History of the Black Jack Table

Part of this is recapping what was on previous pages.

On February 22, 2006 the day before ABC News did their Primetime Interview with Joran van der Sloot they released the never before seen footage of Natalee and Joran entering the Excelsior Casino and then sitting at the Blackjack Table together. This video can be seen a few pages before in this chapter:

When that video clip was shown it was shown for the purpose of showing Natalee and Joran and how they supposedly met. They said there was no "smoking gun!" The message board conversation the following days contained no mention of Paul van der Sloot. Often they would be saying things such as the following, which I found on a very supportive family forum, "Blogs for Natalee."

FannyAndBurglar wrote:

"I think they got it from ALE, not Posner. Posner has done everything he can to stay out of this. ALE is trying to help the Aruba tourism interests. That has been evident for some time. Dompig has not worked very hard at hiding that.

My guess is that there is a lot more tape than these snippets."

airplane wrote:
I agree. I think they got from from ALE and not Posner for the same reasons you do. I, too, think there is a lot more to these tapes than the snippets shown on ABC.

What these snippets show is that Joran and Natalee were at the same poker table at the same time. Nothing more and nothing less. Natalee was behaving herself and Joran was behaving himself. These tapes show nothing untoward at all. Natalee and Joran didn't even, as nearly as I can tell, look at each other on these little snippets.

As far as Natalee drinking from a straw: it has nothing to do with whether her glass was filled with water or a mixed drink. Some people drink everything through a straw and others drink only fast food soft drinks. The straw is meaningless.

The above is just a random sampling of what the discussion was regarding the ABC casino footage. The conversation was all about Joran and Natalee, their interaction or lack of, the other girls, and a variety of things that people can find to discuss. There was no mention of Paul van der Sloot. ABC never mentioned anything about Paul, Joran's father sitting on the other side of Natalee. And since they are a News Source one can be fairly certain had Paul been in this video they would have had the blockbuster story and in fact a true "smoking gun."