During the summer, I sometimes wore a dress I had rigged up, but it wasn’t a thing to wear on a prison visit. And he knew me through and through. He knew exactly what clothes I always wear, because he and I share the habit of wearing the same outfit every day. A clean version every day, but always the same outfit. If I were to suddenly wear something different, he would be immediately suspicious.
Furthermore, I knew from all the earlier visits that we would be whispering and would be seated very close together. A situation where I couldn’t walk away or turn away if I thought he was looking at something.
In the bright light of the visitors’ area, any discrepancy would stand out, every bulge in my shirt would be magnified. If he were to see anything at all “off,” he would discover the equipment at once.
And then there was the issue of the whispering. If I stuck the device under my bra strap, it wouldn’t be close enough to my ear to catch his whispering. It had to be hidden near my shoulder.
I had tried various shirts, cut them up, sewn the stuff in, and eventually I found a shirt that would have to do. But recording the whispering would still be really difficult, so I looked for an alternative. I found one in a spy shop in southeast Amsterdam: a watch that could record. I got one for myself and one for Sonja.
If I dared to wear it, it just might work. I know from experience that when I’m whispering to him in prison, I usually have my arm around his neck. My wrist would be near his mouth, so I’d presumably catch the whispering clearly. The only problem was that those watches are strikingly large, and he knew I never wore one.
I took a gamble: that his trust in me added to the stressful situation would make him blind to the minor wardrobe changes. When he saw me, he would be counting on my support and not aware of even the possibility that I would betray him that day.
The moment had come to enter the prison. Wim’s latest flame would be there, too, and we’d given her a head start. She was already in and couldn’t be witness to anything that might go wrong with us at security. I was very nervous. Theory is totally different from reality. I couldn’t afford to get caught, so Sonja, who had already lost Wim’s trust, served as a guinea pig. She passed through security without a beep. That was good. The watch also passed. Security had no idea that this was bugging equipment. Now me. Phew! Not a sound! We went upstairs to the visitors’ room.
We were inside.
I knew there was a toilet by the entrance near the visitors’ room. There I would have to get the rest of the equipment from Sonja, inconspicuously. Cameras are everywhere and the two of us in there at once would be too conspicuous. So she went in first, took the device out of her vagina, and left it on top of the toilet cistern. I went in after her to get mine out and to attach the equipment as invisibly as I possibly could.
Of course Wim has his own room to receive his visitors in private. We say hello. He could strangle me on the spot.
He grabs me by the shoulder, and I feel his hand trembling. I feel his fear about the message I have come to deliver to him. How terrible. I feel so mean. To extract from someone—in his deepest misery—information about who really set Cor up: such treason. How can I be so evil? I feel like throwing up.
Sonja sees my doubt; she blinks her big eyes and looks at me firmly. It means, Go on. She’s right: We’ve come this far.
I take a deep breath and try to act naturally.
W: “How are you?”
A: “Good.”
W: “Yes?”
A: “Yes. So here we are.”
I start about Ros’s statement at the door, before we even sit down.
A (whispering): “That Ros guy, he is pointing to someone.”
W: “Yes.”
A: “He pointed to someone in the footage, and now they’re busy with the informant, to finally arrive at…”
We are sitting next to each other. He puts his arm around me, whispers in my ear.
W: “One more time.”
A: “The informant, who told on him…in Amstelveen.”
W: “Yeah, but how?”
A: “Well, Ros says that the guys in the footage—”
W: “Yes.”
A: “On TV, okay, what you can see is…the guy who is really running up and down…he’s the informant.”
W (softly): “The informant of what?”
Wim has no idea what informant I’m talking about. I put my arm around his neck and whisper in his ear:
A: “Of Cor’s murder.”
W: “Can’t be.”
I don’t understand. I repeat what Ros has said. I let him see my doubt, but he is adamant.
W: “No.”
A: “This is his [Ros’s] statement; he got it from Danny.”
Wim shakes his head.
W: “I don’t have a problem there.”
A: “I don’t know that?”
W: “No.”
A: “No? [Whispering] The moment it happened…”
W: “No.”
I ask him three times, but he says no, three times. He’s sure about it. He has no problem with Ros’s statement.
Wim turns to Sonja and the girlfriend.
W: “Why don’t you just talk a bit, you two?”
As always, when Wim wants to talk with his visitors unimpaired, the others have to make some noise, ambient noise that covers our conversation and ruins the recording.
Wim explains to me why it’s not an issue—because between the “lurer” and him, there was a middleman. He doesn’t know the lurer, so he can’t name him. He calls the informant the lurer: I hadn’t used that word.
W (whispering): “There was a person in between but I don’t know him…”
A: “Sure?”
W: “Sure.”
Wim wants to know how many people were seen running in the video.
A: “Two of them, that’s all.”
W: “Well, then.”
Neither of them—not Adje or Bassie—was the lurer, according to Wim.
