A videocamera on Van Doren's gear filmed her desperate struggle as she tried to release her reserve parachute. The video ended as she landed in a suburban garden in eastern Belgium.
"The first question a family normally asks is whether the victim suffered, whether she knew what happened. We don't have to ask, it was filmed. Try to deal with that as a family," said Jef Vermassen, a lawyer for Van Doren's family.
Both women, according to police investigators, were having affairs with their Dutch skydiving teacher, Marcel Somers, with all three belonging to the Zwartberg parachute club in eastern Flanders. Jealousy, the prosecution maintains, was the motive for a coldly calculated killing.
When Somers spurned the younger woman for a night with Van Doren, the wife of a Flemish jeweller, Clottemans snipped the parachute strings and Van Doren jumped to her death a few days later, the 68-page chargesheet claims.