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The blow of the attack on Peter R. de Vries, and then also the death of the crime reporter, hit Wicky van der Meijs even harder than she had expected. The board member of the FNG shivered all over her body. She was in shock, just like when her father Martien was murdered in 2002.
She got a re-experience of the moment, which has uncanny similarities. Both Peter and her father were attacked from the back. Peter with a gun, her father with a knife when he walked his dog in Hilversum. They were both lying in the street after their attacker’s attack.
‘broken of’
“I thought I could deal with it well by now, I didn’t expect it to happen like this,” says Van der Meijs, who is also the initiator of the Facebook pages Unsolved Murders and Relatives Murder. “It’s really horrible, I’m devastated. It also has a huge impact. I could always contact him with questions about my father’s business. He has been invaluable to us.”
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The sea of flowers for Peter R. de Vries at the spot where he was shot, in the Lange Leidsedwarsstraat in Amsterdam, continues to grow.
Ⓒ ANP/ HH
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The bitter thing is: the FNG always fought with Peter for the rights of, and attention for, relatives of a victim of a violent crime. Now the crime reporter’s loved ones are themselves. “I think about them all the time,” sobs Wicky. “We’ve been between hope and despair for a week, but it’s disproportionate to what they’ve been through and are going through.”
Monument
Peter was entwined with the FNG, she emphasizes. “The last meeting we had, a year and a half ago before the corona pandemic, Peter talked to each other.” With a smile: “He was always way too early.”
That was at the cold case monument on the De Kemphaan urban estate in Almere, which Peter unveiled together with Telegraaf journalist John van den Heuvel after a silent tour, intended to continue to draw attention to unsolved murders. It is an open book, with a broken rose, and a bookmark. ‘More than 1000 murders’ it says.
“He wanted the victims’ faces to remain alive”
“Peter also took the floor, even though it was not actually planned,” she says. “He had tears in his eyes. ‘The Hague must be held accountable for this’, he said fiercely. And he definitely has a point there, because a lot more needs to be done.” Attention is also very important. “My father’s case is one of the 6 percent that has received a lot of media attention, but for 94 percent of these unsolved murders there was and is not there.”
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Wicky van der Meijs (left) lays flowers at the cold case monument.
Ⓒ Aldo Allessie
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Familiar researchers
Peter was one of the founders of the cold case teams in the Netherlands in 2008, and also ensured that family investigators came to assist relatives. “His contribution to relatives will therefore be greatly missed. Fortunately, we also have two very important pillars in John van den Heuvel and Mick van Wely, but the loss of Peter is huge.”
He always made a case for everyone who needed it, says Van der Meijs. “He was the great load-bearing force that kept that tree rattled, he wanted the victims’ faces to stay alive. We will of course continue with that, he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. But everyone in the Netherlands has become a little next of kin because of his death.”
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Lunch Update
Daily during lunch an update of the most important news.
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