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Disappearance of Natalee Holloway

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Yearbook portrait of Natalee Holloway

Natalee Holloway (born October 21, 1986) is a U.S. teenager from Mountain Brook, Alabama, an affluent suburb of Birmingham, whose disappearance on May 30, 2005 during a post-graduation trip in Aruba has caused citizen concern in Aruba along with a media sensation in the United States.

Disappearance

Holloway and 124 fellow graduates of Mountain Brook High School were visiting Aruba on an unofficial senior class graduation trip. She was last seen leaving Carlos’n Charlie’s, a popular tourist-oriented bar and grill, early in the morning with Dutch-born Joran van der Sloot, the then 17-year-old son of an ex-judicial official trainee, and two companions, Surinamese-born brothers, Satish Kalpoe and Deepak Kalpoe in Deepak's car.

Natalee Holloway did not appear for her return flight the next morning, nor did she appear in any security camera footage of the hotel lobby in the course of the night. Her passport, packed bags, and cellular phone were found in her hotel room. Searches of the island began immediately, but have been fruitless to date.

Holloway was to have started her undergraduate studies at the University of Alabama in August 2005.

Investigation

On May 30, as soon as they found out Natalee could not be found for her flight back home, Natalee's stepfather and mother, Jug and Beth Twitty, traveled to Aruba with friends. Within four hours of landing in Aruba the Twittys went to the Aruba police with the name and address of Joran van der Sloot, the person last seen with their daughter. Accompanied by two Aruba policemen, they went to the Van der Sloot home looking for Natalee. During this encounter, Joran and Deepak related their first story.

Their initial story was that they drove Holloway to the "California Lighthouse" area of Arashi Beach where she and Joran "made out" for a short time before they dropped her off at her hotel around 2:00 A.M. They said Natalee fell down and hit her head as she got out of the car, but refused help, and that she was approached by a black security guard as the boys drove away. On June 5, Aruban Police detained Antonius "Mickey" John, 30, and Abraham Jones, 28, former security guards for the nearby Allegra Hotel. On June 9 van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were arrested as suspects involved in a crime against Natalee with “reasonable suspicion of murder, manslaughter or intentional containment with the dead as consequence.” John and Jones were released on June 13.

On Friday June 17 a fourth person, later identified as disc jockey Steve Gregory Croes, 26, was also arrested. On June 22 Aruban police detained Joran's father, Paulus van der Sloot, for questioning, and arrested him the same day. Paulus was released on June 26 after agreeing to waive his right not to testify against his son. Croes was released on June 27. On Monday, July 4, a Judge Commissioner released Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. Joran van der Sloot, now 18, remains in custody as a suspect, and Aruban authorities have said that all previous persons arrested will remain suspects until cleared in writing by a judge. On August 26, it was announced that Deepak and Satish Kalpoe had been re-arrested.

The reward for information leading to Holloway’s safe return, contributed by the Holloway's family, private donors, the Aruban government, and Carlos'n'Charlie's Restaurant, has grown to $1,000,000. A $250,000 reward is also offered for information that reveals her whereabouts, alive or dead. [1]

The search for physical evidence has so far been unsuccessful, and marked by false leads. Blonde hairs attached to a piece of duct tape found by an Aruban park ranger were DNA tested, but the hair was not from Holloway. Some bones that were discovered washed up on the shore sparked some interest until they were proven to be from a donkey. A small lake near the Aruba Racquet Club was partly drained between July 27 and 30, after a witness claimed to have seen Joran, Deepak, and Satish sitting parked on a dirt road nearby between 2:30 AM and 3:00 AM on the morning Natalee disappeared. [2]. Another witness claims to have seen Joran, Paulus, and Deepak burying a nude, blonde-haired woman in a landfill during the first week after Natalee disappeared. The police searched the landfill by hand for two hours on one day, finding nothing of interest. Later, when a volunteer search team learned about the witness, the landfill was extensively searched with heavy garbage-moving/digging equipment. On August 15 it was reported that when search team members arrived at the landfill, the large hole that had been excavated the previous three weeks had been filled in with new garbage. There was also a fire reported within the vicinity of the landfill, further complicating the search. A blood-stained mattress was discovered, but the blood was found not to be human. On July 4, the Netherlands unsuccessfully deployed three F-16 warplanes, equipped with infrared sensors, to aid in the search.

