Peter R. de Vries | |
|---|---|
.jpg) De Vries in 2017 | |
| Born | Peter Rudolf de Vries (1956-11-14)14 November 1956 Aalsmeer, Netherlands |
| Died | 15 July 2021(2021-07-15) (aged 64) Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Cause of death | Murder by gunshot |
| Occupation(s) | Investigative journalist Crime reporter Columnist |
| Years active | 1978–2021 |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | peterrdevries |
Peter Rudolf de Vries (14 November 1956 – 15 July 2021) was a Dutchinvestigative journalist and crime reporter. His television programPeter R. de Vries, misdaadverslaggever (Crime Reporter; 1995–2012) covered high-profile cases and set a Dutch television viewing record.[1] For decades he was famous in the Netherlands for his works in unsolved crimes.[2] He also became internationally renowned for his programme covering thedisappearance of Natalee Holloway.[3] In 2005, he founded hisown political party which was disbanded soon after.[4]
On 6 July 2021,De Vries was shot in the head after leaving the television studio ofRTL Boulevard inAmsterdam where he had appeared as a guest. He was taken to theVU University Medical Center in critical condition, where he died nine days later.[5][6]
Peter Rudolf de Vries was born on 14 November 1956 inAalsmeer in the Netherlands. He attended primary school inAmstelveen and secondary school inAmsterdam. From 1976 to 1977, he wasconscripted into theRoyal Netherlands Army, where he achieved the rank ofsergeant.[7]
In 1978, De Vries became a journalist for the daily newspaperDe Telegraaf inThe Hague and later in Amsterdam. He gradually moved from general journalism to crime reporting by covering major criminal cases in the Netherlands.[8] In 1987, he resigned fromDe Telegraaf and became chief editor of the weekly magazineAktueel, which he transformed into a crime magazine.[9]
De Vries previously worked for several publications and was an unaffiliated crime journalist from 1991.[9] He investigated the murder of Christel Ambrosius,[10] and revealed thatMabel Wisse Smit knew the drug lordKlaas Bruinsma better than she had previously admitted, before she marriedPrince Friso, a brother to the king. Another important issue in his show was a found floppy-disk. This disk contained detailed information fromAIVD research, the Dutch secret service. It turned out that the service observed the murdered politicianPim Fortuyn; the servicethought that he had sexual relations with Moroccan men.[11]
In 1983, De Vries followed the case of thekidnapping of Freddy Heineken for the Dutch newspaperDe Telegraaf. He attended proceedings and sometimes visited the hotels in France where the kidnappersCor van Hout andWillem Holleeder were being held under arrest.[12]
He wrote two books based on his investigation. The first wasDe zaak Heineken (The Heineken Case, 1983), released in the same year as the kidnapping. This was followed byDe ontvoering van Alfred Heineken (The Kidnapping of Alfred Heineken, 1987), a novel from the perspective of Cor van Hout based on interviews De Vries conducted with Van Hout and Holleeder over a period of four weeks during their last hotel arrest inÉvry, Essonne in 1986. The novel was later adapted asKidnapping Freddy Heineken} (2015) starringAnthony Hopkins as Freddy Heineken.[13]
In 1994, De Vries tracked downFrans Meijer, one of the kidnappers, inParaguay.[12]
In 2001, De Vries took up two unsolved murders from the 1980s, namely the triple murder of Corina Bolhaar and her two daughters in 1984 and the disappearance of Joanne Wilson in 1985.[14] The Netherlands is one of the few countries in the world to have a statute of limitations on murder, which stands at 18 years after the offense is committed, which gave De Vries only a short period of time to expose the killer.[14] De Vries accusedLouis Hagemann, a member of the Hells Angels Amsterdam chapter, of the murders as he exposed new evidence that the Amsterdam police had overlooked.[15] The Hells Angels attacked De Vries's camera crew with rocks in an attempt to intimidate De Vries into ceasing the investigation of Hagemann.[16] The statute of limitations expired on the murder of Joanne Wilson before any charges could be filed, but Hagemann was convicted of the murders of Bolhaar family.[15]
On 13 September 2006, De Vries was arrested inOisterwijk and detained for several hours inTilburg when he tried to confront a police officer with allegations about questionable actions concerning the inheritances of elderly women.[17] He was charged with one count of trespassing. The case was dropped in January 2007 "in view of the final results of the persistent search for the truth and the results of the disciplinary inquest" into the behavior of the police officer in question.[18]
