Birmingham, Ala (WIAT)  The Dutch television reporter who secretly taped Joran van der Sloot confessing to dumping  Natalee Holloway's body in the ocean....a "confession" later denied and discounted...is retiring from his crime reporting television show.

Peter DeVries became a continuing thread in the six year old mystery of Mountain Brook teen Natalee Holloway after her disappearance on a graduation trip to Aruba.

Although Natalee was last seen leaving an Oranjestad bar with van der Sloot, Aruban authorities never charged him in the case.

DeVries aired a show based on twenty hours of secret taping of van der Sloot by a friend.  In the program that aired on Dutch commercial station SBS6, van der Sloot told his friend how Natalee's body was dumped in the ocean after she went into convulsions on the beach.

"Of course, I tried everything," van der Sloot said. "I tried to shake her. I was shaking the bitch. I was like, 'What is wrong with you, man?' I almost wanted to cry. Why does this s*** have to happen to me?"

That program was the start of a strange intertwining of van der Sloot and DeVries' reporting.

In 2010 he caused controversy when Natalee's mother accompanied a de Vries tv crew into van der Sloot's Peruvian prison and shot segments for another program including taping with Beth Holloway here in Alabama.

Although van der Sloot was never charged in the Natalee disappearance, he's currently awaiting trial for murder in Peru.  The corpse of a 21 year old student was found in his Lima hotel room six years to the day after Natalee's disappearance.  Van der Sloot has told Peruvian investigators he killed Stephany Flores in a fit of rage after she found material relating to Natalee on his laptop.

DeVries told the Dutch newspaper AD he's simply tired of chasing crime stories.