Judas

by Astrid Holleeder

  But the sisters weren’t the only ones on the list.

  LW: “What I know, that is important, those sisters for sure, Peter R. de Vries, yes, he wants him and all that, he says, he puts a lot of pressure on his affairs. He talks: he just wants that asshole…that’s what he says…just: that they die, too. Those three that I know, that they are the most important people: that’s what he said to me and also to my partner.”

  Poor Peter. Wim had already said, “If I have to go in for even one day, I will see to it that the same happens to him as happened to Thomas.”

  His fellow detainees had promised him to take care of it, and an advance had been paid and received.

  LW: “To be honest, yes. We have told him it is possible. And we have received money for it, but not that much. It was five thousand euros, split in two. Through a middleman.”

  As for the reason why we must be killed:

  LW: “He wants them dead, so they’re not there anymore… I think so they can’t testify against him.”

  We had predicted all of this. We shouldn’t be surprised that our brother is prepared to take the risk of using strangers to silence us before we can confirm our statements to the judge. But it does sound very harsh when you hear someone else talk dryly about a possible murder—yours. As if it’s some carpeting job.

  He came so close to arranging our deaths from the best high-security prison in the Netherlands. What will be in store for us when he moves to a lower-security prison?

  Scooter Incident

  I STILL LIVE ON THE STREET WHERE WIM USED TO COME TO MY DOOR, where he picked me up, where we’d walk and talk together, him always asking me, “Any news?” It’s a street known for its many bars and restaurants, and it’s popular with the criminal crowd.

  The Justice Department has often advised me to move, but I’ve lived here happily for twenty-one years, and I’m not about to give it up because I’m testifying against Wim. I don’t believe that moving out of my house will increase my safety. I know the store owners on the street, and I feel I benefit from that social safety net. I don’t want to lose my community on top of everything else.

  Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t move. Being a witness has cost me a lot of money; moving is financially impossible unless I can find a house with more or less the same rent, and the chances of that are slim. So I stay put, at an address known to half the criminal world in Amsterdam.

  Aware of the danger because everyone knows where I live, and also aware that leaving my house requires me to walk down some stairs, I am very careful. Before I go out in the daytime, I scan the street for suspicious people, put on my customized bulletproof vest, gather my courage, and get into my bulletproof car. First, I lock the car doors (because what good are bulletproof windows when the door opens), and I drive away.

  I check whether I’m being followed, and if I’m not sure, I take a roundabout full circle or I turn around at once and continue in the opposite direction. I always maintain a gap of six yards between me and the vehicle in front of me, in case a scooter or a motorbike stops next to me. The distance to the vehicle gives me the opportunity to speed away, running over the bike if necessary; by then I wouldn’t care anymore.

  Getting back into my house is a bit more complicated. Driving down my street looking for a parking space is not wise. From a bar or a restaurant, someone can easily watch me; pick a position, wait till I turn on to my street, and then boom. I can drive down my street only after midnight, when the bars and restaurants are almost empty and I can be sure to find a parking space close to my house. That’s why I often wait till twelve to head home. The downside is that when it’s dark, I can barely see people coming, even in those few steps from my car to my house. When I have a bad feeling, I don’t just wear my vest—I also put on my bulletproof helmet and collar and check the camera system on my phone to make sure no one is waiting for me in the stairwell. Then I run upstairs.

  Sometimes I’m afraid to stay out late just because I might not be able to park my car in front of my door when I get home. So I go home early.

  Tonight was such a night. It was eight thirty, and I had to go home. I put on my vest in the car. I checked carefully to see whether I was being followed, but I saw no one behind me. I drove around my house so I wouldn’t have to turn on to my street and be seen there unnecessarily. I had decided to park in the first space available on Churchill-laan, the street perpendicular to mine, so I wouldn’t have to circle around, risking being spotted.

  Everything I needed was inside the car; I didn’t have to open the trunk. I always made sure that I could get out very fast and be away from the car as quick as I can.

  I parked the car and walked down Churchill-laan. A hundred yards away I saw a car, double-parked, a new model. Approaching the car, looking through the rear windshield, I saw no driver in the car, only a passenger.

  Where is the driver? The question shot through my mind immediately, and I scanned the street. I got a weird feeling. I saw no one on the street and took into account that the missing driver might be waiting for me on one of the porches of the houses. I walked past the car and looked inside.