Wim wants to know if the guy next to Cor during the shooting was visible in the video. “No,” I tell him.
The one next to Cor was also hit and was lying on the ground, invisible in the footage. I’m surprised at his question.
I make up that Sonja will also be interrogated about Cor’s murder. We had agreed on that beforehand. I’m still not sure who the informant or “lurer” is and steer the conversation to one of the guys running around in the footage. I indicate that I’m afraid that if Bassie is the informant and is questioned, he’ll crack.
A (whispering): “Because Sonja was also asked to come in…Bassie…that he started talking…”
W: “No.”
A: “No?”
Wim whispers into my ear. The way I think it happened, with Bassie, is not the way it happened.
So it’s not Bassie. Or Adje. But then who gave Cor away? I steer the conversation back to Bassie.
A: “He is a nutcase, isn’t he?”
W: “Yes, but he’s peanuts. Really.”
But he still hasn’t told me who it is. I give it one more try.
A: “Last one, and then I’ll go—”
Wim wants to know again what can be seen in the footage.
A: “I looked at the footage and saw Bassie running around.”
W (whispering, then loud): “I was really scared.”
A: “Yeah, me, too.”
W: “I’m thinking: What are you on about.”
A: “I was also scared because I’m thinking: Well, that…umm.”
I explain to him again that I’m scared the lurer will start talking.
A: “Afraid that—”
Then Wim explains why that’s impossible. The lurer was next to Cor, and he’s dead. It’s ter Haak.
Now I understand why Wim at first didn’t get which informant I meant.
Now I understand why Wim knew that what Ros said was impossible.
Now I understand his question about whether the one next to Cor was visible in the footage.
Now I understand why he was so sure that Bassie was innocent.
Now I understand why he knew that neither of the two people running around was the lurer.
Wim conceitedly looks around the visitors’ room, as if he’s proud that they can’t hurt him with a dead informant, and I immediately get the feeling that ter Haak was deliberately killed. I see Sonja looking at Wim, then at me, inquisitively.
I nod inconspicuously; I know who did it.
I don’t want to talk inside the prison, afraid that someone will record us on the security system.
We walk outside. “And?” Sonja asks.
“It’s not who we think it is. It’s somebody else.”
Back in the car safely, I tell her what she has wanted to know for years: “It was ter Haak.”
That Robert ter Haak was the lurer, according to Wim, doesn’t mean that he was aware of the role. I wasn’t able to ask Wim that question, because it would arouse his suspicion at once. It’s feasible that he was trapped, maybe by a middleman. One thing is for sure, and that is that justice has to be done for his brutal assassination. He had died in the hospital a few hours after Cor, mowed down by the same spray of bullets.
That night Sonja says to me, “As, you shouldn’t feel guilty about Wim. He is a monster. He wouldn’t hesitate one second to do this to you.”
Mom’s Blessing
WE HAD TOLD OUR KIDS MUCH EARLIER WHAT WE WERE DOING AND THAT we might eventually be testifying. Although we had promised the Justice Department not to tell them, it was impossible to keep it a secret from them till the last moment. Our actions would have an enormous impact on their lives, and they had every right to think this through and not be confronted with it suddenly. If they thought we’d better not do it, we would quit immediately.
They were witness to our doubts, the times that we decided not to pursue it, and the times we decided to go ahead with it. But now was the moment when we had to make a choice.
We pointed out again that there was a strong possibility that we’d have to pay for this action with our lives.
Francis said at once, “Do it! He’s going to kill Mama anyway, so she’d better be one step ahead of him.”
Richie totally agreed. But that reason didn’t cut it for me. My position toward Wim was different: I was his ally. How could I justify to Miljuschka putting my life at risk without yet being in acute danger, like Sonja?
“You know what the consequences are if I do this, sweetie?” I asked her.
“Yes, I know, Mom,” she replied softly.
“I have to decide now.”
“Yes…”
“I can’t think of a single reason that outweighs the risk I’ll be taking. I shouldn’t do it, because I know how this is going to end, but still…”
“I understand, Mom. Sometimes you’ve got to do the right thing.”
We already knew Gerard’s point of view on the matter. Sonja and I had asked him back in 2011, before Wim was released, if he’d testify if we did. But back then he’d said: “You’re not going to survive, so why do it? What’s the point?” That was still his position. “What’s the point of all three of us dying? At least I can take care of Mom when you’re no longer here.”
There was still someone else who needed to know.
“We’ll have to tell Mom,” I told Sonja.
She agreed, and we decided to drive straight over there.
“Are you nervous?” she asked me.
“Yes, kind of. We have been working on this for more than two years, but if Mom is against it, we can’t pursue it. In that case we’ve had all this misery for nothing, and we’re facing many more years of it. But hey, it’s her child. She decides.”
“And you know what she’s like.”
“That’s why I’m afraid of her reaction. She has always buried her head in the sand and justified his behavior.”
We arrived at my mother’s house. She was waiting for us at the door, always glad to see us.
