It’s 7.30 in the evening, when shots are fired in the center of Amsterdam. It’s Tuesday, the 6th of July, 2021. Five shots are heard. Four of them quickly after each other, a fifth one just a second later. The shots are fired at the end of the Lange Leidsedwarsstraat, a side street of the Leidsestraat, between the Prinsengracht and the Rijksmuseum. It’s a street that mainly holds restaurant and bars for tourists.
It’s a shooting like they take place more often in the Dutch capital. Shortly after the incident the police put up a Twitter-post that reports on a man being shot, with officers being on the lookout for a suspect.
Also, they rapidly put out a message on ‘Burgernet’, the Dutch police service that sends out voice-messages to residents in the area, asking them to respond to crime in the neighborhood. At 19.41 the police are asking to be on the lookout for ‘a slightly tinted man, with a small and thin posture.’
Supposedly he is wearing a dark green coat with camouflage pattern, and a dark cap. People that spot a man with this description, are requested to call the alarm number of the police, and not approach the person themselves.
Guest
Leidseplein-square, an hour earlier. The 64-year-old Peter Rudolf de Vries has a guest appearance in the tv-studio of ‘RTL Boulevard’, a daily Dutch news and entertainment show. He will be giving his professional commentary on a court case: that involving the death of an Amsterdam hairdresser.
De Vries is seen in the first shot of the program. He is leaning relaxed against the presenter’s desk, dressed in a fancy beige-grey suit, a black shirt, wearing leather shoes.
After the show has started, he explains the story he is covering, in a way the Dutch viewers are accustomed to. With his well-known sonorous voice and his clear arguments and conclusions on the developments in the trial.
De Vries is not showing any extraordinary behavior in the broadcast this night. Nothing points to him being nervous, or stressed out. At most he seems a bit tired.
Then he is seen one last time. As the show comes to an end, he has taken a seat in one of the guest chairs. When the light of the studio goes out, it is still visible how De Vries picks up his phone that’s lying on a table in front of him, to see if he has gotten any messages. It’s the last moments we see of him on television, alive.
Walking
It’s just a few minutes past half eight now. Peter leaves the studio on the Leidseplein, and walks along the busy Leidsestraat, to take a right after hundred meters, into de Lange Leidsedwarsstraat.
He was fine with having security pick up his car for him for a while, but got displeased with this, when they caused some damage to it. Now he prefers to walk to the parking garage at the end of the long and narrow street, unaccompanied. It only takes him about three minutes to reach it. Just before he gets to the garage, the shots are fired.
Terrace
Right on that moment, Thijs is only two hundred meters away from the spot where people are gathering around De Vries’ body. He is having a drink with an old friend, on the terrace of café ‘Heuvel’. It’s one of the few remaining typical Amsterdam pubs, on the corner of Prinsengracht and Spiegelgracht. The two have not seen each other for a while, and are catching up, with corona making this possible again. It’s a pleasant evening, with quiet weather, and just a breeze now and then.
Suddenly Thijs sees a young man approaching, running towards him, crossing the bridge over the Spiegelgracht. He is not thinking much of it, but it does stand out to him and his friend: ‘Why is this boy running, we wondered. Did he steal something perhaps?’
Thijs describes the man: ‘He was about 1,76 meters tall, wearing some sort of training suit in green-brown camouflage colors, and a black face mask. He moved like he was on the run for something, but it wasn’t sprinting.’
Soon after this an ambulance drove past, and a police helicopter started circling over the city. The people on the terrace started talking to one and other. On the other side they said they had heard gunshots coming from the direction of the Lange Leidsedwarsstraat.
Slowly Thijs and his friend started to realize what must have happened. As the news on the shooting reaches them more and more, they immediately remember the running young man.
Arrested
They also think back of the silver-color Renault Kadjar they saw pass by the terrace about six times, apparently on the search for a parking spot. The last time this car drove by, was exactly at the moment the young lad came jogging of the bridge. He even ran along the Kadjar for a while, next to the Prinsengracht. Because of the angle he was sitting in, Thijs could not see if he had stepped into the car.
Within an hour it becomes clear that a silver-color Kadjar with two men in it, has been stopped at the A-4 highway, near Leidschendam. Thijs and his companion on the terrace have most probably seen the gunman that shot Peter R. de Vries walk past. They even helped the police catch him by telling the police what they saw.
Thijs: ‘It all seemed to match. The Kadjar that did not seem to want to park, the running boy that probably stepped into the car by the canal, and the two men that later got arrested in a car of the same type on the A-4.’
Later the police acknowledges that they were able to catch the two suspects on the highway, through witness testimonies, camera footage and the license plate recognition system along the road.
On the canopy of the pub where Thijs and his friend experienced all this, there is a text that’s meant to be funny: ‘Als ik toch sneuvel, toch bij Heuvel’, which means as much as ‘If I have to fall, better in this pub after all’.
Just a bit further on an employee closes the backdoor of the parking garage where De Vries wanted to pick up his car earlier that evening.
