This week, Bali was rocked by another brutal murder reminiscent of gangland killings. A Dutch tourist, Rene Pouw, became the latest victim when he was assaulted by two knife-wielding attackers on a motorbike. The horrific event unfolded on the street right before his girlfriend’s eyes.
This disturbing crime has left the local community in shock, adding to a growing list of similar violent incidents on the island.
Just last month, the tragic case of a Ukrainian man who was abducted, tortured, and ultimately beheaded, allegedly by the Chechen mafia, grabbed headlines.
Earlier this month, a court found three Australians guilty of orchestrating the premeditated murder of a fellow Australian. This gangland-style attack, which stemmed from a debt dispute, tragically involved a case of mistaken identity. According to a Bali coroner, the island has seen a dramatic rise in its murder rate over the past year.
At around 10 PM on March 23, Pouw, a 49-year-old Dutch national, was brutally attacked outside his villa in the bustling neighborhood of Kerobokan, an area also known for the notorious Kerobokan Prison, often referred to as the Bali Hilton.
The attack was witnessed by his girlfriend, a 30-year-old Indonesian woman, identified only as PI.
She told police Pouw suffered knife wounds to his head, neck, shoulder and lower thighs, in addition to cuts to his hands and arms as he attempted in vain to defend himself against the vicious attack.
PI also told police that the assassins, one who wore a black and green jacket commonly used by delivery drivers in Indonesia, then pursued her down the street with a bloody knife.
“The victim’s girlfriend hid in a dark area in front of villa number four because she had been targeted by the perpetrator wearing the ojol jacket,” chief of police for North Kuta Commissioner I Ketut Agus Pasek Sudina said. “[Only] after feeling safe and seeing the perpetrators fleeing towards the main road, [did] she dared to come out.”
Another witness, identified by the initials KPTAP, told police he heard screams and spotted the assassins fleeing the scene of the crime on a black Honda Vario, noting the pillion passenger was still brandishing a long knife described as a samurai sword by some news outlets in Indonesia.
Pouw was rushed by ambulance to Bali’s BIMC private hospital but lost consciousness before he arrived. he was declared dead as a result of blood loss at 11:30pm. The body was transferred to Ngoerah Central General Hospital on Tuesday morning, where it is being prepared for a forensic autopsy.
“So far I have only performed an external examination,” Dr Nola Margaret Gunawan, a forensic medicine specialist who will perform the autopsy, told news.com.au.
“Most of the wounds are large in size and are mostly in the upper body and head.”
Dr Gunawan, who has worked as a coroner in Bali since 2019, said there had been a dramatic increase in violent murders in Bali over the past year.
“From the first day I started working in Bali until the end of 2024, I performed an autopsy on one murder victim. But in the first six months of 2025, I received one murder victim every month, and that was only when I was on duty,” she said, adding, “This is the second murder victim I have received this year, and we’re still in March.”
Commissioner Sudina said police were still working to identify the motive for the attack, adding that theft was being considered a likely motive because “none of the victim’s belongings were missing.”
But according to Algemeen Dagblad (AD), a Dutch daily newspaper, Pouw was a convicted drug criminal on the run from the law and was probably murdered in a “targeted” hit to “settle” a bad debt.
“Everything points to him being the man of the same name who was on the run from the Dutch investigative services for years,” AD reported. “His name and age from previous publications on this website … correspond exactly with data from the Indonesian police. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague reports being aware of the death of a Dutch man, but for privacy reasons does not want to say whether it is actually the [same person] known in the underworld.”
Pouw was sentenced to five years in 2005 for drug trafficking, but only served one year before absconding from the Netherlands while on weekend leave. In 2010, he was placed on the European nation’s National Wanted List. In 2011, Pouw was rearrested in Spain and served the remainder of his sentence there before moving to Southeast Asia.
“The authorities had a great interest in him at the time,” AD added. “He was on their radar because he possibly wanted to testify in the Passage mega-trial, concerning a failed assassination attempt.”
Back in Bali, chief of Badung Police Joseph Edward Purba, whose precinct is jointly investigating the murder with North Kuta Police, announced an island-wide manhunt is underway to apprehend the suspects. “The team is fully engaged in the investigation to determine the identity and whereabouts of the perpetrators,” he said. “This case is a priority for us.”
