Every week, crime reporter Henk Strootman writes a column about what strikes him in the crime world. This week: the book about ‘the real Ferry Bouman’
The appearance of the book Drug lord about the life of Janus van Wesenbeeck has not exactly gone unnoticed. The author is Vico Olling, former crime chief of Panorama and currently the author of bestsellers such as The Cold Old One about the life of top criminal Stanley Hillis and Martin H. about the ex-police officer held responsible for the murder of drug lord Klaas Bruinsma. With his new book, Olling meets a ‘long-felt need’, as they so nicely say. Because its creation was started years ago. Not by Olling, but by our colleague Hendrik Jan Korterink, who unfortunately died much too early.
Damn, we miss that man. HJK, as he was called by intimates, was a lovable jack-of-all-trades. Small in stature, big in action. Not only did he maintain his site crimejournalist.nl on a daily basis, he also wrote one book after another at a breakneck pace or contributed to crime television programs. Between the companies he still found time to travel city and country for appointments, investigations or lawsuits. And if necessary, he took a plane to the Philippines, Lebanon or Curaçao. HJK took pleasure in declaring everything to be ‘a secret project’, about which he ‘unfortunately could not tell anything’… That dry tone was also reflected in his lyrics. They were never boring and often peppered with quotes or references to song lyrics.
A few years ago I was having coffee with him at Van der Valk in Ridderkerk. ‘Something’ had been found during a medical check, Hendrik Jan said. He didn’t seem very worried. But that ‘something’ marked the beginning of the end. Korterink turned out to be seriously ill and ended up in the medical mill. He kept a select group of people informed about his physical condition and in the meantime continued to write his articles. He even took on larger projects. While the debilitating disease increasingly took hold of him and his strength visibly diminished, he continued to work on three books. So one of them was about Janus Wesenbeeck. Hendrik Jan had managed to gain his trust and had already written up the necessary interviews with him. But death caught up with him. The book about Janus was not published. That is to say: not yet.
Years passed and no one really knew what to do with HJK’s unfinished work. For daughter Anna – also a journalist – the project turned out to be too time-consuming and, above all, too emotionally charged. One of the colleagues with whom HJK was in close contact until the end of his life was Vico Olling. Wasn’t he the man to bring Korterink’s latest project to a successful conclusion? Hendrik Jan’s relatives quickly agreed: HJ would have thought it was an excellent idea. Olling was given access to all notes and conversation reports and started working. That was easier said than done, because Olling had to repeat many conversations to be thorough.
The results are impressive. In Drug lord (300 pages) you can read the real story about the man whose life the Netflix hits Undercover and Ferry are loosely based. About how Janus spent his youth in the infamous Doolplein caravan camp in Eindhoven, eventually becoming one of the largest drug smugglers in the world. The book does full justice to the thorough preliminary work of Hendrik Jan Korterink and can therefore also be seen as a posthumous tribute to that unforgettable Little Big Man from Wezep.
