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Back at the beginning of September I wrote about something that I had run across at Diario as well as on Greta Van Susteren's show notes/blog. Basically a witness had come forward who could place Joran Van Der Sloot as well as his father near the Monserrat Dam around 4AM on the morning that Natalee disappeared. The witness felt that the Aruban police had just blown him off and had been very hostile toward him, which is why it had taken him so long to come forward with the information again. The news has been picking up steam over the last couple of months and now they are thinking about reopening the investigation again.

That new witness coupled with the videotaped confession from Joran earlier this year may just be enough information to get them to reopen the case. If that's not enough apparently an ex-girlfriend has also come forward with some suspicious sounding comments that Joran made at the time as well. CNN has some of the information up on both of these witnesses.

The lead Aruban prosecutor Hans Mos says that they hope to make a decision by the end of the year as to whether they are going to arrest van der Sloot again or not. That's if they can find him of course.

Natalee Holloway

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It's been several months since anything has come up in this three year old investigation which has since been closed by Aruban authorities. I ran across a story over at Greta Van Susteren's blog just a little while ago. She received a translation of an article from Diario that talks about a new witness that has come forward in the case. I found the original article. It's here if you are interested.

If you will recall, the chief prosecutor reopened the investigation last year late in the summer and then at the end of the year closed it again and said that they would not prosecute the three young men suspected of being complicit in Natalee Holloway's untimely demise.

According to what I got out of the article below. Hans Mos was not happy with this new witness and was very hostile toward him. That could mean any number of things and may or may not be true. I do know one thing, from some of my reading in the Casey Anthony case I heard the rumor that some folks from Texas EquuSearch might be back in Aruba again as recently as last week doing another search. Related? Who knows. Certainly not me but it might be.

The content of the translated article is below.

JORAN SEEN FULL OF MUD WALKING NEAR THE DAM WITH ONLY ONE TENNIS SHOE ON HIS FEET

THE DAM AT MONSERAT GETTING NEW ATTENTION IN THE NATALEE HOLLOWAY CASE

ORANJESTAD (AAN) Perhaps many will say today that God is great, and in a meticulous way does His work so that every crime has hidden clues so that the solution may be reached. Today it has gone so far that DIARIO can reveal officially to the people that at last a masculine witness has come forward.

This witness felt he could no longer hold back, and at last gave his complete declaration as to what he saw at the end of May 2005, at 4 oclock in the morning, from the window of his living room.

Due to his fear of reprisals, he only gave to the local authorities a partial statement, in other words that he saw Joran walk past his house at 4:05 a.m., walking strangely because he only had one tennis shoe on.

The local authorities, principally Prosecutor Mr. Mos , was acting very hostile towards this witness, and that made the witness hold back the totality of his story to him as to what happened.

Nevertheless, with the American investigators and to his lawyer he gave the complete story, not just the part regarding Joran alone. Parts of the complete story will appear later in the DIARIO.

But, the first aspect of the story of this witness, immediately created suspicion by the Americans. Even though he lives at about 1.9 kilometers from the Fishermen Huts, his declaration can have important implications to complete this big puzzle.

The Americans wanted more assurances and asked the witness to travel to the United States, where one of the most trusted experts in Polygraph Examinations, the famous John S. Swartz, made the test with him, to determine whether this Aruban witness was lying.

He passed all the examinations perfectly, and John S Swartz is convinced that this witness is telling the truth about what he saw at 4 a.m. in front of his house.

Even though Prosecutor Mr. Mos and also the Van Der Sloot family want to or not, this gives a complete turnaround in the whole investigation. Today DIARIO focuses on the first part of the declaration of the witness. What is being published today is what the local authority (e.o. Prosecutor Mos) know from him, since they have his signed declaration.

But the next publication which will appear in the DIARIO, will reveal more than the authorities in Aruba know. This is something that the local witness did not dare tell the local detectives nor to the prosecution that received him in the beginning. He was too afraid to do so. But, to the Americans he did give his complete declaration, and he passed a Lie-Detector test in the United States to prove that he was telling the truth.

JORAN'S CLOTHES WERE FULL OF MUD WHEN HE WAS WALKING NEAR THE DAM AT MONSERAT

First part of the new revelations by the witness

ORANJESTAD(AAN) A new witness who has proven to be speaking the truth, is bringing the long-awaited clarity in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in May 2005 in Aruba. At last, after studying the new revelations of the witness during the last few months, now DIARIO has gotten the results back from the U.S. about the first part of his declaration.

