Middle of the Night Visitors

Arrival of Posse

Natalee Holloway Missing

Visualize this if you will, it is around two in the morning on May 31, 2005 and you are awakened from a sound sleep, hearing voices and shouting at your front gate. The voices are loud and they appear to be Americans and you have this uneasy feeling about it all, as you cannot imagine why they would be at your gate and certainly not at this hour. They are asking where a young white American girl is, her name is Natalee Holloway . Who is she, you wonder and why are they here asking you this?

For Paul van der Sloot this was the reality he faced on May 31st at that early morning hour when the Alabama posse arrived demanding answers. He was mystified as they kept saying Joran would know where this girl was and that she had been missing since the night before. What further complicates this for Paul, he knew the night before he had picked up Joran at the McDonald's, around 11 P.M. and brought him home for the night, so he thought.

Missing Alabama teen

What follows is both interesting and confusing. When Paul once again realizes that Joran is not home he calls him on his cell phone and reaches him at the Wyndham Hotel. Paul wanted answers from Joran and the group that is shouting angry words is demanding to know where Natalee is. Paul would encourage Joran to speak more to the police than the Americans. The initial statement Joran made that night, dropping Natalee at the Holiday Inn would prove several days later to not be the truth. As the posse listens to Joran's story several in the group get quite heated with Joran. Deepak would encourage Joran not to speak. Eventually his father would put an end to the interrogation. How the events of that night conversely effected this investigation has long been debated. Suffice it to say that Paul van der Sloot strongly believes that if he had been able to take his son to the police, never having made those lying statements to the posse on May 31st there may have been a better resolution to what really happened to Natalee Holloway.

Alabama posse investigates

Beth and Jug Twitty will be part of this Alabama posse which seemed to be conducting their own investigation. The group would hear Joran's Holiday Inn lie, but the security cameras later proved that Natalee was not dropped off there. The media would take this one initial lie and soon commentators like Nancy Grace would spin it into "gang rape and murder." One man, Charles Croes tried to tell the story of what happened that night at the Van der Sloots. His interview can be found on Scrux. The details of what happened that night at the Van der Sloots even four years later are still difficult to sort out as to what really happened and how it might have forever impacted this investigation.

Paul van der Sloot remembers that night

as told to The Holland Television Show, NOVA.