Natalee Holloway, Psychics & Other Frauds - 25

Page 5

Chapter: twenty-five

Hodges boarded the Persistence

December 19th

On the next morning, I boarded the Persistence along with Louis Schaefer and Tim Miller staying on the boat for the next 24 hours as they continued to scan the ocean bottom. The staff was impressive—capable, bright, and extremely motivated working essentially through the entire night. Clearly this was going to be one quality search. I can’t say enough good things about the group among others Kyle Kingman and Rob Floyce—the geologists who interpreted the data-- along with Brandon Hernandez of the ROV team already aboard. We had several interesting discussions both on deck and in the relatively small galley. At one point, boat owner and captain John Silvetti voiced his complaints about not having an exact description of the missing “crab cage” which he had been requesting for several weeks—the identical frustration Louis had voiced to me earlier. Tim Miller had come up with an approximate cage size from the best reports he could obtain. The search team was having a model cage constructed along these lines with plans to drop it underwater and obtain as accurate a scan signature as possible to enable quicker identification of the real cage.

Oh the fish/trap/cage again!

This December 19 entry is actually quite telling:

At one point, boat owner and captain John Silvetti voiced his complaints about not having an exact description of the missing “crab cage” which he had been requesting for several weeks—the identical frustration Louis had voiced to me earlier.

The police said that their investigations revealed that no fish trap was stolen. Tim Miller, Dave Holloway, TJ Ward and now Andrew Hodges seem to be basing so much on a missing fish trap, or cage, they actually vacillate back and forth on which it is on something that has never been declared missing by Aruban Law Enforcement.

Dompig on rumors of missing fish trap

Here is Chief Gerald Dompig's statement about the missing fish trap, from October 25, 2005 on MSNBC.

GERALD DOMPIG, ARUBA POLICE COMMISIONER: Well, that‘s basically the reason why we are looking at the ocean right now, because, although we don‘t have an official statement or declaration that a fishing trap has been missing, there are enough rumors out there that we—lead us to believe that maybe that is the case. You should understand that these fish traps are—some of these fishermen have like 200, 100 to 200 of these fish traps, so they might not miss one. What is officially reported as stolen, though, is a big knife, and out of one of the fisher—fisherman‘s huts or—yes, where they keep their stuff, you could say. And that‘s the basis for us to search in the ocean.

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Natalee Holloway, Psychics & Other Frauds - 25

So very many "headcases," seemed to jump into this case and appear helpful and useful. Were any of them really helpful? Did any of them offer anything of value to the investigation? Or did they cause Law Enforcement more trouble than they were worth? by Jan Brennan

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