DIARIO again wants to put emphasis on the fact that Prosecutor Mos has knowledge of this part, but doesn't know what he did with it. The second part which will appear soon in the DIARIO contains information that the Prosecution of Aruba has no knowledge of at this point, simply because every time the witness gave his declaration he was pushed into a corner of fear for reprisals.

This witness, a man born in Aruba, went to the United States where he took and passed a polygraph test successfully.

THE WITNESS SPEAKS:

It was on the night of the 30th of May 2005 that he was asleep in his room at his house, when he was awoken by the sound of numerous dogs barking out of control and in very menacing tones.

The witness opened his eyes, looked at the watch and saw that it was 4:05 in the morning.

Listening to the direction from which the sounds of the dogs were coming, he went to the living room of his house and observed what the dogs were barking at with such urgency.

Under a street lamp he saw a person walking in the direction of his house. He was coming from the sports field of Nacional, near the Dam of Monserat, going in the direction of the hotels. The person on foot passed under the following street lamp and the witness saw the person very well and clearly. He was a notably tall, thin, masculine, white skin, short dark hair, a relatively young man who looked like a Dutchman.

He also saw the form (profile) of his head and one side of his face.

The clothes he had on was a red tee shirt and long clear colored pants .

Remarcable was that this person was walking with a limp, and here is where the witness saw that he lacked one tennis shoe. He calculated that from the way he was walking, he was missing the tennis shoes of his right foot.

Another thing that he noticed was that the person was breathing heavily, as if he had been running for quite a while. His chest was heaving up and down rapidly.
CLOTHES WERE WET

The witness continued to declare (and proved with his test that he was telling the truth) that the man he saw had on wet clothes, and had a notable stripe of muddy waters that reached to his chest, about 5 centimeters more or less over his flannel.

The stripe on his flannel showed clearly that from the muddy waters going down his clothes were completely wet.

At first the witness thought that this person had beenin a fight and ran away so as not to receive any more blows. The side of his face that the witness noticed, however, did not show any signs of blood or blows. But, due to the fact that the person did not once look over his shoulder to check if anyone was following him, and continued to walk with his head down and, with accelerated v elocity, the witness thought that he was involved in something else and not in a fight.

The person continued to walk in front of his house until he lost him from sight, and in no instance did the man look up or back, and continued to walk in the direction of the hotels.

All this happened in about 1 minute.

After he lost the person from sight, the witness sat in his living room for about 15 to 20 minutes before he went back to sleep.

(DIARIO COMMENT: Here something else happened, that the witness did not reveal to the local authorities, but well to the American investiga tors. In our next publication DIARIO will reveal what else the witness saw that eventful morning. The Polygraph test he took proved that here too he was telling the truth!)

The witness woke up and went to his work at about 11: a.m. Then the news about Natalee's disappearance was on the radio and he found out that there was a tourst teenager who did not make it back to her hotel. He immediately remembered what he saw a few hours earlier

After the news became bigger, and they began to arrest the wrong persons, the witness felt discouraged to come forward, and after he saw that the young man Joran van der Sloot in the news, he recognized him immediately as the person he saw walking past his home.

After he found out that the father of the man was a lawyer and studying to become a judge, and that he was an intimate friend of a high ranking police officer, he felt totally discouraged to come forward with what he saw.

On top of that, knowing that the Aruban judicial system is totally in the hands of the Dutch, he forced himself to keep quiet. This lasted for over 2 years, until the end of 2007, when he felt he had to tell about what he saw, and so he came forward slowly, to explain what he saw in front of his house, which is situated at about 500 meters from the Dam of Monserat at Noord

He also got himself a lawyer, because the case was so big and he needed advice.

In the meantime, the Americans, with police permission, made a sonar test of the Dam of Monserat in the beginning of this year, when the level of the water was low. DIARIO has found out that this test discovered 15 objects of interest and that they could define only 3 of them.

IN another article, DIARIO will show how Prosecutor Mos paid little attention to this witness and on the contrary, tried to discredit him. This makes you wonder: Is it true that they want to protect van der Sloot cost what it may?

