Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Cambodian Man Gets 13 Years for Murder of Jewish Mother and Daughter

A Cambodian man who confessed to killing a Dutch Jewish United Nations worker and her daughter in Phnom Penh was sentenced to 13 years in jail.

Chea Phin, 35, confessed to killing Daphna Beerdsen, 31, and Dana Beerdsen, 2, in April in their home in the Cambodian capital by stabbing them after the mother noticed he had broken onto her property and called for help while using a broomstick to fend him off.

“My goal was to steal her bicycle. I did not go (to her house) with the intention to kill them,” Phin said earlier in the month during his trial, before his sentencing on Dec. 24, according to the French news agency AFP.

Phin, who was homeless, was convicted of murder following his arrest at a Buddhist pagoda two days after the stabbings, according to Cambodia Daily. The victims’ bodies were buried at a Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam.

Beerdsen and her husband, Joris Oele, were both U.N. workers living in Cambodia.

Beerdsen had been an active member of the city’s Jewish community of 100.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.