June 2007

"That Joran had lied was a huge shock to me".

Aruba, the island of the sun, the careless beach days. The island also where on May 31 2005 the American Natalee Holloway disappeared without a trace. "Islandboy" Joran van der Sloot (19) was seen with her last and was arrested as a suspect. Anita van der Sloot (50) tells what that meant for her and her family.

"Two years ago, in May, my grandmother became ninety years old. I was in Holland to celebrate her birthday. Shortly before I would return to Aruba, my husband Paul called me and told me that a girl was missing. And he added to that: It seems Joran is the last who has been together with her".

Immediately all sort of things went through my mind. I found it very confusing that also things like "damn, seems he went out Sunday night" popped up in my mind. We did not know anything, he must have sneaked out if the house".

A real Aruba boy.

"When Joran was three years old we immigrated from Holland to Aruba, Paulus could get a job there as a juridical worker. Joran, who till then had been a socially exemplary child, did have a difficult start out in Aruba. He went to toddler school, where he did not liked it at all.

Every time I brought him there, he was fighting his tears. But after some time he became accustomed, he learned papiamento real fast, and became a real Aruban boy, he for example always walked bare foot.

Do you know how delightfully relaxed it is on Aruba?

It is súch a fine island, actually more sort of a village, the size of Terschelling. We live outside a lot. Soon as you are awake, you open the doors and can enjoy butterflies, colibies and orchids. Joran has two younger brothers: Valentijn and Sebastiaan, Valentijn is very creative. And Sebastiaan resembles Joran a lot, as well as his looks as his character. Just like Paul I also found a nice job on the island, as a teacher on the International School. All five of us enjoyed ourselves a lot and after a few years we decided to stay on Aruba permanently."

He really was a small bastard back then.

"In first instance I thought Natalee must have ran away. But by then Joran had stated that he had dropped her of at the hotel. That statement seems to have not been correct; he had left her behind at the beach. At a certain moment Joran no longer dared to tell that to us. He díd tell it to a friend, who shot himself off to me on the phone, I asked the boy to come to our house and heard the truth from Joran and from him, which led to the arrest of Joran.

That he had lied in first instance to me was a huge shock.

Lies we all tell them at times, But I truly did not understand why he had lied about something so big and so determining. I am a sober person and work with students for years already, I know the tricks. When I am honest I have to say that Joran was a small bastard back then. He lied, stole a phone from his brother, that sort of things. Joran has written a book about the past period and from that it becomes clear that he had also fooled us for months.

He was leading sort of a double life, went out a lot, without us knowing.

We did not have any suspicion, because on school things went fine with him. In the year before Natalee disappeared, Paulus was worried about Joran that I am admitting honestly. Paul was in Holland for 14 months for his judge-training and came home once every two-three months. So I sort of had to do it all on my own, which went well. But Paul sort of lost control. Despite Joran's behavior it hit us hard that he had lied about leaving Natalee behind, about something so big. That I had not expected from my child. On the other hand I do understand that he felt guilty that he had not dropped her of safe and therefor made up a small lie. And after that had no way back..."

I actually always have been convinced of Joran's innocence.

Very briefly I have doubted his story. Paul also. Briefly we thought: would something have happened, an accident or something that he does not dare to tell us? We went to talk with him: Tell us if there is something, because for the parents of Natalee it is unbearable if they do not know what happened to their daughter". Above all Joran and his friends had made up ánother story around the disappearance: that they had dropped off Natalee and that the girl had fallen. Paul and I wondered why they were adding all sorts of things. Later I realised that they did so to make it credible.
In that period I was angry at Joran. Paul also. Paul is someone who would have, if Joran had done it, picked him up and brought him to the police station. Because he loves him so much. Due to his profession he cannot support injustice. Paul has always been very clear: Tell the truth, be honest!

Even though the feeling that Joran was innocent came back quick, in fact within 24 hours of his arrest. Joran was a minor, so I had (as his mother) only access to him. No, Paul not, they were afraid that due to his profession- he at the time was a judge in training- would whisper things to Joran. We know our child through and through and are able to see right through him. He has great faith in Paul and me, so great that he would dare to show his vulnaribility. If something had happened, then he would have cracked long time ago.

The mother of Natalee was on Aruba 24 hours within the disappearance of her daughter. And very fast FOX News was also on the island. We knew nothing then and were very naive, we all had it come over us. We began this whole ordeal with a lack of information. The media pressure was enormous and the police of Aruba, who normally is busy with small criminal behavior, had no clue/was desperate.

That I realise now, but at such a moment, when you are in the midst of things, you feel powerless. In that time I also met the mother of Natalee. I found her a bitter woman, but what do you expect, I also would be desperate if my child had gone missing,

The media violence was too big.

"I found it a very heavy time. The first half year after the disappearance I have lived on tranquilizers and sleeping pills. It all occurred during the summer vacation, so I had vacation too, It was kind of nice, in that hectic time, to not be busy with work, But when it became August, and Joran was detained for some time, I looked forward to go to work again, I needed distraction.