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Natalee Holloway

Image via Wikipedia

Apparently a dutch company has plans to make a movie "loosely based" on the disappearance of the Alabama girl who disappeared and was most likely killed in Aruba in 2005.
The Hollywood Reporter AMSTERDAM -- Dutch producer Hans Pos (Shooting Star Film Company) has announced plans for a Dutch feature film loosely based on the disappearance, and possible murder, of the U.S. student Natalee Holloway in 2005 on Aruba, one of the islands in the Dutch Antilles.

The case attracted a lot of publicity in the Netherlands and the U.S., as the main suspect was filmed with a hidden camera by crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, for a program for SBS Broadcasting of the Netherlands, which was subsequently nominated for an Emmy Award.

Pos will base the film, which he will also direct, on the crime novel "Vuurkoraal," written by Dutch journalist Annet de Jong. Screenwriter Simon de Waal is currently working on the adaptation. Pos plans to release the film in 2009.

It's only been a matter of time before they did it, I think everyone knew that. At least they waited three years. It would be nice if they would donate a portion of the proceeds to something like Texas Equusearch or one of the Missing Children networks.

Hopefully they will portray Joran as the scum-sucking piece of shit that he is as well.

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I finally found a version of the confession video with English subtitles.

Natalee Holloway's mother and reporter Peter R. DeVries were on Larry King. You can watch the video over at CNN. She brings up the point I mentioned last week about how investigators in Aruba kept asking Natalee's parents over and over if Natalee had ever had a history of epileptic seizures.

The Aruban authorities have also questioned Joran Van der Sloot again, this time in the Netherlands. deny. deny. deny. He is claiming that everything on the video tape is lies and that he was just making it up so that he could get a job with the bad guys :)

He was apparently interviewed for two hours again and he denied any type of role in Natalee Holloway's disappearance according to the prosecutor's office. He claims that he was under the influence of Marijuana when he was secretly videotaped saying that he was with Holloway when she died. In the video tape he also says that he couldn't be sure that she was dead when they disposed of the body. That's just messed up.

The Aruban courts have said that there is enough evidence to re-open the investigation, which they obviously have, but not enough to arrest Joran, so the scum sucking loser is still walking around free. The prosecutor's office has appealed that decision and a three-judge panel is supposed to rule on that this next week.

Investigators have taken a hard drive from Joran's computer as well as a laptop in order to look for new evidence.

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I have not had the time this week to really devote to checking out the updates on the case until recently, nor did I get the chance to search and see the video that was on Dutch television Sunday night.

According to authorities in Aruba, the secretly-taped video could be admitted in court in the case however.

According to the tape Joran van der Sloot said that he "didn't lose a minute of sleep" knowing that Natalee Holloway's body had been dumped out in the sea.

Van Der Sloot admits to being with Holloway the night of her disappearance, having sex with her, and when she died, most likely from a combination of the drugs and alcohol she had used, called a friend who took her out in his boat and "threw her out, like and old rag"

According to Van Der Sloot's attorney the friend that Van der Sloot named in the video wasn't even in Aruba in 2005 and has never owned a boat and there are a couple of other issues as well that don't fit, including the fact that the coast guard had checked the phone in 2005 that according to his story he used to call the friend. There was no such call made from the pay phone on that night.

Aruban investigators are saying that there is more evidence against Joran van der Sloot than what was revealed in the hidden camera interview. They have also searched two places in Holland on Monday where Van der Sloot has lived, removing some evidence. They will not specify what that evidence is but supposedly they knew exactly what they were looking for.

Sprocket brings up an interesting point and now that I have seen that I will have to go back through some of the old reports. Anyway, it was mentioned over at Trials and Tribulations about the fact that early in the investigation Aruban investigators asked Holloway's parents several times if Natalee had ever had any seizures. Kind of funny considering that's exactly what Joran describes on the tape...

Anyway, about the guy named that owned/doesn't own a boat. Remember party boat DJ Steve Croes? Supposedly THAT'S who Joran called that night and then the two of them took Natalee out and dumped her body. I have also read in several places that Lorenzo van Rijn, a known underworld figure and drug dealer in Aruba is probably the person that Joran called that night. It's not the first time I have seen that either. Missing in Aruba is a site that hasn't been updated since the fall of 2005 and I think that may be the first place I saw mention of Lorenzo, who very well may be Joran's half-brother.

I found the taped confession from Joran over at Youtube. Of course unless you speak Dutch it's pretty much useless.. I am just now sitting down to watch...

Now if I could just pick out more than a couple of words...