  A young Antillean-looking man turned his head away from me and looked at his phone. I immediately thought, Is he signaling? Maybe he was just waiting for someone in one of the houses. It was possible. But then again, maybe not. I started walking faster. I had to get off this street as soon as I could. A hundred more yards and I’d be at the intersection.

  I turned the corner and saw a group of skaters waiting for the traffic light. Pffft. I was relieved. With so much activity, nobody in his right mind would liquidate someone, but, still not reassured, I kept walking—fast.

  I was past the shoe store when I caught sight of a scooter out of the corner of my eye. I was scared and looked back. On the scooter was a guy dressed in dark clothes, wearing a helmet. He had dark eyes and a thin mustache. We looked each other in the eye, and I felt this was going to be the end of me. It was a very strong sensation.

  I went through my chances quickly. He was a house away from me and on a scooter, I was on foot and unable to get away. I saw him bend over to get something, and I thought, Why don’t I just resign myself to this?

  Instinctively, I backed away from him and he tried to prevent me by calling out, “Lady, can I ask you something?”

  At first I felt I had to stay put out of courtesy—maybe he did just want to ask for directions, as my common sense told me? But then suddenly my instincts took over.

  I shouted, “No, you can’t ask me a damn thing!” and I started running. I ran as fast as I could, but it felt as if I was standing still. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder, afraid of losing seconds. Getting distance from him seemed to take forever, and I thought, He’s coming, he’s coming, and I’m not fast enough. He’s coming.

  I ran upstairs and put the key in the lock, my hands trembling. I made it in, safely behind my steel doors. My heart was pounding, and my breath felt raw in my throat.

  I ran to the window to see if he was still there, but nothing. He was gone. I called my security and told them the story.

  “You have to get out of there,” they replied.

  I left the next day. My loss is almost complete: my work, my house—I’ve lost it all.

  But I’m still alive.

  We Celebrate Cor’s Birthday

  WE CELEBRATED COR’S BIRTHDAY ON AUGUST 18, 2016, AT ROYAL SAN’S, the restaurant where Cor had eaten last, just like every year. A new café had opened across the way, about two years before: Het Wapen (The Weapon). Cor would have seen the humor in it. On the site where he’d spent the last seconds of his life there was now a terrace full of people drinking beer. Cor couldn’t have hoped for a better memorial.

  Shortly before his death, he had gotten a beer out of the fridge, at eleven a.m. “Freddy Heineken has gotten to me,” he joked to Francis.

  It was true. Freddy Heineken had gotten to him: not through the beer he brewed, but through the curse attached to the H
eineken ransom, the lost six million that had corrupted his relationship with Wim without him noticing it. And that was the reason for the first, second, and, finally, the fatal attempt on his life. The curse spread to everything and everyone connected with the ransom, directly or indirectly.

  To Thomas van der Bijl, who stated that he had dug up the ransom and was silenced, partly because of it.

  To Willem Endstra, who arranged for Willem to keep his bloody gambling halls, and who got caught up in a web he couldn’t escape from alive.

  And to Wim himself—the curse had driven him to commit the craziest crimes.

  We are watching two guys with beer bellies having a lot of fun. “People with fat guts are fun to be with, Dad used to say,” Frances commented.

  “Yes, but he was always trying to lose weight,” Sonja replied. “Remember he was taking those slimming aid pills, that Xenical? If he wanted to have an extra hamburger or two he would just take some extra pills. Or he took up exercising like a madman, like when he started playing tennis with his friend Kai.”

  Every year we bring up the same memories, because new ones aren’t available.

  “Remember that time when they were done playing tennis and a jealous woman had scratched HOER [whore] on Kai’s car?” I say.

  “Yes,” Sonja says. “Kai was too embarrassed to drive it, so Cor took his key and scratched an A after HOER [hurrah] and said, ‘Problem solved!’”

  “Hurrah to you today, Cor,” Sonja says. “Happy birthday!”

  We raise our glasses.

  Together forever!

  Afterword

  BROTHER,

  It breaks my heart to have you locked up, but believe me when I say that I am in there with you. I will give you a life sentence, but I will have the same. A life full of fear, until the moment my time comes. Or, like you say, “When you see him running toward you with that piece, you still have a moment. A moment to think, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’” But I did it. I would have liked things to be different, but you left me no choice.