Life
It’s several months after the murder. Normal life seemed to have returned in the Lange Leidsedwarsstraat, after two years of corona. Although it’s still relatively calm, there’s tourists sitting on the outside terraces of the narrow street again. Laughing, and eating.
After the attack on Peter R. de Vries it took a while too, before the good atmosphere returned, the owner of a restaurant says – who wants to stay anonymous, considering the sensibility of the subject.
At the time of the attack he was in the restaurant, thinking he heard some of his tables fall on the streets. But it where the shots fired at De Vries: ‘This is not happening after all, I thought, when I saw the security officers of RTL Boulevard run by.’ The restaurant owner realized the worst-case scenario had taken place, when he saw a friend return from the spot where it happened all pale. ‘I decided not to carry on walking towards the scene.’
By then the entrepreneur knew that the victim had to be the crime reporter. He watched De Vries walked by regularly. Every now and then he drove his car through the Lange Leidsedwarsstraat as well. A street, that’s officially a pedestrian area at night. ‘He was even being pointed out this by the police once.’
That same police requested the restaurant owner for his camera footage, taken on the fatal night. But on these, not much more was to be seen, than that already came out in the open earlier. ‘I found it hard to watch back these images. The attack has had its impact in the neighborhood as well.’ He does not understand why De Vries did not have any protection by security people. ‘Wasn’t he a man with important and dangerous work? Well, that’s easy to say in hindsight, I guess.’
Further down the street the manager of the parking garage nods his head straight away, after being asked for comment on the sad event that occurred just in front of his door. But the murder, and the sea of flowers afterward, including all the attention by the public, made too much of an impression to him. He doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Another reason is that ‘wrong information’ has come out. Even after insisting what he means by that, the man does not want to explain.
Right after the shooting it came out in the media that a man had been seen right out of the office of the parking garage that was keeping an eye on De Vries, and that looked exactly like the driver of the getaway car.
But the manager of the parking garage does not want to share if it it’s that information, that was published incorrectly.
A bit further in the Lange Leidsedwarsstraat a club manager shares his thoughts about how threatened De Vries must have felt at times: ‘He always greeted in a friendly manner, with a straight back. But about one and a half year ago I watched him stop and stiffen, when a passer-by got something out of his pocket, and walked right at him. It turned out to be a fan, that wanted to take a selfie with his mobile phone. I witnessed how De Vries sighted and relaxed again. Apparently, he was quite suspicious then already.’
On the last images that show De Vries, taken on the security cameras in the street, one can see how he walks quite quickly, looking at his phone constantly. As if he had an important meeting to go to.
Which came out to be true. In an interview with a Dutch newspaper his girlfriend later said they were going the check out a house in Utrecht, because they wanted to start living together. The crime journalist was somewhere else in his mind, when the five shots on his body where fired.
Suspect
Right after the murder, crime watchers did not rule out the killing could be put on the account of the involved with the ‘Marengo’-case, with Ridouan Taghi as the main suspect. On the 29th of March 2018 the brother of the crown witness, the innocent entrepreneur Reduan, was assassinated already. On the 18th of September 2019 B.’s lawyer, Derk Wiersum was another victim.
Peter R. de Vries decided last year to become Nabil B.’s media advisor. He became a confidant for him in the trail. That included him being allowed to call the crown witness, without being bugged by the police. The public prosecutor attempted to put a stop to this by protesting against it with the courts, but failed.
In September of last year, there was another trial day in the ‘Marengo’-case, in the extra secured court in Amsterdam, better known as ‘the Bunker’. For the first time in the trial the chair of Peter R. de Vries stayed empty.
The judge payed attention to this for a moment. On a formal tone: ‘The death of such an involved human being, who played an important role in so many cases, must have been a shock. The first day he is not there anymore, feels raw.’
It was Onno de Jong, lawyer of the crow witness and therefore a former colleague of De Vries, spoke a few words as well. He called the court case ‘the most screwed up and poisoned one ever’. The barrister: ‘I would prefer not to be here anymore, not to see you anymore, after the life of a member of our team has been take in such a cruel way.’
Threatened
On the 14th of May 2019 Peter R. de Vries reports the police has told him Ridouan Taghi, who is still at large at the time, has put him on a kill list. The crime journalist in a post on Twitter: ‘He has ordered to have me killed, because of critical remarks about him.’
This way De Vries tried to take away the threat against him. ‘Everyone who tries this, is warned as of now.’
At first the police did not want to tell De Vries who was behind the murder assignment. De Vries responded angry to this: ‘As the presumed victim I have a right to know what I have to watch out for, and with whom I should or should not meet up? Therefore I put on the pressure. I demanded they would tell me who was involved. In the end they told me.’
Quite remarkable is the fact that Taghi responded to this only a day later, claiming the threat to De Vries was wrongful. He even sends De Vries a personal letter. That read as follows: ‘Shocked and astonished I read the news that according to police and prosecutor, I would have ordered to have you killed. That’s a total fabrication and complete nonsense.’
