Royce deVries. Screenshot: RTL 4 / Humberto on Sunday
Royce de Vries joined in last night Humberto on Sunday to talk about theHeineken kidnapping that happened nearly 40 years ago. And especially aboutthe role of his father Peter R. de Vries in this. According to many viewers,he is starting to look more and more like his dad.
What viewers from Humberto (Tan) also noticed: the calm with which Royce deVries speaks. “Nice to listen to him,” it sounded on Twitter about the man wholost Peter R. de Vries to an attack last summer.
Book Heineken kidnapping breakthrough Peter R. de Vries
Freddy Heineken, director of the brewery of the same name, was kidnapped in1983 with his driver Ab Doderer. The perpetrators were four youngAmsterdammers, Cor van Hout, Willem Holleeder, Frans Meijer and Jan Boellaard.Peter R. de Vries wrote the book about the kidnapping The Kidnapping ofAlfred Heineken and published this in 1987. It is regarded as one of the mostwidely read Dutch books and became De Vries’ breakthrough. The great successwas told from the perspective of the kidnappers and Peter R. de Vries becamefriends with Cor van Hout, who was murdered in 2003. That friendship of thethen Telegraph journalist was called controversial.
Royce de Vries was not yet born when his father’s book came out. “I grew upwith the book,” says De Vries. “It was often discussed at home and I read itat a young age. My father built his career with the book, that’s how itstarted. It played a big part in my life and I got to know many people fromthe book personally. It is a story that has come close to me.”
Royce de Vries about Cor van Hout
Royce de Vries told in Humberto nice about father Peter R. de Vries (you cansee the whole broadcast here). For example, it was about the fact that DeVries was the only journalist who flew with the four suspects to Sint Maarten,where they were temporarily allowed to serve out their ‘house arrest’ on thebeach. A beautiful photo of Peter R. de Vries behind his typewriter on thesame beach. “It made the front page every day.”
The journalist previously wrote a letter to Cor van Hout, who was detained inFrance, who, according to Royce de Vries, probably did not like him at all inthe first instance. „He wrote for The Telegraph with big heads, so he wasn’thappy about that. After six weeks he received an answer from Cor van Hout.”According to Royce de Vries, himself a friend of Van Hout’s son, thefriendship that arose was a gradual process. “My father had asked in theletter whether he could do something for Cor van Hout. Then he wrote back thathe would like it if he could come every Monday The Telegraph would send.Then he could see what Ajax had done. My father did that every day, assumingthat they would be there for another two weeks and then be extradited. Thatended up taking two years.”
‘How does he look like Peter R. de Vries’
Royce de Vries’s stories about his father were beautiful, but the resemblanceis especially striking. Or maybe it’s getting more and more striking. Hisvoice, his attitude, it’s all Peter R. de Vries. Many twitterers saw that andappreciated his way of speaking.