PHILIPSBURG -– Around forty years ago, on November 9, 1983, the Netherlands was shocked when five criminals from Amsterdam kidnapped brewery magnate Freddy Heineken and his driver Ab Doderer. Against the advice from the police, the family paid a ransom of 35 million guilders (almost $16 million). Police managed to free the victims on November 30, 1983.
The masterminds of the kidnapping, gangsters Willem Holleeder and Cor van Hout fled to Paris where they spent three years, first in a hotel and later in the Santé prison, at the time labeled as the most notorious prison in France.
The gangsters called themselves Epancratius; they probably got stuff mixed up a bit because there is no such figure in Greek mythology. However, pancratius does exist and its meaning makes sense if you consider the ambitious criminal minds that were a part of this gang: supreme ruler.
The Netherlands initially requested the extradition of the two kidnappers, but there was a problem. The extradition treaty between the Netherlands and France was written in 1985 and it did not contain the term kidnapping. Holleeder and Van Hout could only be extradited on charges of making threats, a crime that carried at the time a maximum penalty of four years The Dutch did not want that: they wanted to put Holleeder and Van Hout on trial for kidnapping, a crime that carried a maximum sentence of twelve years.
France was unhappy with two criminals who had done nothing wrong within their jurisdiction. But when the Netherlands submitted an extradition request the two men were arrested om February 29, 1984. They objected to extradition, initially with some success. The French authorities placed them under house arrest on December 6, 1985.
In the meantime, amending the old extradition treaty ran into technical difficulties and after more than a year the French had had enough. Om February 13, 1986 they put Holleeder en Van Hout on a plane to Guadeloupe, without informing the Dutch government.
The plane was scheduled to make a stop at Princess Juliana International Airport on its way to Guadeloupe. That upset the kidnappers, because they feared that this would give the Dutch authorities the opportunity to arrest them. Justice Minister Frits Korthals Altes vetoed that action, fearing that the court would later declare the prosecution inadmissible for using what would have been a loophole to arrest the kidnappers.
Therefore, the two gangsters were taken to the French side of the island. The local population was not happy, saying that they refused to be used as a dumpster for France. Locals revolted and threatened to take Holleeder en Van Hout over the border to the Dutch side of the island, hoping that this action would result in their arrest.
The French authorities reacted by using a military helicopter to take the men to the airport in Grand Case for a trip back to Paris. There they initially stayed in a hotel in Evry, but when the Netherlands filed a new extradition request, this time based on an adjusted treaty, they were imprisoned once again, this time in the Fleury-Mérogis prison, in France, near Paris.
This was, as Philip Freriks reported for Dutch television, a very unpleasant facility. Holleeder and Van Hout disliked it there so much that they gave up their fight against extradition.
On October 31, 1986, 36 months after the kidnapping, a plane with the two criminals on board landed at the airport in Rotterdam. They were later both sentenced to a 12-year prison sentence, but they were released in 1992.
The story does not end there, though. On January 24, 2003, Van Hout was liquidated in Amstelveen. Holleeder, who was his brother in law, ordered the killing.
Holleeder is not doing too well either. He is currently serving a life sentence in the Netherlands for five murders, including the one on Van Hout, and one case of manslaughter.
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Related article:
History – How the mafia picked St. Maarten as one of its favorite spots
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