Taghi explains why: ‘I don’t have any reason to hurt you. You can go out and about wherever you want, without having to fear me at all. As a young boy I was always very fascinated by your tv-show. I respect you and view you as a professional journalist.’
Taghi states that by accusing him of having put De Vries on a kill list, the police and the prosecutor try to portray him as an ‘enemy of the people’.
In Jeroen Pauw’s talk show Peter R. de Vries wondered for starters why Taghi would have put him on a kill list. ‘I don’t know Taghi, and haven’t written in such a critical way about him, that would let you think he would want to shoot me.’
De Vries even laughs, when Pauw says there’s a certain romantic tone in the letter: ‘I can imagine him having watched my show as a young lad. Maybe that played a role in him coming out now, believing he needs to say something to it now. Although he did not do this, on the most severe accusations to his person.’
In June of 2020 Peter R. de Vries announces that he will start off working as an advisor and spokesperson for the lawyer of Nabil B., crown witness in the case against Ridouan Taghi, and 16 other suspects (including the crown witness himself). ‘With this I would like to give off a clear signal to the murderers of Reduan B. and Derk Wiersum. Others will take their place.’
A year and a month later the crime journalist is shot. Peter R. de Vries, born in the town of Aalsmeer, on the 14th of November 1956, dies on the 15th of July 2021, because of his gunshot wounds.
Taghi’s lawyer Inez Weski warns for accusing her client after the murder of De Vries. She stated she was ‘shocked’ by the attack on him. Police and prosecution are not ruling out a connection between Taghi and the suspected murderer of Peter R. de Vries.
Involved in the attack
Right after the attack on the crime journalist images are cleared on which two young men are to be seen, who walk towards him with smart phones in their hands. As if they knew beforehand what was to be filmed.
After the news website ‘Geenstijl’ discovered this, the police stated they would investigate the matter. Did they film the body of De Vries, lying on the ground bleeding, for the person that gave the order for this?
Then on the 19th of August there’s the article in the German magazine Der Spiegel, in which an employee of the parking garage where De Vries had stalled his car, says something peculiar. ‘It should not have happened, he tells the German reporters. Because they, the people of the parking garage, did warn for hit, the journalists quote him. A week before the murder they noticed someone acting suspicious. This would have been on the 28th of June. They immediately reported this to the security people of RTL Boulevard, who passed it on to the police. De Vries supposedly reacted stoic to it.
The man they spotted later turned out to be the Polish man who has been accused of being the driver of the getaway car, whose face was seen in media after the attack.
Despite it all, on the 6th of July De Vries was walking from the tv-studio to the parking garage on his own again. Even just before the attack on of the employees of the garage called the police, Der Spiegel wrote, because a man was acting suspicious, sitting on a staircase next to the garage. Soon after this the shots were. Could this person have been Delano G., the caught suspect of the assassination.
‘He must have felt untouchable’, an employee states in the magazine article. Then he gets tears in his eyes’, the German journalist writes.
The manager of the parking garage refuses to comment any further on the article. He does state the ‘wrong information’ has come out, but is not willing to elaborate on this.
Who is Delano G.?
The man suspected of having killed Peter R. de Vries is the only 21-year-old Delano G. from Rotterdam. He is the young man that was taken out of the silver color Renault Kadjar on the A4 highway near the town of Leidschendam, only an hour after the attack. Together with the driver of the getaway car.
Delano G. grew up in Tiel, in a one parent family. He has a Dutch Antilles background. Neighbors that witnessed him growing up as a kid, cannot imagine him as the murderer of Peter R. de Vries. Others say he was capable of being hateful.
He was a talented street dancer. As a 13-year-old he participated in the auditions for the Junior version of the show ‘So you think you can dance’. He did not make the second round. At his sixteenth Delano starts sliding off in his life. He gets convicted to ten months of jail time in a youth prison, after break ins, street robbery and violent crime.
Then he tries a career as a rapper, using the name of ‘Demper’. He brings out only one track, called ‘Bouw op mezelf’ (‘Trusting upon myself’). In that song he raps: ‘School and work did not work, so I chose for the street.’
But as a rapper he isn’t very successful either. In May 2021 he withdraws his music company from the chambre of commerce.
Delano turns out to be the cousin of Jaouad ‘Joey’ W., who is seen by the police as a one of the bosses of the organized crime gang of Ridouan Taghi. W. was the leader of a group from Nieuwegein, who was suspected of possession of firearms, and the preparing of killings. Joey W. got sentenced to 13 years in jail for this.
Like Delano G, Joey W. is from Tiel. His shocked family says he was lured into crime by criminal friends from Tiel, Vianen en Nieuwegein, they told De Telegraaf-newspaper. By killing Peter R. de Vries Delano would get money and status. He was supposedly getting payed 150.000 euros for the killing, from the crime boss that ordered it.