Updated 2-2-08 --- Joran Van der Sloot was interviewed again on the show Pauw & Witteman yesterday and made the statement that he had nothing to do with Natalee Holloway's disappearance and that he had lied when he privately told someone he was involved.

"It is true I told someone. Everybody will see it Sunday. This is what he wanted to hear, so I told him what he wanted to hear" adding that he had built up a relationship with the man but had never fully trusted him.

According to his lawyers, the confession was obtained by an Aruban employee of DeVries who was handsomely rewarded for winning Joran's trust and betraying him , although according to Joran's statement he never fully trusted him. I guess he's not choosy about who he spouts lies to, as the past has shown us.

A Dutch Judge should make a ruling today or tomorrow as to whther or not Joran Van der Sloot can be re-arrested.

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Updated 9:55 p.m. I have posted several times today but my damned blog won't rebuild and my host keeps telling me there are no problems. Apparently the fact that the last six entries plus this one that I have edited several times is a figment of my imagination. Anyway, Equivocation Nation is also keeping us updated on the case as well. ABC has apparently purchased the video for an undisclosed, very large amount and Peter Cuomo is flying to the Netherlands to interview Peter DeVries.

Updated 9:45 p.m. The Aruban prosecutor has requested that Joran Van der Sloot be arrested based on new evidence, sources have told CNN. Hans Mos, the chief prosecutor said that he expects an answer from a judge as soon as Saturday or Sunday. If the judge rules that he can be arrested he would be brought back to Aruba for detainment and more questioning.

------------------------------------

I mentioned yesterday in my post about Peter R. DeVries that prosecutors in Aruba were looking at the case again and sure enough, they have decided to reopen the case, 33 days later.

In a statement made earlier today the public prosecutor's office in Aruba said "The recordings made available to the Public Prosecutor have given the Public Prosecutor a reason to reopen the investigation".

They haven't made any references to the possibility of arrests but I am sure that will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

DeVries is supposed to be broadcasting a Secretely taped confession on Sunday by Joran Van der Sloot. It's not clear exactly what he has has confessed to but obviously since Aruba is reopening the investigation  it will either be her disappearance or murder.

 

Natalee Holloway Updates toward the bottom of the entry

Just received a breaking news alert from CNN. Investigators in Aruba are looking at some new evidence that has been provided by Peter R. de Vries, a Dutch reporter. I posted about de Vries earlier this month but really didn't go into the report much. He along with Joran van Der Sloot were on the Dutch TV show Pauw & Witteman earlier in the month and Joran lost his temper and threw wine at the reporter on camera after being confronted with his lies. If you haven't seen the wine incident yet, this is the part of the show where Joran throws it in his face.

 

 

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7:13 p.m. - Now CNN has reported that the office of the prosecutor in Aruba has intensified it's investigation of the case of Natalee Holloway after having received the information from Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries. They are stating that the information may help considerably in the solution of the mystery of Natalee's disappearance and assumed death. The statement does not say what the information is. Sound like an all too familiar situation? If so it's because that's the same line of crap we heard last fall from the prosecutor's office who ended up dropping the case at the end of the year because they didn't have enough evidence.

Peter R. DeVries Apparently Joran has pissed off the wrong person. According to the report the information may help resolve exactly what happened to Natalee Holloway during a 2005 graduation trip to Aruba during which she disappeared after spending time with van Der Sloot.

Prosecutors had to dismiss their case late last month after they finally figured out that they didn't have enough evidence and information to prosecute van Der Sloot or the Kalpoe brothers. Perhaps whatever it is that de Vries has turned over to police will be enough this time.

He has had at least a couple of positive findings in the past. DeVries tracked down the Heineken-kidnapper Frans Meijer in Paraguay and has had other achievements as well.

 

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7:30 p.m. I don't know how true this is but go read Joran Did It! and see what you think. Here is Peter R. de Vries home page. The headline on his site (click the American flag for English version) states that he has "solved the crime!" Apparently he has conducted an undercover camera operation and turned the results over to the Aruban prosecutor.

de Vries has put out a press release which you can get to here. Beth Twitty is now in the Netherlands and has screened portions of the video and apparently Beth reacted extremely shocked by what she saw along with the certain news that her daughter is indeed dead.

9:28 p.m. The AP released this video earlier this evening:

Other Links:

The Anniston Star

Eyes For Lies

ABC News

 

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Updated January 14th, 10:00 p.m. I wasn't aware of it at the time that I put the timeline together, but I had already posted one, albeit incomplete, back in May of 2007.

