Heijboer initially worked for the
Limburgs Dagblad and the
Nieuwe Eindhovense Courant. In 1968, Heijboer moved to Amsterdam, where he started working for
Het Parool. He settled in the new
Bijlmer neighborhood. From 1980, he worked as domestic editor for
de Volkskrant. In 1983, Heijboer became an editor in
Maastricht, he lived in
Wijnandsrade for some time. Together with his colleague
Hans Horsten, he conducted research into the
Dutch Civil Servants Pension Fund, which turned out to receive extra subsidies due to fraud. State secretary
Gerrit Brokx had to resign in 1986 as a result of the affair and a
parliamentary inquiry into construction subsidies followed later that year, led by
Klaas de Vries. Heijboer took
early retirement in 1997.
Bijlmer disaster Heijboer investigated the
Bijlmer disaster that took place in Bijlmermeer in 1992. He followed the
parliamentary inquiry into the Bijlmer disaster of 1998–1999 very critically. From day to day, he provided the probes with critical commentary. Heijboer was convinced that the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry had not found the truth about the disaster; according to him,
El Al's
Boeing 747 had been a military aircraft. Under the name
Het Klankbord (
The Sounding Board) he collected facts about the Bijlmer disaster that were concealed during the parliamentary inquiry. He paid particular attention to the victims. He wrote a book about it, (
Flight of Doom: The Hidden Secrets of the Bijlmer Disaster), which was published in 2002. In 2003, Heijboer demanded compensation from the
Aviation Enforcement Service, because the service allegedly tampered with a file on helicopter flights over the Bijlmer, which Heijboer had requested in reliance on the
Dutch Public Access to Government Information Act. The
Dutch Association of Journalists supported Heijboer in his demand. A few years later, he published (2006,
Waiting for the Nightingale: The Story of the Bijlmermeer) about forty years of Bijlmer, from dream neighborhood to the most maligned locale in the Netherlands. Heijboer's investigation into the disaster plays a major role in (
Disaster Flight), a TV drama series published in 2022. Heijboer was played by
Yorick van Wageningen.
Indonesia In 1977, Heijboer wrote (
Mosquito Nets, Klewangs, Coconut Palms: The Indies Won and Lost). A book about the in the
Dutch East Indies (present-day
Indonesia) followed in 1979, which was translated into
Malay in 1998. At the end of his life, Heijboer researched the experiences of Dutch and Indonesian soldiers during the
skirmishes in West New Guinea in 1962. (
The Honor and the Misery: New Guinea 1962) was published in 2012. == Personal life ==