover your back and meeting the minimum standards,” one mental health practitioner told the study authors.
More resources, specialist training and improved information sharing across service providers is needed to ensure perpetrators are consistently identified and their risks assessed and monitored, the authors wrote for The Conversation.
ANNEMARIE’S STORY CAN CHANGE LIVES
Just 65km from Perth, the small historic village of Jarrahdale is home to about 1200 people. It is enveloped by a forest of striking eucalypt trees known as jarrah, for which the town is named.
Jarrahdale is beautiful in a quintessential Aussie way, but it was the sea which captured Annemarie‘s heart.
When life at home was too much, she’d make the 40-minute drive to Point Peron. Here — surrounded by gleaming white sands and the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean — she’d find solace from the torment in her home.
Some of Annemarie’s ashes were spread along this tranquil stretch of Australia’s coastline – her sanctuary.
The rest were returned to her family in the Netherlands where she now rests alongside her parents.
Christoffel deeply regrets not being able to change Annemarie’s story, but he’s hopeful her death will turn the page for other women who stand where she once stood.
“Let’s act when we see the writings on the wall, when we observe some red flags,” he says, urging people who see those in domestic violence crisis to provide a lending hand.
“Let’s really sit down and share what we observe, check if they really hear and process what we say and don’t give up when we listen to their reasons about why they can’t do it (leave) now, but maybe later or if they say the famous ‘he will change’.
“If you are in an abusive relationship, please reach out – you cannot imagine how much your friends and family are willing to help you.
“Later may never come.”
News Corp’s Sherele Moody has multiple journalism excellence awards for her work highlighting violence in Australia. Sherele is also an Our Watch fellow, the founder of Australian Femicide Watch, The RED HEART Campaign and the creator of the Australian Femicide & Child Death Map and All That Remains: The Memorial to Women and Children Lost to Violence.
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