IT’S EIGHT FIFTEEN A.M. WHEN I GET A TEXT. IT’S THE POLICE, ASKING whether they can call me.
I text back, “Of course,” and wonder what’s going on.
“Good morning, Astrid.” I recognize the voice of one of the detectives.
“Good morning,” I answer.
“We’d like to inform you that we charged your brother this morning on suspicion of ordering your murder, Sonja’s, and Peter’s.”
I feel tears come to my eyes, and I can’t hold them back. “Okay,” I manage to say.
“We thought we’d better tell you in case there’s a leak.”
“Sorry, but I’m really upset. It’s as if I realize only now that all of this is real. It’s so dramatic—my own brother,” I say through my tears.
“Yes, I know,” the voice on the other end says.
“Thanks for telling me,” I say.
“My pleasure,” he says, and hangs up.
Tears are rolling down my cheeks.
I imagine his face as he’s told why he is being arrested, and I suddenly feel so sorry for him. He must have been so startled by my betrayal, his omnipotence torn apart in every possible way. Everything he is used to doing unnoticed is being noticed. Good for us, but at the same time, sad for him. He’s being dragged down more and more, and I don’t see how he’ll ever recover.
Wim denies the allegations and declares that if it were up to him, his family would not be hurt. “If I heard anything like that, I’d certainly warn them.”
Now, where had I heard that before?
There have been situations twice before when Sonja and I supposedly “had our turn.” This was the third time, but this case was different in that there was sufficient concrete evidence that the Justice Department could investigate.
The DAs explain that Wim had made contact with two members of NLS, which stands for No Limit Soldiers, an international group known for its drug trafficking and assassinations, with branches in the Netherlands. They are being held responsible for the murder of Helmin Wiels, leader of the biggest political party on the island of Curaçao (Pueblo Soberano).
The two members Wim approached have both been convicted of murder. Liomar W. is serving a twenty-four-year sentence for killing a Dutch couple. Edwin V. was sentenced for a shooting in which one person was killed. They are being held in the same facility as Wim—the most heavily secured prison in the country—because they tried to escape from prison on Curaçao.
Sonja and I look at each other in bewilderment. We hadn’t expected this—Wim has tapped a network totally unknown to us. But these are no small potatoes. How could the authorities have let him spend time in the prison yard with them, exercising and cooking together?
According to Liomar W., Wim met him in a corner of the prison yard, out of sight of the cameras, to talk to them unseen and unheard.
Typical of Wim, I think immediately, and obviously the NLS guys are no amateurs, either; they, too, know how to communicate undetected.
Luckily the Justice Department was alert, and they picked up on two key details that tipped them off to Wim’s plans. First, the fact that Edwin V. wanted to be transferred for no reason caught their attention. They suspected that Wim might want to get some distance from his fellow prisoner. Rightly so, because that’s just the way he works: make sure you’re not around when something is about to happen, so you can’t be linked to it.
Second, the Justice Department noticed that Wim had been very chipper lately. I can see why: As soon as we were dead, he would have regained control over us, and that prospect would have cheered him.
The investigation started, and Edwin V. was caught passing a phone number that he didn’t care to discuss. Asked by the police whether he’d ever heard of Holleeder wanting something to happen to his sisters, he didn’t deny it, but he answered evasively:
EV: “It’s none of my business. I am not going to comment. I’m not here to testify about his sisters. No, that’s not my problem.”
Liomar W., on the other hand, spoke in some detail about what Wim had asked them.
LW: “He told me and that other Antillean guy that he’s mad at his sisters. He wants them dead. You know what it is? He wants those people who have testified against him, especially his sisters…he said to do them as soon as possible. Have them killed. That’s the way he said it.”
Wim wanted them to look for a gunman and had promised them a lot of money.
LW: “Either way, money is no object, that’s what he says. Sixty thousand, seventy thousand, that’s a lot of money, right? That’s what he pays for killing people.”
Wim wanted to pay thirty-five thousand per sister.
LW: “He said thirty-five thousand. So, seventy thousand. Those are very good figures. That’s what he used to pay.”
Liomar W. continued. Wim didn’t have the means to take care of the murders himself. He asked the two fellow prisoners to organize the assassinations through their contacts outside.
LW: “Yeah, he just wants us to find him some people. What needs to be done? Well just eh…he wanted, you know…contract killer. That’s what he wants.”
The person who could do that had been identified, according to Liomar W.; he was a leader of NLS.
Wim had, as we were told earlier, a priority list. Number one on his to-do list was me. Rightly so. I would want to kill him, too, if he’d done to me what I’ve done to him.
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?