“How nice of you to come by,” she said. “Make yourselves comfortable. Tea?”
“Sure, Mom,” I replied.
“I’ll have some, too,” said Sonja.
I got straight to the point. “Mom, we’d like to talk to you for a bit.”
“What is it now?” she asked.
“Yes, well,” I said. “We’re going to testify against Wim.”
“Testify how?”
“Well, tell what he has done.”
She immediately looked worried. “That’s not very clever. He’ll never accept it.”
“I know, but it has to stop sometime. You know that it’s Son’s turn one of these days, and I don’t want to wait for that,” I said.
“Then you should do it,” she said resolutely.
Sonja and I looked at each other in surprise. Was she throwing in the towel that easily?
“But be aware that if we do it, chances are that he’s going in for life,” I said.
“Let’s hope so, or he’ll be chasing you.”
Sonja and I again looked at each other in astonishment. This was her son. “Do you know what you’re saying, Mom?” I asked to be sure.
“Assie, what do you think? He is threatening Sonja, he is threatening my grandchildren! That is unheard of! Do you think I don’t know what he is made of? I am scared to death that he will get you. I would much rather have him inside prison walls. I wouldn’t know what to do if anything happened to you. I would rather hang myself!”
“Okay, I’m glad you support us. For a minute there I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t? As, he has brought nothing but trouble to everybody. And now he wants to get at my child and my grandchildren? He’s my son, and it hurts to say it, but he’s an animal! I’ve had no life because of him, right? Always visiting, always with those crazy women of his. Always shouting and cursing when things don’t go his way. I didn’t even dare maintain a normal relationship with Roy, afraid of him running into Roy and kicking him out the door.”
My mother had met Roy a couple of years after the divorce. He dropped by the fruit stall where I worked, and my mother got to talking with him. Every week he came back and asked how she was doing. He was a tall, handsome man of Surinamese descent. They started seeing each other.
Wim didn’t like that. He didn’t want his mother to date a “negro.”
It was a disgrace. She anxiously kept it a secret from Wim for thirty years. She didn’t have the chance to have a normal relationship, and now she was alone.
“Did you know that Wim was responsible for Deurloostraat?” I asked.
“No, you never told me. Really?” she asked.
“Yes, it was him.”
“What a bastard. I still see it happening, right in front of my eyes. It’s been so long, but it still keeps me awake sometimes. Then I’ll see, bang, bang, bang, there on the car window. I hear Son screaming, Richie crying. I see Cor’s blood everywhere. I’ll never forget it. That’s all I needed—how is it possible?”
“But, Mom, let it sink in a bit what I’m saying: When we testify, chances are he’ll get a life sentence. Do you realize what that means? That you’ll never be able to visit him, never be able to call him, because he will use any contact with you, in any way, to track us down. Do you understand? When you say yes, you will be saying goodbye to your eldest son. Can you do that?”
I saw tears in her eyes.
“See, you start crying at the mere thought.”
I started crying, too, and said, “Son, we won’t do it!”
My mother was trying to control her tears. “But, As, it’s not so strange that all this saddens me so much, is it? It saddens you, too. I will have a lot of sorrow for the rest of my life, but it has to be done. This has to stop.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure.”
“Will you think of me as a traitor?”
“You, a traitor? Why? For helping your sister? Because you stand up for your nephew and niece? Are you crazy? You’re no traitor! He’
s a traitor! He’s got the Nazi blood of your grandfather.”
Apart from my mother, there was one more person I had to take into account in our decision to condemn Wim to life in prison: his son Nicola.
If I’d had the least idea that I’d hurt this little boy by taking his father away from him, I might not have done it. Maike and her mother raised him, and Wim called him his “white source” (legal money source) because he was the heir of Maike’s father, a wealthy real estate tycoon.
Maike, whom Wim still considered part of his harem, had called to meet me when Wim was arrested and nobody knew of our role as witnesses. During this meeting, she asked if I’d help her to stop Wim from seeing Nicola. She was terribly worried about what would happen if Wim was released, and she hoped that he’d stay behind bars for good.
I figured that it wouldn’t be too traumatic for Nicola if Wim were put away for longer, and that I wouldn’t be robbing a little boy of a loving father if his father got a life sentence.
That relationship was no reason not to testify.
The day before it was made public, Sonja and I went to see Maike to tell her what we had done. For Nicola’s sake, we wanted her to know beforehand so she could be there for him if he needed her.
Use of Preliminary Statements
FROM MID-DECEMBER 2014 UNTIL MARCH 19, 2015, WE HAD BEEN GOING back and forth about using our preliminary statements. Now, finally, we had decided to go ahead and use them.
The plan was that on March 20, 2015, the statements would be handed to the court, the district attorney’s office, and the defense. Finally, after such a long and nerve-racking experience, the moment had arrived. We were fully prepared for that day, and then came the message that it was called off! It was an incredible blow. My nervous system couldn’t take much more.
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