  In 1996 you started hunting for Cor. You had Cor, Sonja, and Richie shot at, in front of their house, the house that you pointed out. I knew the hunt was over when I stood next to Cor’s lifeless body in the mortuary in 2003. After two failed attempts, you told Sandra, you finally succeeded: Cor was dead.

  In the following years, you wreaked death and destruction on everyone close to you. In 2006 you were arrested for extorting Willem Endstra and Kees Houtman, among others. Not for murdering Endstra or Houtman, just for extorting them. And that was wrong.

  Still, when you went away to jail, at least we’d gotten room to breathe. But as soon as you were released in 2012, it started all over. That is why I have testified. Peter would have to go, just like Thomas, who you took care of on your first day inside. Sandra’s son, he would have to go, because he knows people you have problems with. Your sister would have to go, since she wouldn’t give you the money she made from the book about the Heineken kidnapping by Peter R. de Vries. Your sister, who has to flip a coin to decide which of her children will go first.

  I have to testify, because I know you will execute your threats. Or, as you would say, “I don’t threaten, I just tell you what to look out for.” The message is clear: You don’t threaten, you execute—that is, you have others execute; you never do it yourself. “You know what I’ll do, right?”

  Yes, we know what you’ll do, and we know what you have done. Like the serial killer keeping his trophies, you’ll never let us forget.

  I know I’m the last one you expected to do this, just like I was the last to believe my big brother would harm his family so profoundly.

  “We are the same,” you often told me. And that is partly true. I can think like you, reason like you, and act like you. That is the reason you are in prison.

  But those similarities don’t make me the same as you. Because everything you do hurts other people. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.

  I know you trusted me. I have betrayed that trust. I don’t like that about myself, but I did it deliberately. I feel I was justified, because you betrayed Cor, and many others.

  Your unsuspecting victims let you into their houses and into your lives, let you spend time around their children and their families. And all along, you always had your own agenda. I have had one myself for the last couple of years. I’ve had conversations with you, for years, with only one aim: to document everything you’ve done in order to prove that you actually did tell me about your crimes.

  Was it necessary to record conversations with you? Yes, because nobody would believe me otherwise. Everyone told me that if you denied the allegations, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. So I did what Endstra had wanted to do for years but couldn’t because in doing so he would have revealed his own criminal acts. I taped you.

  You know enough now. You know this is the end of the road, because of everything you’ve told me.

  You know you will go to prison for life.

  To others, I still have to explain why you deserve that. I have tried by testifying against you, but those testimonies lack nuance. To understand who you are and what you have done—to me, to yourself, and to all of us—I would have to explain my life story.

  And a whole life is much too complicated to write down in a few testimonies. No police interrogation, not even dozens of them, could capture our relationship, your complexity, or our common reality.

  It’s an insane reality.

  With you, nothing is what it seems. When you don’t talk on the phone or get visitors in prison, the police think this should be comforting for us. We, on the other hand, get really scared, because we know what that means. You are staying out of contact with the outside world, so that when we are out of the way you can play innocent: “But, Your Honor, I have not called anyone or seen anyone in prison. How could I have given an order to assassinate them?”

  If you wonder, Wim, why I did this to you, this is my answer: for Cor. For Sonja. For Richie. For Francis. For all the children who have lost their fathers because of you. And for all the children I want to spare that suffering.

  It’s time to stop the killing.

  That Sonja, Sandra, and I will have to pay with our lives for testifying against you, you know that. We know that. The only reason you’re still alive is that you want to take our lives.

  But despite that certainty, Wim, I still love you.

  Acknowledgments

  I would especially like to thank Peter R. de Vries. He was the first one we—my sister and I, but also the rest of the family—ever put our trust in and to whom we told our whole story. He has never betrayed that trust. He was there for us from the moment Cor was killed, and he supported us on the long road of making and disclosing our statements. Peter, thank you for your friendship, your reliability, your sincerity, your support, and your courage, on behalf of my mother, as well.

  About the Author

  Astrid Holleeder is a Dutch lawyer and writer. She is the sister of the criminal Willem Holleeder and was, together with her older sister and a former friend of Willem, a witness to his prosecution. Her memoir Judas sold half a million copies and became the bestselling book in the Netherlands in 2016. Her second book, Diary of a Witness, also became an instant bestseller.

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