For your reading pleasure: a not so flattering article on the Eikelenboom's written by the Denver Post in 2009:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12102408
Evidently wifey is 13 years older than hubby.
Just read it. Posting here:
There are lots of reasons to live in Holland. But, for Selma and Richard Eikelenboom, the low crime rate isn't one of them.
The Dutch duo is in the business of murder or, rather, solving them by plucking bits of DNA from evidence. Given that "Americans love to shoot each other," Selma says, they're moving to Colorado to keep up with the police and appeals lawyers begging for help cracking cases.
You may remember the Eikelenbooms for their role in proving Tim Masters' innocence in the mutilation and murder of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins. Or maybe you read about their work to exclude convict Tim Kennedy from a 1991 murder scene in Colorado Springs.
Both in the U.S. and abroad, they're aiding investigations of cold cases and probing murders in which they suspect miscarriages of justice.
Richard, 42, is a former special-forces agent trained in biochemistry. He's the DNA expert in the pair.
Selma, 55, the forensic specialist, is trained as an M.D. and has worked as a flight attendant, social worker, paramedic and coroner. Her "obsession with death," as she tells it, set in at age 7 after watching the tiny white coffin of a dead child being carried from a church.
She is notoriously hard- nosed, known for snapping at lazy investigators, sloppy lab techs and folks who don't share her socialist views. She's also a softy who cried during Masters' exoneration and has a cat she calls "Poesie-Woesie."
She is perfectly comfortable analyzing a mutilated human body. Yet she was squeamish when, on a walk this week, she came across a deer leg gnawed by another animal.
What sets the couple apart, says Barie Goetz, a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation lab director, is their diligence.
While a government lab might analyze evidence for a few hours, the Eikelenbooms examine every millimeter for weeks with alternate light sources. While the government might cut one or two samples, Richard snips dozens bearing the tiniest traces. And while the government often tries to extract skin cells with swabs, drowning them, he says, "in a big ball of cotton," he carefully extracts them with tape.
The result is that they often manage to find DNA and more markers of it overlooked by the state.
"What we do is try to solve the case, not just get rid of it," Selma says.
The couple met in a blood analysis class in Holland and married during a homicide conference in Vegas.
They chat over dinner about blood spatter and re-enact killings in their kitchen.
Like any husband and wife team, they have their tensions.
"Basically, Selma yells and Richard backs down," says Goetz, who has worked with the pair as an investigator.
Though world-renowned in their fields, the couple have registered as grad students at the University of Denver, where he'll research touch DNA and she'll study ways to determine the time of death. Having the letters "P," "H" and "D" after their names, they say, should help disarm their naysayers.
"We work at the edge," she says. "It's important to show we're keeping up with the scientific foundation."
The couple plan to keep their farmhouse and lab an hour east of Amsterdam. It's at that so-called Crime Farm that Selma has waged a long and bitter feud with a neighbor she's convinced mistreats his horses and is killing her trees.
"We're looking for lots of acreage," she says of their search for a place to live and work in the foothills. "I'm not moving here to mingle."