Willem Holleeder

Willem Frederik Holleeder (born 29 May 1958) is a Dutch gangster, outlaw biker and convicted criminal. He is nicknamed De Neus (The Nose) because of the size of his nose.

In 1983, Holleeder was sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment for his involvement in the kidnapping of Heineken president Freddy Heineken for a 35-million-gulden (approximately €16 million, or US$19.5 million) ransom. Then, in 2007, Holleeder was sentenced to nine years in prison for several counts of extortion, including the extortion of businessman Willem Endstra, who was murdered in 2004 after falling out with Holleeder. He served his sentence in Nieuw Vosseveld and was released on 27 January 2012. He was arrested again in May 2013 (released 12 June 2013), May 2015 and April 2016. In July 2019, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for five murders and one count of manslaughter. The sentence was upheld by the Amsterdam Appeals Court on the 24th of June 2022.

Early life

Born in 1958 in Amsterdam, Willem Holleeder is the son of Wim Holleeder (1927–1990), an employee at the Heineken breweries who lost his job because of alcoholism. As a teenager, he, along with his classmate Cor van Hout, was part of a gang that worked for landlords in evicting squatters, and may have been involved in several robberies. Cor van Hout was later to become his brother-in-law by marrying Holleeder's sister Sonja.