I GET A CALL FROM MICHELLE, AND SHE ASKS IF WE’VE GOT TIME TO TALK to Betty. She’d like to see us tomorrow, but I’ve got commitments and I don’t feel like showing up there whenever they see fit. I’ve made time for them on so many occasions, totally reorganized my schedule, and it has gotten us nowhere.
“No, Friday doesn’t work for me. Sometime next week, maybe.” Could we come on Monday, because they’d really like to see us. I wonder why the hurry all of a sudden. It has been eighteen months now, and I’ve never noticed any sense of hurry before.
So we make a plan to meet on Monday, September 15, 2014.
On Friday morning, we find out that Fred Ros, the man who was convicted of killing Thomas van der Bijl, has made statements about that murder, among others. He points to Dino Soerel as the direct contractor, but adds that Willem Holleeder was behind it.
Now I understand why Betty wanted to see us, and I understand the hurry.
It’s a big news story, but I don’t hear from Wim.
He doesn’t call me till after noon, and he wants to meet at the Viersprong in Vinkeveen. I assume then that he knows about the Ros statements. I get in the car and drive to meet him. I hide my equipment in my clothes; I want to record what he has to say about this.
When I see him, he’s in very high spirits, and I ask him:
A: “Do you know yet?”
W: “What?”
He doesn’t know.
A: “That Ros has testified.”
W: “Oh, fuck. Fucking hell. Oh, that’s bad. I don’t even know the guy.”
I’m disappointed at him saying that he’s never spoken to Ros. I want to record something useful. At the same time, it’s clear that he’s not happy with the news about Ros. He wants to know where I got it from.
A: “It’s on the Internet, everything.”
W: “What?”
A: “That he is a Crown witness who has testified against you. He testified against Soerel, Akgün; he talked about liquidations, Cor, Nemic, and eh…what’s his name, Thomas.”
W: “Cor, Nemic, Thomas.”
A: “Yes.”
W: “What did he say about me? I’ve never spoken to this man.”
A: “I don’t know.”
He wants to see what’s on the Internet; but as always I have my cell phone switched off when I’m with him. He lets me switch it on, and I read to him from my screen.
A: “He also made statements about the killings that aren’t part of the Passage file and also mentions the name Willem Holleeder. He’s said to be involved in the assassination of his former companion Cor van Hout in 2003. Holleeder has been linked to at least three liquidations but was never prosecuted.”
W: “So he talks about Cor? Is that what they’re trying to get me for?”
A: “Well, obviously. I’ll switch it off now.”
W: “I’ve never talked to him.”
A: “Well, good.”
W: “In prison I told them that I did not want to be in a cell near him.”
While Wim was in prison in the Penitentiary Institution in Rotterdam for extorting Endstra, Fred Ros was put in the cell next to him. Ros was being held in connection with the Passage case, the same one for which he’d now become a Crown witness, after an appeal. Wim immediately asked for a transfer to another prison.
W: “When he was put next to me in prison, I said at once, I have never spoken to this man, and I have no intention to at this stage.”
He is so clever. From the beginning he has avoided the danger Ros could present. He instantly suspected him of working with the Justice Department as an informant. He wanted to prevent at all costs that Ros could say he had spoken to him, and from the moment Ros was moved into the cell next to his, he never set foot outside of his cell.
W: “I have an appointment with Stijn, tomorrow at three. He has received some statements.”
He now understands why Stijn asked him to come over and is irritated at Stijn for not bringing this up immediately. Stijn had mentioned a box of statements coming in, but he never said they were Ros’s. Surely this can’t wait! We need to see him at once.
We drive there, although we haven’t been able to reach Stijn to tell him Wim wants to see him now, and there is a good chance Stijn is no longer at his office because it’s late.
And he’s not there.
We call his partner, Chrisje Zuur; maybe she knows where he might be or where we can reach him. But she can’t help us. Wim will have to wait, and these circumstances make him very tense.
To reduce the tension a bit, we start scanning the Internet for more news. He wants to know more about the contents of Ros’s statements, but we can only find generalities.
We drive back to my house and end up in Beatrixpark. Wim is afraid of being arrested. We talk mainly about Cor’s assassination. For years there has been speculation about who was riding the motorcycle. I tell him I recall him saying that Ros wasn’t the one. Wim confirms that.
I try to put him at ease. If Ros wasn’t riding that motorcycle, how can he make a statement about the liquidation? He wasn’t there, was he? How could he incriminate Wim?
Wim keeps going on about how he’s never spoken to him.
W: “At one point I said, ‘I want to speak to the warden.’ So I spoke to him, and I said, ‘You have put this Fred Ros here [in the prison cell next to his]. I have never spoken to him, and I’d like to keep it that way.’”
A: “So you don’t have a problem. Others can say what they like about you.”
He trusts my legal judgment and has calmed down, but his unease about the possibility of arrest remains.
The Ros case is a crisis situation to him, so he’s back the next day. “I see you’re still here,” I say, referring to the fact that he’s not been arrested yet.
He asks me to see Stijn Franken with him. Stijn apparently had gotten a sense of Ros’s statements. At his office, Stijn appears to be less optimistic than I am pretending to be about the repercussions for Wim, and, understandably, much more careful about what he says.
He wants to take his time rereading the statements.
The next day Stijn, Chrisje, Wim, and I meet at a hospital somewhere in the Gooi area. We can speak freely there.
Wim walks and talks with Stijn. I walk and talk with Chrisje. “He’s just lucky, again,” I tell her. “This Ros thing is going nowhere.”
After further reading of the statements, Stijn is also convinced, but Wim remains tense. He had a girl make a reservation at a hotel so he can choose where to sleep. I tell him not to take any chances, but that I don’t expect an arrest because it would have already happened by now. They have no reason whatsoever to wait—if they have a strong case.
Wim is convinced now that he’ll get away with it. “God is with me,” he tells me. And he only sees Ros as an advantage. After his earlier panic, Ros had become “exactly what [he] needed.”
I get the distinct impression that he has made a pact with the devil.
That same day, Sonja and I meet with Betty. She asks if we are aware that Ros is testifying against Wim. Of course we are.
“But it’s not enough. Wim has never spoken to him, so that’s not going to work,” I say. I tell Betty what I’ve been through with Wim this weekend, including the reason why Ros became a Crown witness: he was no longer going to be getting paid to keep quiet by his former friends.
She’s taken aback but gets ahold of herself. “I would like to know if your loyalty has returned to Wim.”
“It’s still the same, it’s not with Wim,” I reply. “If you want him convicted, you’ll need us.”
“And that’s exactly what I don’t like,” she says, worried as always. “I still think it’s too dangerous.”
“We are both still willing,” I say.