With that ruling, the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam confirmed the verdict in the first instance on Friday, thereby definitively drawing a line under the era of ‘Dutch polderpenoze’. Holleeder has made ‘terrible choices to get money’, the court ruled. ‘He unscrupulously ruled over life and death, and in doing so inflicted irreparable suffering on many partners and children.’
Holleeder (64) is held responsible for the murders of his brother-in-law and former bosom friend Cor van Hout, ‘underworld banker’ Willem Endstra, pub owner Thomas van der Bijl and drug traffickers John Mieremet and Kees Houtman. Other victims were also killed during these attacks, including one fatality.
Holleeder denies any involvement. ‘I may be a crook’, he said earlier at the hearing, ‘but I have nothing to do with liquidations’. The court bases its evidence mainly on (crown) witness statements and sound recordings that his sisters made of conversations with him.
Crown witnesses
His long criminal trial was very exceptional for many reasons. It arose from the extensive liquidation process Passage, which began in 2009 and concerned murders in the Amsterdam underworld in the period 1993-2006. Ten suspects were on trial for seven liquidations and five attempted murders. Two key witnesses came forward, who have stated incriminating about their own criminal organization in exchange for a reduced sentence. The Public Prosecution Service welcomed them with open arms, ‘because with a crook you can catch an even bigger crook’.
The first key witness, Peter la S., suddenly announced in 2011 that he had said years earlier in safe statements that Holleeder, who was not on trial in the Passage process, also ordered murder. Those statements had been kept secret, because S. was afraid that Holleeder would ‘do something to him or his family’. La S.’s comment hit like a bomb. Because Passage was already at an advanced stage, it was decided to prosecute Holleeder separately.
After numerous preliminary sessions, the Holleeder trial began substantively in 2018, and covers a long criminal history, which started with the kidnapping of beer magnate Freddy Heineken in 1983. The central question in it raged throughout the trial: what happened to the 17 after that kidnapping? million euros paid in ransom?
More than 230 witnesses were heard and many well-known criminals from the so-called ‘Dutch networks’ figured in the criminal proceedings, such as Stanley Hillis (liquidated in 2011), John Mieremet (liquidated in 2005), Dino S. (sentenced to life), Greg R and his son Jesse (the latter also sentenced to life imprisonment), and Mink K., for whom prosecutors had to travel abroad because he was being held in Lebanon at the time.
‘The limit is on homicides’
Holleeder was arrested in April 2013, because he threatened Peter R. de Vries with death at his front door. In doing so, he violated the conditions for his conditional release. During the trial, De Vries gave decisive evidence about the collaboration between the criminal triumvirate Holleeder-Hillis-Dino S.
The most startling thing about Holleeder’s criminal case is the fact that his sisters Astrid and Sonja, together with Holleeder’s ex-girlfriend Sandra den Hartog, had secretly made incriminating statements about Willem. In 2013, they reported to the Public Prosecution Service in the utmost secrecy, with the help and guidance of Peter R. de Vries. Although the sisters can invoke the right of nondisclosure as a family, they designated their brother as the principal of liquidations. They did this, they said, because he threatened his sister Sonja and his ex Sandra as well as their children with death.
Also special is the fact that Astrid Holleeder was a lawyer and Holleeder’s confidential adviser. She gave the reason for her secret statements that the killing had to stop. ‘After the Heineken kidnapping you think: OK, now we all have to move on. Then came that conviction for the extortion of Endstra and others, and you think: now the penny falls with him. Then it comes free and it starts all over again. It’s in him. He doesn’t learn from punishment. But for me there is a limit for homicides.’
The sisters called their incriminating statements ‘suicide’: they are convinced that Willem Holleeder will take revenge on them as soon as he gets the chance.