In early August, investigators in Aruba decided to start off from the beginning, retracing all of their steps. According to the authorities in Aruba, new evidence of a possible gang rape has come to light, and they subsequently rearrested the Kalpoe brothers and another, new suspect, Freddy Arambatzis, Joran's friend and neighbor. Details of what this new "evidence" consisted of have never been released or leaked to the public.

Whatever the new "evidence" was, judicial authorities in Aruba determined that it was not sufficient to justify the continued detention of the suspects. On Friday, September 1, 2005, all of the remaining suspects were ordered released from pre-trial confinement, including Joran Van Der Sloot. It is uncertain where the investigation will go from this point.

In addition to the "official" investigation, Natalee's family and friends have been conducting their own searches, publicizing island and world-wide the disappearance of their daughter, and have hired private detectives to assist with the investivation. Mrs. Twitty has said she will keep searching in Aruba until her daughter is found and/or criminal charges are filed.

Criticism of the investigation

Commentators in the United States have frequently criticized the apparent lack of progress by Aruban police in solving this case. Aruban officials blame some of this on a lack of understanding of Dutch judicial procedures, which are employed on the island. Various uncorroborated theories alleging a cover-up have so far not warranted any official response.

Alabama Governor Bob Riley and U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) pressured Aruban authorities to accept more assistance from the FBI. On Friday July 22, Aruban Prime Minister Nelson Oduber wrote to Attorney General Karin Jannsen asking that island police give the FBI complete access to their dossiers on the investigation. On the same day, during a special session for state budgets, the Alabama House of Representatives passed a resolution asking Alabama residents not to visit Aruba until the case is resolved.

The Twittys, early vocal critics of the Aruban officials, have apologized for their public criticism of the handling of the case. Nevertheless, they have agreed to hire T. J. Ward a private investigator from Alpharetta, Georgia who offered to help them search for clues. [3] Aruba has waived the requirement for this investigator to hold a work permit while he is in Aruba.

Other commentators have criticised the disproportionate amount of government and media attention directed towards the finding of Holloway, such as the use of F-16 Fighting Falcons to aid the search, while over 800,000 other children are reported missing each year. [4]

During the course of the two searches by Texas Equusearch, an Aruban park ranger accused the volunteer search team of destroying a nest of sea-turtle eggs. The claim was disputed by Equusearch's director, Tim Miller, as simply being an attempt to divert attention away from the failed investigation of the Aruban authorities. [5]

Criticism of the media coverage

Aruban media have covered this story. Jossy Mansur of Diario newspaper has focused on this case. Diario reporters have discovered witnesses and assisted in the investigation.

U.S. television networks have devoted much air time to the search for Natalee Holloway, the investigation of her disappearance, and rumors surrounding the case; Greta Van Susteren, host of On The Record on Fox News, perhaps most prominently. The saturation of coverage triggered a backlash among some media critics who see the attention paid to this case as disproportionate, presumably because Holloway is a young attractive blonde girl. They have labeled the sensation a symptom of "missing white woman syndrome."

Immediately following the announcement that the Netherlands was sending F-16s to join the search, the popular blog Kuro5hin published a scathing editorial comparing the coverage of Holloway's disappearance with that of Reyna Alvarado-Carrera, a 13-year old Hispanic girl who disappeared from her home in Norcross, Georgia, in May. The article, which features an expletive in the title, has continuously remained atop Google's search results for "Natalee Holloway".

Kuro5hin is not the only publication to have drawn unfavorable comparisons to other cases. On June 9, the Birmingham Post-Herald, which serves Holloway's home town, printed an editorial entitled "Aruba story overshadows cases in city." by columnist Elaine Witt comparing the Holloway case to two adult missing persons from the Birmingham area.

Others have observed that Aruba's longstanding reputation as an exceptionally safe tourist destination make the case unusual enough to have merited increased media coverage. [6]

References

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