In the first half of 2006, De Vries and Wim Dankbaar produced a two and a half hour special aboutthe 1963 assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy. In what was De Vries' longest show to date, he spent two weeks in Texas speaking with formerCIA andFBI agents and the ex-girlfriend ofLee Harvey Oswald. One of the interview subjects,James Files, said he was the gunman responsible for taking Kennedy's life. Files contradicted the findings of theWarren Commission and claimed that the CIA and themafia were involved in the assassination.[19]
In November 2006, a program by De Vries was broadcast in which he accusedJoran van der Sloot, one of the prime suspects in the disappearance ofNatalee Holloway inAruba.[20]
On 11 January 2008, Van der Sloot threw a glass of red wine in De Vries' face right after a live broadcast of the Dutch talk showPauw & Witteman on which De Vries and Van der Sloot (with his parents) had been guests.[21] The wine got into De Vries' eyes and briefly it seemed to have caused him a considerable amount of pain. During the tense but peaceful conversation during the broadcast, De Vries had on several accounts challenged Van der Sloot's integrity.[22]
On 31 January 2008, De Vries said to the media that he knew what had happened in the case of Natalee Holloway. He shared his findings with the police, stating that he would publicly show this new-found evidence in a special episode of his television program.[23] On 3 February 2008, the undercover video aired on Dutch television showing Van der Sloot purportedly smokingmarijuana and admitting to being present during Holloway's death. The show was watched by 7 million viewers in the Netherlands and was the most viewed non-sports program in Dutch television history.[1]Patrick van der Eem, working undercover for De Vries, had befriended Van der Sloot, who was unaware that he was being taped when he said that Holloway had suffered some kind of seizure while having sex on the beach. After failing to revive her, he said that he summoned a friend named Daury, who loaded her on a boat and dumped her body into the sea.[24] The prosecutor in Aruba determined the video was admissible,[25] but the evidence was deemed insufficient to warrant re-arrest. Although the taped confession appeared damning, Van der Sloot argued that he was lying to impress Van der Eem, who he believed was a drug dealer.[26] Van der Eem said that ABC paidUS$830,000 to secure the rights to broadcast the program in theUnited States.[27]
De Vries wrote the introduction to the June 2008 bookOverboord: hoe ik Joran van der Sloot aan het praten kreeg (Overboard: how I got Joran van der Sloot to talk) in which Van der Eem recounts his experience with Van der Sloot with transcripts of the undercover video.[28] On 22 September 2008, in New York, De Vries accepted anInternational Emmy Award in Current Affairs for his coverage while accompanied by Natalee's motherBeth Holloway.[29]
In November 2008, De Vries aired undercover footage of Van der Sloot making preparations for the apparentsex trafficking of Thai women inBangkok. De Vries claimed that Van der Sloot was making $13,000 for every woman sold into prostitution in the Netherlands.[30] Van der Sloot used the alias of "Murphy Jenkins" to avoid Thai authorities.[31]Peruvian Minister of JusticeAurelio Pastor said that Thailand is pursuing criminal charges against Van der Sloot. According toThe National Enquirer, he is being investigated for his involvement in the disappearance of young women he may have recruited for a Thai sex slave gang while posing as a production consultant for amodeling agency that would send them to Europe.[32]
In August 2010, De Vries traveled toSubiaco, Western Australia in an attempt to interview dive instructor Daniel Ian Ross, who is being sought throughInterpol for the August 2008 death of 23-year-old Dutch tourist Mariska Esmeralde Mast on theHonduran island ofRoatán.[33][34] Ross was initially arrested and released after surrendering hisBritish passport with instructions not to leave the island. Ross, who hasdual citizenship, then used his Australian passport to leave the island.[33] Ross denied responsibility for the death through his lawyers inAustralia, which does not have anextradition treaty with Honduras.[35] An autopsy report stated that Mast died ofblunt force injuries andasphyxiation resulting fromstrangulation.[35] His flatmateJisoo Han, who helped take Mast to hospital, was later arrested and is underhouse arrest in Honduras.[36] Han publicly appealed to Ross to come forward and exonerate her.[35] Ross called the police when De Vries attempted to contact him at his home on 19 August. De Vries was arrested and paid a $200 fine for disobeying a police order to move on. On 6 SeptemberPerthmagistrate Giuseppe Cicchini rejected an application by Ross for arestraining order against De Vries, who had by then left the country.[37] De Vries criticized theWestern Australia Police for arresting him, stating: "I didn't touch him, I didn't insult him, I didn't threaten him... This is a homicide case and I tracked him down and now you're putting me in jail. That's the world upside down."[38]
