De Vries previously worked for several publications and was an unaffiliated crime journalist from 1991. and revealed that
Mabel Wisse Smit knew the drug lord
Klaas Bruinsma better than she had previously admitted, before she married
Prince Friso, a brother to the king. Another important issue in his show was a found floppy-disk. This disk contained detailed information from
AIVD research, the Dutch secret service. It turned out that the service observed the murdered politician
Pim Fortuyn; the service that he had sexual relations with Moroccan men.
Kidnapping of Freddy Heineken In 1983, De Vries followed the case of the
kidnapping of Freddy Heineken for the Dutch newspaper . He attended proceedings and sometimes visited the hotels in France where the kidnappers
Cor van Hout and
Willem Holleeder were being held under arrest. He wrote two books based on his investigation. The first was (
The Heineken Case, 1983), released in the same year as the kidnapping. This was followed by (
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 in
Évry, Essonne in 1986. The novel was later adapted as
Kidnapping Freddy Heineken} (2015) starring
Anthony Hopkins as Freddy Heineken. In 1994, De Vries tracked down
Frans Meijer, one of the kidnappers, in
Paraguay. 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.
Kennedy investigation In the first half of 2006, De Vries and Wim Dankbaar produced a two and a half hour special about
the 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 former
CIA and
FBI agents and the ex-girlfriend of
Lee 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 the
Warren Commission and claimed that the CIA and the
mafia were involved in the assassination.
Natalee Holloway disappearance In November 2006, a program by De Vries was broadcast in which he accused
Joran van der Sloot, one of the prime suspects in the disappearance of
Natalee Holloway in
Aruba. 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 show on which De Vries and Van der Sloot (with his parents) had been guests. 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. 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. On 3 February 2008, the undercover video aired on Dutch television showing Van der Sloot purportedly smoking
marijuana 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. The prosecutor in Aruba determined the video was admissible, 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. Van der Eem said that ABC paid
US$830,000 to secure the rights to broadcast the program in the
United States. De Vries wrote the introduction to the June 2008 book (
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. On 22 September 2008, in New York, De Vries accepted an
International Emmy Award in Current Affairs for his coverage while accompanied by Natalee's mother
Beth Holloway.
Joran van der Sloot sex trafficking In November 2008, De Vries aired undercover footage of Van der Sloot making preparations for the apparent
sex trafficking of Thai women in
Bangkok. De Vries claimed that Van der Sloot was making $13,000 for every woman sold into prostitution in the Netherlands. Van der Sloot used the alias of "Murphy Jenkins" to avoid Thai authorities.
Peruvian Minister of Justice Aurelio Pastor said that Thailand is pursuing criminal charges against Van der Sloot. According to
The 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 a
modeling agency that would send them to Europe.
Death of Mariska Mast In August 2010, De Vries traveled to
Subiaco, Western Australia in an attempt to interview dive instructor Daniel Ian Ross, who is being sought through
Interpol for the August 2008 death of 23-year-old Dutch tourist Mariska Esmeralde Mast on the
Honduran island of
Roatán. Ross was initially arrested and released after surrendering his
British passport with instructions not to leave the island. Ross, who has
dual citizenship, then used his Australian passport to leave the island. An autopsy report stated that Mast died of
blunt force injuries and
asphyxiation resulting from
strangulation. Han publicly appealed to Ross to come forward and exonerate her. De Vries criticized the
Western 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."
Documentary work with Beth Holloway On 11 September 2010, De Vries traveled to
Lima,
Peru, with his television crew and
Beth Holloway to visit
Miguel Castro Castro prison where Joran van der Sloot was being held while awaiting trial for the murder and robbery of
Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramírez. According to Van der Sloot's attorney Maximo Alonso Altez Navarro, his client was taken to meet them "practically by force." 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. A prison spokesperson stated that Holloway's name was not found in the visitor registry. Representatives for Holloway and De Vries denied that a hidden camera was involved nor was anything seized. Colonel Abel Gamarra of the
National Police of Peru stated that no arrests had been made. While in Peru, Holloway spoke with Flores Ramírez's brother Enrique on camera. 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. == Politics ==