This story means a lot to me, as Jan Kikkert is the father of the elder that headed my judicial committee, Luc Kikkert. Yan was a regular pioneer that was sent to Tasmania with his 4 boys to serve where the need was greater. He started an affair with a girl 40 years younger than himself. Yet despite everything that he has done, (and there is a lot of other questionable activities I am aware of that he was involved in) he had the audacity to come up to me at my father's funeral a few months ago and ask when I was going to come back to the truth.
The story mis-spells his name, unless he changed it for some reason. It also inaccurately states Jan became a JW in 2004, which was after the fires, giving the impression he may have become a better man due to his conversion. In actual fact he was a JW for many decades, but was in a disfellowshipped state at the time of the arson.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2012/04/16/319251_scalesofjustice.html
A 77-YEAR-OLD Blackmans Bay man walked into the Hobart Police Station last year and confessed to two major insurance frauds committed in the mid 90s that saw him set fire to his car and burn down his house, a court heard this morning.
And Jan Kikkart would have got away with the two crimes, Hobart's Supreme Court was told, if not for the ever-growing weight of the guilt he felt over the scams, which allowed him and his then-wife pocket close to $100,000.
The first crime saw him place an icecream bucket filled with petrol and a floating candle in the footwell of his Mazda 626 back in 1994.
The car was parked outside his Blackmans Bay property and before lighting the candle he smashed a window and tampered with a lock in an effort to fool police.
The car was destroyed by the resulting fire and Kikkart pocketed $10,200 from the insurance claim.
A year later and in need of funds to build a new home on his block of land at Blackmans Bay, Kikkart struck again, this time upgrading the homemade incendiary device used from an icecream bucket to a 12-litre drum.
He told police he and his wife had been renovating their second property at Primrose Sands so it could be rented out, but apparently they had a change of heart in April, 1995.
After telling his wife to take their two children out to the car while visiting the property, Kikkart placed the drum in the house's living area and turned off the electricity in case the insurance company refused the claim in the mistaken belief the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
A neighbour called triple in the early hours of the morning and firefighters arrived to find the house engulfed by flames.
Like the car, it was totally destroyed.
While firefighters determined the blaze to be deliberate police were unable to prove who was responsible and the Kikkarts received an $86,000 insurance payout.
That would have been the end of it but the couple divorced in 2007 and the newly remarried Mr Kikkart, who became a Jehovah's Witness in 2004, apparently decided he could no longer live with the burden of his criminal activities.
"He told police his first allegiance was to the Creator," prosecutor Yolanda Prenc said.
The court heard Kikkart's ex-wife, with whom he has been embroiled in a custody dispute over their daughter, is likely to also face criminal charges and Kikkart has made it clear he is willing to testify against her.
Justice David Porter remanded him in custody to consider his sentence which will be handed down on Monday.