On 11 September 2010, De Vries traveled toLima,Peru, with his television crew andBeth Holloway to visitMiguel Castro Castro prison where Joran van der Sloot was being held while awaiting trial for the murder and robbery ofStephany Tatiana Flores Ramírez.[39] According to Van der Sloot's attorney Maximo Alonso Altez Navarro, his client was taken to meet them "practically by force."[40] Altez Navarro stated that the meeting with Holloway took "less than one minute," with Van der Sloot saying that he could not speak to her without his lawyer present and handing her his business card. Altez Navarro claimed that Holloway was "snuck" into the prison without being identified by the media crew who she was with.[41] A prison spokesperson stated that Holloway's name was not found in the visitor registry.[39] The group was removed from the prison, reportedly after ahidden camera was discovered by the guards.[42] Representatives for Holloway and De Vries denied that a hidden camera was involved nor was anything seized.[43] Colonel Abel Gamarra of theNational Police of Peru stated that no arrests had been made. While in Peru, Holloway spoke with Flores Ramírez's brother Enrique on camera.[41] On 17 September De Vries and the group left Peru forPanama and arrived in Aruba on the same day.[44] He spent a few days in Aruba working with Holloway on a documentary about her missing daughter to be run on Dutch television, with the cooperation of prosecutors who had been investigating Van der Sloot.[43]
In 2005, De Vries started a political party,Partij voor Rechtvaardigheid, Daadkracht en Vooruitgang (P.R.D.V. orParty for Justice, Action and Progress). On 31 October he presented his plans that mainly focused on changing the existing political culture in the Netherlands.[45] To prove his point, he stated that an opinion poll on 16 December would decide whether he would actually continue his party or not, with a 41% cut-off point. Since only 31.4% thought De Vries would be a gain for Dutch politics, he decided to disband the party.[4][46]
Together with criminal lawyer Khalid Kasem, in October 2017 de Vries and his son Royce de Vries established a lawyer's office inDiemen (Amsterdam South-East area)De Vries & Kasem – Lawyers / Investigations.[47][48] Not a lawyer himself, he became the company director, and worked for clients in regard to their media matters or providing a second opinion.[47]
In 2021, De Vries supported the crown witness in theMarengo trial.[49]
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On 6 July 2021, after leaving the television studio ofRTL Boulevard inAmsterdam where he had appeared as a guest, five bullets were fired at him in theLange Leidsedwarsstraat.[50] De Vries was shot in the head.[51] He was taken to a hospital in critical condition.[52][53][54] The Dutch police arrested three suspects that same evening, one of whom was released the next day, as he was no longer a suspect. De Vries died as a result of the shooting on 15 July 2021.[55][56][51] The killing of De Vries[57] was condemned by the Director-General of the UNESCOAudrey Azoulay in a press-release published on the 15th of July.[58] According to global monitoring onthe safety of journalists by the Observatory of Killed Journalists, he was the first media professional killed in the Netherlands in 2021.[59]
On the third anniversary of his death in 2024, a monument was unveiled onLeidseplein in Amsterdam.[60]
Nine suspects in the murder were scheduled to be tried starting on 23 January 2024.[61] Later that year, on 12 June, a court in the Netherlands sentenced three men to 28 years in prison for the murder of De Vries, and three other men to 14 years for aiding the murderers.[62]
De Vries was married for 35 years to Jacqueline and they had a son and daughter named Royce and Kelly. They divorced in 2013.[63] From 2015 until his death, he was in a discreet relationship with aDutch Afghan writer and journalist,Tahmina Akefi [nl].[64][65] Akefi revealed the relationship on 30 January 2022 and said that the couple planned to marry in summer 2022, and that they were going to publicise it.[66]
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