Still a Mystery

We were just excited to be in the sun

and be in anywhere around the water.

That's where we were most comfortable and most happy.

Two tourists befriended Max.

These two men kind of got closer and closer

and right away, I'm thinking, "Oh, no."

It was more than just a jet ski accident.

Those two men know what happened to my son.

I hear her car pull up.

She had, like, an old Volkswagen Rabbit hatchback.

All of her friends are sitting there.

10 minutes later, she's still not up in the apartment.

She was just gone.

To just be grabbed and disappear without a trace...

I mean, it's the stuff of nightmares.

The inviting ocean and sandy beaches of Aruba

has proven dangerous for an American more than once recently.

And it was definitely not what we closed our eyes and dreamt it to be.

I received this phone call from Yvonne

and she said, "I can't find Max."

That's when I knew. He's not coming home with us.

A local family devastated by...

It ended up being just a bigger part of the nightmare.

It just didn't stop. It just kept going.

Having worked cases involving kids that have gone missing or abducted,

I thought, to myself, "I know where this is going."

The world knows about Natalee Holloway,

the Alabama teenager who disappeared in southern Aruba,

but another young teen from Brighton, Michigan,

also vanished without a trace from the island.

His name was Max DeVries.

Max was really...

He was really smart. He was real adventurous.

Everybody liked him. He had a lot of friends.

Max was my older brother. He's two years older than me.

He was definitely...

I would say, one of the popular kids.

Everybody liked him and...

kind of gravitated towards him.

I tell you, that kid.

He was...

He was not shy. He was an extrovert.

He was a good-looking guy.

He was articulate. He was funny.

To the point of it was hard to discipline him

because he had a really good sense of humor.

Max DeVries grows up in Brighton, Michigan,

a safe and affluent suburb of Detroit.

He loved the water.

He was great with it.

We had a sailboat when I was younger,

so we spent a lot of time on the sailboat.

Anything in the water was...

something that we all enjoyed together.

It was more than I could have ever dreamt.

My marriage and my family life, we were very blessed.

My dad, he was...

probably one of the most genuine loving people that I've ever met.

And he made sure to make all kinds of memories with us because...

I think he knew he didn't have that long to be with us either.

November, 2002.

The DeVries family's idyllic life takes a turn,

when Max's father, George, dies suddenly from a heart attack.

And it was definitely weird growing up after that

because nobody can really relate to what you just went through.

So...

It was really hard and lonely for a long time.

It still is.

May, 2004.

Yvonne takes 14-year-old Max and 12-year-old Dominique to Aruba.

It's a much-needed opportunity for the family to heal from George's tragic death.

I think a lot of it was just to spend time as a family,

like, to do something together since my dad had passed away.

We were just excited to be in the sun

and be in anywhere around the water.

That's where we were most comfortable

and most happy.

We brought our, I call her, Auntie Pat,

there to help me keep an eye on the kids.

So she came as a good support...

and another set of eyes.

And, you know, we were just doing the beachy thing.

Basically, just doing...

nothing but staying at the resort.

A few days into their trip, Max is playing pool

when he's befriended by a fellow American guest in his mid-thirties.

There was an age difference, but, you know, they were just playing pool.

We're on vacation.

The man introduces Yvonne to his adoptive father.

The father, I would say, was in his fifties

and I thought that he would have something in common to speak with Auntie Pat.

They said that they were on vacation there,

celebrating their adoption date.

And the next day...

we went parasailing.

We all did that together.

We came back...

and then they had asked to take Max on the jet ski.

So the son went jet skiing with Max the first day.

They came back and then we ended up going to dinner.

The following day, the DeVries family is relaxing by the hotel pool.

The father came with a book and a towel and then

he asked Max, "Would you like to go jet skiing again?"

And I said no, he'd already went jet skiing.

And he said, "Well, no. I'd like to, you know,

pay for Max to go on the jet ski."

Max was, "I want to go!"

You know, he's very excited to go again.

So I did tell him he could go.

The jet ski ride is only supposed to last about 45 minutes.

Over an hour passes and Max and the older man haven't returned.

So I went down to the beach

and they were already looking through their binoculars for them in the water and...

I think at that point, I could just tell.

Even before I knew anything happened,

I was just like, "Something's not right."

And...

everything changed after that.

With no sign of either of them,

a search and rescue team is dispatched.

The father came back on the recovery boat and Max did not.

It was, just, definitely an instant feeling...

when I saw...

the father off the boat that I was never gonna see my son again.

A desperate Yvonne asks him point-blank, "What happened?"

He said that they went to the sandbar.

The sandbar, I think, was about six miles away.

They got off the jet skis, turned them off.

When they went to leave, they did not start again.

So Max tied up the jet skis...

to keep them together.

"We were holding on. I heard a thump

and then I saw Max floating away."

And that was the last he saw of Max.

As a stunned Yvonne tries to process the nightmare

that has descended on her family...

the Aruban police bring in the older man for questioning.

He had scratches all over his neck, his arms.

And right away...

being a girl, I've been in many fights.

Those were scratch marks and I knew that they were.

A horrified realization dawns on Yvonne.

She believes the older man was in a fight.

But was it with Max?

The mommy instinct was just kicking in.

I had asked them if they could check underneath his nails...

if they could do a lie detector test.

And they said, "No. This is not America.

We do not do things like that."

I didn't even know what to think of or how to act.

Like, how do you even get help?

Who do you even begin to ask?

You're kind of, like, just stunned and lost.

The Aruban authorities launch a vast air and sea search

for 14-year-old Max.

They said it was the biggest water search they'd done at that point

in Aruba.

I was definitely hopeful that they were going to find him right away,

but after a couple of hours, I was like...

I don't know.

And then, definitely, that next day, it was like...

"It's not gonna happen."

And it was definitely not what we closed our eyes and dreamt it to be,

a healing celebration.

It ended up being just a bigger part of the nightmare.

It didn't stop. It just kept going.

And then the Aruban police deemed that he was lost at sea...

that...

he was a terrible accident and they gave up the search.

It was just surreal. You...

Just kind of going through the motions to get back home and...

it was a silent plane ride.

A silent plane ride. Nobody could say anything.

Being above, like, that entire body of water and thinking...

"He could be out there somewhere and we're leaving."

But...

there wasn't anything else we could do.

Back home from Aruba without Max,

a grief-stricken Yvonne DeVries and her daughter, Dominique,

go through the motions of their new reality.

I remember when I got back to school...

it was like...

everybody knew this big thing that had just happened, but...

I didn't want to talk about it to anybody

and nobody wanted to ask me how I was doing.

They just... It was a lot stares.

I mean, what do you do? Start looking for help?

Lila Lazarus joins us with an incredible story of heartache and hope.

I was an anchor and health reporter in Detroit

for several decades.

And I was doing a story, a health story, at a mall

and I noticed a woman and her beautiful daughter sort of watching me.

So, at some point, she came up...

and introduced herself to me and said, "I think I have a story for you."

This is a story about appreciating what you have

because you never know how instantly it can all disappear.

I felt so bad for her.

I mean, when does lightning strike twice?

To lose your husband and then to lose your 14-year-old son.

Two years ago,