Rambo Miller

Thursday the 7th of May, at half past ten in the morning three unarmed policemen knock on the door of the house of a Jan Molenaar (Miller) in Napier. He went for a walk with his dog. His girlfriend Del welcomes the policemen and offers them coffee. Five minutes later Jan arrives back home. When he sees the policemen he gets furious. He fetches a gun and fatally shoots a policeman.

The two other policemen are seriously injured. A neighbour tries to take the gun away from Jan. Jan also shoots the neighbour. In the meantime girlfriend Del has fled the scene. Jan barricades his home and shoots on every moving thing. The police hermetically close off the neighbourhood. Houses are being evacuated, schools closed. At ten o’clock the injured are in hospital and the siege starts. The police try to talk to Molenaar by megaphone. The answer is a salvo. After a siege of about 48 hours a heavy explosion and some shots are heard. It is not exactly clear where the shots come from. Speculations are that the police blew up the garage door. At noon, after nothing has been heard from Molenaar for hours, the police dare to enter the premises. They found Molenaar’s body in his bedroom. Cause of death: suicide by a single shot through his head.

Between two fires

Jan Molenaar, 51 years old, was a great bear of a bloke, extremely strong and was in excellent physical shape who lived a secluded life. He did not use drugs or alcohol. At the most the occasional hash, party pills and steroids. His hobbies were motors, bodybuilding and fire arms. Afterwards the police found at least seven perfectly kept weapons, including fast fire arms. Complete with a generous supply of ammunition. He was suspicious of people with paranoiac traits and suffered from persecution mania. On top of this he was allergic to invasion of his privacy. His house was a fortress. He was also very short-fused and could become beside himself with rage. He did not want any police in his house as he possessed illegal weapons and cannabis: two marihuana plants and eight ounce of hashish.

Anyhow, Jan was also allergic to the police. He thought that they provoked him to come to his house when his girlfriend was home and he was not. That had happened before. He also thought that the police discriminated his Maori girlfriend. Except for the police Molenaar also detested the feared Mongrel Mob, the local gangster- and motor gang. He knew that they were after him, because he openly dared to resists them. They had sold his brother the amphetamine that killed him. He is one of few people that dare to resist this ruling motor gang.

The police was very much aware of these things.

Tall stories

The news of the shootings and the siege went all over the world. The emphasis was on the ‘bloody’ facts. The background was kept in the dark. Also the part the police played was, to put it mildly, dubious. The police knew Molenaar very well. They knew of his weapons, his cannabis and his extreme hot temper. Why this house-search by three unarmed policemen? And why no hard action with a tit-for-tat reaction?

New Zealand’s journalists sensed that many things were withheld. They went to investigate. Friends and neighbours excelled each other with tall stories about Jan. He would have been gruff and friendly, dangerous and would not harm a fly. There would be many explosives and booby traps in the house. Those stories did very well. Under the pretext of this the police stood by at a save distance and waited for many days.

This way the media and police worked together to make this drama as large as possible.

But not everything resurfaced. The connections with Maori and the Mongrel Mobs were disguised. Only at the funeral – hundreds of people came – other things surfaced. But by that time the international news service had been gone a long time.

The aftermath

The funeral service of Jan Molenaar took place at the Maori community house in Napier. Hundreds of people attended. The shooting was hardly mentioned. Jan was commemorated as a respectable person, a good friend, husband and father. “A great man with a big heart and a smile that illuminated the world.” A hero who, by himself, dared to take on the motor gang as well as the police.

The body was escorted to the crematorium by hundreds of friends and admirers. Many were bikies from all parts of New Zealand and even Australia and England. Placed on the coffin was a helmet that strongly resembled a Nazi helmet. No policeman in sight. Only a few women shouted some abuses.

Dutch Molenaar?

In New Zealand live two hundred thousand people from Dutch descent. Immediately many recognised the typical Dutch name. Jan’s brothers were called Hans and Peter, his father Paul. So, it had to be a very Dutch family. In this country Nederlanders and their offspring are known as respectable and honest civilians. Was Jan really a Dutch Rambo?

The doubt grew by the memorial speech of the tribal chief of the Maori Kahungnu tribe. Jan and the policeman he killed would have a mutual Maori ancestor. How was that possible? The mother apologised for her son’s behaviour on TV. Her hair was bleached, but not one sign of Dutch or Maori accent or features.

Eventually I found an interview of the Sunday Herald with the father of Jan Molenaar. Finally the truth was revealed: Paul Molenaar is Jan’s stepfather and Jan is, in spite of his name, not of Dutch descent.

The Dutch throughout the world can breathe more freely again. The prejudices are safe.

The Dutch version of this article is published in the July-August 2009 edition of Holland Focus.
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