Astrid Holleeder’s Crime Family

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All her life, Astrid Holleeder knew that her older brother Willem was involved in crime; in their tough Amsterdam neighborhood, and as children of an abusive father, it wasn’t a shocking development. 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. Although he served some time for the crime, it was only the beginning of the successful career of Holleeder. 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 of Holleeder’s 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, she told the New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, she would have to kill Willem herself. Willem is on trial now for multiple murders, and Astrid is testifying against him. Living in hiding, travelling in disguise, she tells Keefe the story of her complicity and its consequences. Keefe’s story about Astrid Holleeder, “Crime Family,” appeared in the magazine in 2018. This segment originally aired on August 3, 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.7	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Think a little bit about the family you grew up, and there's probably someone in there that you're a little, I don't know, ashamed of or afraid of, a sister who tells
0:21.9	racist jokes, a brother who drinks too much and screams at the kids, an uncle who seems to have
0:27.9	a little bit more money than anybody can account for. Every family's got someone. But I'm going
0:34.4	to bet your family doesn't hold a candle to Astrid Holaders.
0:38.5	Most of the men that I know from my family are dead, I could name not many people that are still alive that I used to know because they were shot.
0:50.3	Helator grew up in an Amsterdam neighborhood that's called Yordaun.
0:54.3	It's gentrified now with galleries and airbnbs, but when she grew up in an Amsterdam neighborhood that's called Yordan. It's gentrified now with galleries and airbnbs,
0:57.5	but when she grew up, it was big families in narrow apartments and a street life
1:01.5	that was pretty unsavory that was street crime, mobsters, and tax fraud.
1:06.1	She grew up all around that stuff.
1:08.8	But when Helator was 17, her family would be at the center of a crime that became international news.
1:15.9	In Europe, the kidnappers of beer millionaire Freddie Heineken today made their first demand,
1:20.8	silence from the police, Heineken's family, or else.
1:24.8	Heineken and his chauffeur were abducted last night.
1:27.8	Almost four decades later, Astrid Holader is still living in the aftermath of that crime.
1:33.2	The New Yorker's Patrick Raddenkief wrote about Astrid and her family in 2018.
1:38.3	And when he went to meet her, he was picked up in a car and taken to a secret location.
1:43.7	We've altered her voice in this recording because telling her story put her in great danger.
1:48.6	Here's Patrick.
1:51.8	The kidnapping of Alfred Heineken, who everyone called Freddie, the magnate who ran the Heineken
1:56.9	company, one of the richest men in the Netherlands, was news throughout the world.
	...

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