What Happened to Natalee?

Is Natalie alive? Natalee Holloway was last seen with still prime suspect Joran van der Sloot. He says he left her on the Marriott Beach area of Aruba near the Fisherman Huts. Unfortunately he told what is called the Holiday Inn Lie when first questioned and because of this Natalee's mother Beth Holloway and others refused to believe him after that lie was uncovered. Some will focus on the Mt. Brook teens, especially those like Francis Ellen Byrd who gave very vague answers to what happened that might. In spite of boycotts, lawsuits and lots of contradictory stories and many rumors this remains a case of a Missing Alabama Teen. Here are some of the best of the on line essays on the case.

Thought provoking essays on the Natalee Holloway case

 
Okay, Charge Them with What?
 
By anonymous internet poster Nomdeguerre

Someone has reported that a decision will be made in the fall whether or not to charge Joran and the Kalpoes with a crime in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. That seems to make sense, as sooner or later the Aruban prosecutor's office has to charge them with something, or the judges on Curacao will release them as suspects.

Releasing them as suspects is something we all can understand. The question in my mind is, if it goes the other way, what could they be charged with? This is assuming that there is no evidence in the files of either the Aruban police or the KLPD that definitely establishes that Joran or the Kalpoes either harmed Natalee or took action to conceal her body if she died accidentally. Presumably, if they have a smoking gun, somebody would be in jail right now.

When Karin Janssen was in charge of the case, I thought that she would probably wait as long as possible, then if no evidence of a serious crime could be found, she might try a "hail Mary" with the best evidence she could come up with to support some lesser charge. Don't know enough about the current person in charge to even speculate about what she might do, but let's assume for a minute that the prosecutor's office wants to bring charges. It doesn't look as if they have enough to support a charge of murder or what we would call manslaughter, so if they file anything, it would have to be lesser charges.

 
The problem is, what lesser charge?

Paulus has been released not only from jail but as a suspect. That has to mean that they don't have any evidence that he was guilty of anything in connection with Natalee's disappearance, including being involved in helping Joran somehow dispose of Natalee's body if she died accidentally in his presence. Joran's friends were questioned (again and again, in some cases), yet with the exception of the Kalpoes, those who were arrested were promptly let go. That would seem to indicate that, if Joran somehow disposed of Natalee's body, they don't know who helped him do it.

Could Joran and/or the Kalpoe brothers be charged with rape or sexual assault? How would you go about proving there was a rape, much less that anything that occurred wasn't consensual? Even when you have a live "victim" screaming her head off that she was raped, that would be a tough charge to prove in a situation like this, where Natalee had been partying with Joran and voluntarily left a bar with him in the middle of the night. In expectation of what? Going window-shopping at closed stores in downtown Oranjestad for wedding rings? I think not.

And despite all the crap we've been forced to endure for almost two years about Natalee and Joran messing around in the back seat of the car while she "went in and out of consciousness," that apparently was a mis-translation of a statement that she kept dozing off and waking up - not enough to render her unable to consent to anything.
Under our laws, you don't have to move a person very far in order for it to constitute kidnapping, but it has to be unwilling. Don't know how Dutch/Aruban law stands on that, but the bottom line is that there's no indication that Natalee was taken anywhere against her will.

For some kind of battery, you'd probably have to have either a battered body or a confession plus a supporting statement or witness testimony, which the Arubans apparently don't have. A weapon with Natalee's blood on it would also be excellent proof, but there seems no indication that such a thing exists, either.

At one point there was a lot of speculation about a charge being brought against Joran for leaving an impaired Natalee alone on the beach, but as Dutch and Aruban posters have pointed out to us, the circumstances here just don't qualify. If Natalee had been in a wheelchair or if Joran had been her hired caretaker or something like that, he probably could be charged, but a couple of drunk teens, and one says the other wasn't ready to go in for the night? Highly unlikely.

Drug charge? Maybe, but you'd probably have to find someone who said he/she sold the stuff to Joran or the Kalpoes, or witnesses who saw them with it. Besides, it appears that NATALEE was the one with the drugs.

So what would the charge likely be, and where would they get evidence of it? Joran's friends, such as Freddie Arambatzis-Zedan, seem to have been pretty steadfast in denying that they have any evidence that Joran harmed Natalee. A lot of Joran's friends also seem to have left the island to attend college elsewhere (common on Aruba), so how would you compel their testimony? Aruba doesn't use grand juries, they couldn't be subpoenaed to come before a U.S. grand jury because Natalee didn't disappear in this country, and extradition laws don't apply to witnesses. If the Arubans asked the FBI to go interview, say, Koen or Sander Gottenbos for the umpteenth time, Koen and Sander could just say, "No thanks. Go pound sand," and there's nothing the FBI or the Arubans could do about it.

I don't know about Aruba's laws, but under ours, you have to have knowledge of the crime to be charged as an accessory. You don't have to be physically present at the site where the crime occurs, but you have to know that a crime is going to occur (accessory before the fact) or has (accessory after the fact) taken place, and you have to commit other acts, such as inciting someone to commit a crime, helping them cover it up after the fact, etc.