Joran in the mean time had a hard time in jail, He stopped talking there. It hurts my mother heart that he did not, as planned could start his study in America.

The media violence was so huge that he had to flee to Holland. He lives and studies now in the town where I grew up, My mother still lives there, she has Joran under her wings. If she had not been there, we probably would have immigrated back to Holland ourselves, because Joran no longer had a life on Aruba. The last night that he was on the island, he has sleeped with me and Paulus in the room, like a baby."

Even though we stay on Aruba.

"After three months in which no evidence against Joran was found, he was released September 2005. If then before the end of May (it then is two years ago that Natalee disappeared) no incriminating evidence is found against Joran, he no longer is a suspect. But that in itself does not say much'; Joran stands up and goes to bed with the idea that Natalee has disappeared. He feels guilty, and says he should have left her behind in her hotel room. This will press on his shoulders till she is found, that I realise very well.

For me she has become alive even though I never knew her. Not one day passes that I am not busy with it. If not for the horrible disappearance, then I will receive a threat letter or phone call or a window is smashed in. Even though we will stay on Aruba, it is our island, we feel at home there. Foremost, we dare to look everyone straight into the eyes. And so we try to pick up our lives again, That is necessary for Valentijn and Sebastiaan. I am a positive thinker and see the future with full confidence, I am convinced this case will be solved!"

In case of vanished tourist, Aruba also suffers

Carol J. Williams

A siren blares and whistle-blowing waiters race in to the hectic beat of the “Mexican Hat Dance.” It’s time for the hourly tequila attack at Carlos ‘n Charlie’s.

The target is an already inebriated blond with seven gal pals, a sunset-colored rum drink and a sunburned nose. The waiters crown her with a giant sombrero, toss a serape over her bare shoulders and pour a stream of golden liquid into a mouth turned up like a baby bird’s.

Liquor-plying mission accomplished, a DJ swaps the peppy Mexican melody for a blaring rendition of dance group T-Spoon’s “Sex on the Beach.”

Alcoholic excess and abandon are back in vogue at the cantina, where a pretty blond teenager from Alabama named Natalee Holloway was last seen by her high school classmates – drunk and supine on the bar as a boy slurped Jello shots from her navel.

Two years later, it may be business as usual at Carlos ‘n Charlie’s, but the mystery of the missing American girl lingers. No body has been found, no evidence of a crime has been uncovered, and the 18-year-old’s disappearance is dangerously close to being labeled a cold case.

The sad trajectory of the case mirrors that of the increasingly bitter relations between Holloway’s parents and the people of Aruba, arcing downward from the moment two years ago when islanders took the tragedy to heart and joined in the hunt by the thousands to today, when locals mutter about American media distortions and “missing white woman syndrome.”

Holloway’s parents – and the cable TV crime analysts who followed their plight for months – have cast affluent Aruba as a dangerous den of iniquity, its police force as inept bunglers and its government and people as co-conspirators in covering up what happened to the hearty-partying teen.

As in the cases of slain child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, missing congressional staffer Chandra Levy and murdered expectant mother Laci Peterson, the ill fate presumed to have befallen Holloway made her a cause celebre for vigilante justice-seekers and a ratings boon for cable TV crime mavens.

Although they have recovered from the initial economic fallout, Arubans say the accusatory free-for-all was a blast-force end of innocence – danger could indeed lurk under wind-sculpted divi-divi trees or on sugar-white beaches. Yes, it was a blow to their livelihoods, as U.S. visits fell 7% last year. More painful, though, it was a wound to the heart for all who had joined the prayer vigils and searches, Arubans such as restaurant manager Edwin Trimon say.

“Last year was a tragedy for us. Many people’s businesses were ruined. But what hurt the most was what they were saying about us on TV,” said Trimon, a fixture in the Aruban tourism industry “since there was just one hotel on the island.”

Marcelino Maduro, who has had a taxi service for 17 years, angrily defends his island nation. “The truth is, Aruba is safe. We don’t have people begging. There’s no bad neighborhood where a tourist feels he could be in trouble. We were all shocked when whatever happened to this girl happened.”

In the first days after Holloway went missing, hundreds of tourists joined Aruban police and U.S. private investigators in combing the island’s beaches, coral outcroppings and cactus-studded fields. The Aruba government gave thousands of civil servants a day off to join the hunt. A pond was drained near the Marriott, where Holloway was reported to have gone after she left Carlos ‘n Charlie’s with three locals. North shore sand dunes were scoured. F-16s flew in from the Netherlands to infrared-scan the entire island for signs of freshly turned earth.

No trace of Natalee Holloway was found. Now, the period defined by Dutch jurisprudence for bringing suspects to trial is about to expire.

