The spectacular escape of master cracker Aage M. from the Leeuwarden prison still appeals to the imagination half a century later. Based on witness statements, reporters Frank von Hebel, Martin Groenewold and Colin Mooijman reconstruct his outbreak, which has never been fully clarified, in episode 3 of the podcast De Nostalgisten.
A cheerful guy. Smart. Attractive. A charmer. Anyone who knows him doesn’t say a bad word about Aage Meinesz.
He is therefore the prototype of a cuddly criminal in the early 1970s. Long before half-known Dutch people want to have their picture taken with Heineken kidnapper Willem Holleeder, Meinesz appears as a guest in a popular talk show ( Off the cuff, presented by Willem Duys), he records a gramophone record as a singer and writes down his burglary adventures in a bestseller.
“Aage had a sense of humor,” says Leeuwarden advertising painter Koos Reinsma, who befriended him in the 1970s. “A really nice guy.” Partly because Aage never used violence, he gained a lot of sympathy among the public. He was a thug, but a friendly one.
It burned right through concrete and metal
Because of his career as a burglar, Aage Meinesz (1942) is mainly known as ‘Aage M.’ the newspaper columns. The Indonesian-born resident of The Hague is the terror of the banking world; no vault is safe from him. As a tool, Meinesz uses a thermal lance, a kind of welding device with which he can burn straight through concrete and the thickest metal.
During the Easter weekend of 1971, he used it to break open the V&D safe at the Ruiterskwartier in Leeuwarden. The loot amounts to 120,000 guilders. The proceeds could have been even higher, but Aage leaves the staff’s paychecks untouched. In September 1972 he repeated his feat in Helmond. This time the Nederlandsche Middenstandsbank is missing more than 600,000, but not a cent is missing from the private safes.
“Aage was a criminal with principles,” says his son Jelle Meinesz. “I don’t think he was even concerned about the money, because he just as easily gave it away to his downstairs neighbor who had never been on holiday. Or he put 1,000 guilders in the handbag of a woman he met on the street, after which he ran away.”
Spectacular escape from the detention center
A highlight of Aage’s life as a criminal is without a doubt his spectacular escape from the detention center in Leeuwarden. It is April 18, 1974, two weeks after Meinesz was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison on appeal for, among other things, the above-mentioned safecracking. Around 11 p.m., passersby discover that, like in a comic strip, there are sheets tied together hanging from a prison window.
“If I see a hole, I’m gone. He literally said that,” Jos van den Broek remembers. The then deputy director of the House of Detention reports Aage M.’s statement to the management and staff. “But no one expected him to really run away.”
It therefore seems completely impossible: Aage M. is locked up with two others in a cell – ‘a room’ in Van den Broek’s words – on the second floor. The small windows are hidden behind sturdy bars. The courtyard over which the detainees look out is enclosed by a wall that is at least 3 meters high. Due to the round top, any climbers have no grip. Guards regularly make their rounds and check all cells.
Master cracker had listening equipment in his cell
But Aage won’t let herself be stopped. ‘I turned the radio on full blast and started plugging the seams of the cell door with bread dough,’ he later notes in his book. ‘Then I plugged the air vents that led into the hallway with wet rags. I turned on the baby monitor and picked up the transmitter I had hidden in the custodial watch and listened. The guards’ voices sounded familiar to me. In general terms I could follow their actions. Satisfied, I put the device in my pocket. It worked perfectly.’
The master cracker therefore has listening equipment in his cell. After the escape, the detectives also found hacksaws, fake keys and locksmith tools there. And most importantly: an improvised cutting torch to attack the bars. From the courtyard, Aage climbs to freedom along a rope thrown to him from outside.
The burglar and burglar uses this freedom in a special way: Aage starts a relationship with – of all people – a chief police officer at his hiding place in Rijswijk. He calls the radio program In the Rooie Haan to say hello to the employees of the prison in Leeuwarden. And he sends postcards to the police from different cities.
‘I’m sorry it made such a noise’
Jos van den Broek receives a handwritten letter when Aage is arrested again after four months and is detained in Arnhem. He writes, among other things: ‘I have always been treated well in Leeuwarden. Thank you very much for that. The outbreak was therefore not aimed at the institution. I’m sorry it made such a noise. (..) But I thought I left in a sporting manner and certainly without violence.’
The two did not see each other again until the autumn of 1985. Van den Broek is walking through a corridor in the penitentiary hospital in Scheveningen when he hears a voice behind him: ‘Hello, Mr Van der Pair of trousers.’ “I immediately heard that it was Aage, also because he always mispronounced my name. I looked over and saw a man wincing in pain. He had death in his eyes. What did I have to do with him? A few days later, Aage died of colon cancer.”
The Netherlands’ most famous cuddle criminal will be given a final resting place at the Westduin general cemetery in The Hague. The grave has now been cleared.
New light on the matter
Even half a century after his deed, it has never been fully clarified who helped Aage M. with his escape. How did those things get into his cell? Who drove the getaway car? Aage has always kept quiet about it and his cellmates also kept their jaws tight. In the podcast The Nostalgists reporters Frank von Hebel, Martin Groenewold and Colin Mooijman speak with those involved at the time. For example, what role did Leeuwarden drummer Arjen Kamminga play, who had recently performed in prison? Ally Fens, the now 95-year-old best friend of Aage Meinesz, also sheds new light on the case.
The Nostalgists
The Nostalgists is a six-part podcast series by Dagblad van het Noorden about historical events in Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland. In each episode, Frank von Hebel, Martin Groenewold and Colin Mooijman highlight one topic. The first episode, about FC Groningen’s successful European Cup debut in 1983, was online on Wednesday, February 14. Last week it was about the possible presence of subterranean tunnel systems under Appingedam and Franeker. The coming time you will hear episodes broadcast from Groningen Showbiz quiz (March 6), the search for a Nazi treasure on Schiermonnikoog (March 13) and the history of hazing at student associations (March 20).