Astrid Holleeder’s Crime Family

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All her life, Astrid Holleeder knew that her older brother Willem was involved in crime. But she was stunned when, in 1983, Willem and his best friend, Cornelius van Hout, were revealed to be the masterminds behind the audacious kidnapping of the beer magnate Alfred Heineken. It was the beginning of a successful career for Willem, known as Wim. After a stay in prison, he became a celebrity criminal; he had a newspaper column, appeared on talk shows, and took selfies with admirers in Amsterdam. He got rich off of his investments in the sex trade and other businesses, but kept them well hidden. But when van Hout was assassinated and other associates started turning up dead, Astrid suspected that her brother had committed the murders. She decided to wear a wire and gather the evidence to put him away. If that didn't work, Astrid tells staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, she would have to kill Willem herself. After Astrid testified against him, Willem was convicted of multiple murders. Living in hiding, and travelling in disguise, she tells Keefe the story of her complicity and its consequences.

Keefe’s New Yorker story about Astrid Holleeder appears in his new collection, “Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks.”

This segment originally aired August 3, 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.5	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:13.4	Patrick Raddenkeef is a staff writer and really one of the best writers out there on crime,
0:18.5	corruption, and misdeeds of all kinds.
0:21.6	In one of our earliest stories on the radio hour, Patrick introduced us to the informants
0:26.5	who put the drug kingpin' El Chapo in US prison.
0:30.7	Patrick has just published a collection called Rogues, true stories of grifters, killers,
0:35.9	rebels, and crux.
0:37.9	And in the book he tells the story of a woman named Astrid Holater and how she helped bring
0:43.1	down a gangster who was her brother.
0:46.4	Crime for the Holaters was always close at hand.
0:50.4	Most of the men that I know from my family are dead, I could name not many people that
0:56.7	are still alive that I used to know because they were shot.
1:04.6	Holater grew up in an Amsterdam neighborhood that's called Yordon.
1:08.8	It's gentrified now with galleries and Airbnb's.
1:12.2	But when she grew up, it was big families and narrow apartments in a street life.
1:16.8	It was pretty unsavory that was street crime, mobsters, and tax fraud.
1:20.9	He grew up all around that stuff.
1:23.6	But when Holater was 17, her family would be at the center of a crime that became international
1:29.3	news.
1:30.3	In Europe, the kidnappers of beer millionaire Freddie Heineken today made their first
1:33.7	demand, silence, from the police, Heineken's family, or else.
	...

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