Under Dutch law, prosecutors can designate suspects for arrest and interrogation without probable cause but must bring a case against them within “a reasonable time,” which judicial precedent has defined as about two years unless fresh leads justify extension.

It was on June 9, 2005, 10 days after Holloway’s disappearance, that Aruba police arrested 17-year-old Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch citizen, and Surinamese brothers Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, who were respectively 18 and 21 at the time. They were released that September after a magistrate who had granted numerous extensions ruled that police had insufficient grounds to further detain them.

“I hope we can close the case against them,” said attorney David Kock, who represents the Kalpoe brothers. “They have been living with this sword over their heads for two years now.”

Vivian van der Biezen, head of legal and policy assistance for the Aruba prosecutor’s office, says that authorities are prohibited from discussing an active case and that a new phase of the investigation began six weeks ago.

On the recommendation of officials in the Netherlands who reviewed Aruban and FBI reports, Van der Sloot’s home was searched again April 27. Twenty forensic investigators perused his parents’ diary notes and a personal computer and poked narrow rods into soil in the backyard of their modest home.

Paul van der Sloot, the suspect’s father, said they found nothing suspicious.

Van der Biezen said she was confident the magistrate on the sister island of Curacao, where the case has been relocated, would give the prosecution more time given the high visibility and complexity of the Holloway case. But she acknowledged that the clock was ticking and, at best, they had a few more months to find a body or forensic evidence that a crime had been committed.

“There will come a time when we have to make a decision to prosecute or make it a cold case,” she said.

Like many Arubans who understood the anguish of the missing girl’s parents, Van der Biezen is reluctant to accuse them of interfering in the investigation. But she observed that their freelance actions in confronting witnesses and suspects blew early opportunities for clandestine surveillance.

In one of her frequent appearances on Greta van Susteren’s “On the Record” legal show on Fox News, Beth Twitty, Holloway’s mother, complained that the parallel inquiry that family members and friends conducted was being ignored by Aruban investigators.

“We’ve just about done all the investigation for them, I guess, so to speak – identified witnesses, put the three suspects on a silver platter and gave it to them,” Twitty said of the sleuthing she did when Aruban police were still convinced her daughter had simply extended her vacation.

Recriminations are a two-way street here on Aruba.

Julia Renfro, a Los Angeles native who is editor in chief of Aruba Today, initially took the side of Holloway’s parents when they sought publicity on the disappearance and lambasted Aruban police for following Dutch investigative procedures rather than those in the United States.

Galvanized by compassion for a desperate mother, Renfro stopped the presses of her daily newspaper for the first time in its history to include a picture of Holloway to aid Arubans in the island-wide search.

A mother of four, Renfro spent weeks shuttling the family from the scene of one rumored development to another but eventually became disenchanted with what she saw as Twitty’s pandering to tabloid TV and “flat-out lies” she told on the air.

“I feel guilty saying any negative thing about a mother who has lost her daughter,” Renfro said. “But her behavior was odd from the get-go.”

Renfro has concluded that the body would have turned up by now if Holloway died on the island. She – and many Arubans – doubts the three suspects, who were all good students without criminal records, could have pulled off a perfect crime, leaving no forensic evidence behind and never caving in to the intense pressure of interrogations.

“I’ve spoken with all of the suspects,” she said. “I don’t believe any of them did anything to her.”

Heavily intoxicated, according to accounts later given by her classmates to the FBI, Holloway could have staggered into the sea and drowned after the local men left her, Renfro speculates. She might have died of alcohol poisoning or a drug overdose and washed out to sea, as Deputy Police Chief Gerold Dompig surmised in a CBS interview last year. She might have climbed aboard one of the dozens of catamarans and cabin cruisers moored off the beach for late-night partying after a concert nearby.

Renfro says she was perplexed when Twitty immediately concluded that her daughter had been kidnapped and made no effort to check hospitals or police about accident victims. Within a few hours, Twitty had concluded Van der Sloot was responsible, and within a couple of days she was telling TV interviewers that she knew her daughter had been gang-raped and murdered.

Twitty didn’t respond to e-mailed requests for an interview.

Renfro parted ways with Twitty and ceased front-page coverage of the disappearance after what she considered a malicious act of distortion. A video aired Sept. 15, 2005, on “Dr. Phil” appeared to show Deepak Kalpoe telling a California private investigator, Jamie Skeeters, that Holloway had sex with all three men on the night she disappeared.

The Kalpoe brothers sued talk-show host Phil McGraw, CBS and Skeeters (who died in January), alleging the clandestinely recorded jailhouse conversation was doctored heavily to change the elder Kalpoe’s response from “No, she didn’t” to “She did.” Versions of the original and aired tapes available on YouTube and other websites appear to back Kalpoe’s contention that his words were altered.

Although leads have faltered and investigators no longer seem to be focusing on the three named suspects, the case of the “missing white woman” promises to live on for years, at least in the legal TV and unsolved-mystery broadcasts.