32. From Traitor to National Hero
After van Meegeren successfully demonstrated that he was merely a criminal forger and not a traitor, the prosecutors dropped the charges of treason and collaboration against him. The revelation that he had conned the Nazis transformed him in Dutch eyes from a derided traitor into a national hero, who had performed an act of resistance by sticking it to the hated occupiers.
That did not get him off the hook with the authorities, however. Van Meegeren was prosecuted on the lesser criminal charges of forgery and fraud, and in November of 1947, he was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of a year behind bars. However, he ended up not serving a single day of his sentence. A few days after the sentencing, while free during the grace period for filing an appeal, van Meegeren suffered a heart attack and was rushed to a hospital. There, he suffered a second heart attack, this one fatal, and died on December 30th, 1947.