Scared Monkeys has some recent posts up about Joran and his antics if you want to go check them out. Apparently Joran appeared on the late-night talk show Pauw & Witteman and by the end of the show threw wine in the face of a crime reporter. Good thing he wasn't alone on the beach with him.

hollowayphoto Ever since June of 2005 millions of people around the world and most particularly here in the United States have been wondering just what happened to Natalee Holloway and if she will ever be found.

Although this is titled a "Definitive Natalee Holloway Timeline" this is certainly not meant to be the last source of information and I plan on adding to it as time goes by. I have not added a lot of the stuff that has happened the last couple of months but will when I get the free time. I also need to arrange it in more or a chronological order. I have worked on it off and on when I had free time over the last week or so, it jumps around a bit.

The first I heard of the story was right around the time of this news story at CNN.

Natalee Holloway was on a post-graduation trip to Aruba along with about 100 students from Mountain Brook High School in Alabama in order to celebrate their graduation. Along with the students were seven adult chaperones.

She was last seen in the company of three young men, Joran van der Sloot as well as Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, leaving Carlos & Charlies, a nightclub in Oranjestad. According to initial reports the three men claimed that they took her to Arashi Beach before dropping her off at her hotel about 2 AM. Somewhere between 20 and 40 of her classmates saw her leave the bar with the three young men around 1:30 AM. None of the security cameras at the Holiday Inn where her class was staying show Natalee returning. The class of 124 was scheduled to fly back to the states on that day, May 30th. Her passport, packed luggage, camera and cell phone were all in her hotel room.

natalle_friends

This photo was taken with Natalee's disposable camera on May 29th 2005 with Natalee's disposable camera just hours before she disappeared.

 

One interesting thing about the security cameras is that on April 19th, 2006 Beth Twitty stated that the security cameras at the Holiday Inn were not working on the night that Natalee vanished. She has made other statements in public as well as in her book, that the lobby camera was working. This could just be a matter of simple confusion. I would be pretty darned confused if my child had been missing so long. It could also point to the fact that she didn't know what the hell she was talking about and just had to say something to the media.

This post is extremely long. If you are interested in finishing it, the rest is below the fold.

According to this article over at CNN (seems I have been hanging out there a lot lately) the investigation of Natalee Holloway is not closed but has entered a new phase as four detectives assigned to the case continue to look for evidence. Regardless of what happened or who killed Natalee (if indeed she is dead as I and most people assume) the family needs some kind of closure as does the Aruban people. Exactly how much do they trust their own authorities if they can't even prosecute the killers of one girl?

hollowayphoto

Hans Mos stated that the charges were dropped against

Joran van der Sloot and the two Kalpoe brothers, Deepak and Satish not because they don't have a case but because they couldn't be sure of a conviction. If they were to be prosecuted and then the case were to be dismissed, because of double jeopardy (as in our laws) they couldn't be tried again. It actually makes sense to make sure that they have all of their ducks in a row before they go for a conviction. Then again, they could just be assigning the four detectives to a never-ending case just to appease the traveling public.

The decision not to prosecute doesn't mean "there is not a file in which these three people are primary persons of interest,

We believe justice will prevail one day, but we cannot force that right now.

Hans Mos

Some of the conflicting statements from the three young men include the fact that the Kalpoes told police that they dropped Holloway and van der Sloot off near a lighthouse on the northern tip of the island. Joran van der Sloot's mother says that he told her he was on the beach with Natalee but left her there because she wanted to stay. If you will recall, during the interrogation of Joran van der Sloot he initially told police that Natalee Holloway wanted to go to the north side of the island to see sharks (interesting only in the fact that it was dark and you wouldn't see shit, but if she were drunk the fact that it was dark wouldn't matter), but later on said that 'at no time did Natalee ask to go to the north side of Aruba and then later said that the idea of going to the lighthouse was his?

Anyway, the good thing is that under Aruban law criminal prosecution is possible until the punishable acts become too old. For voluntary manslaughter that is six years and for homicide it's twelve.

From FOX News last night:

Starting to ramble now. For other recent stories and developments:

Seems to be a bit of a recurring theme lately :)

I just found this video from the AP concerning comments that one of the three suspects made in an Internet chat room concerning Natalee Holloway

Apparently one piece of the 'new' evidence (according to reports) that prosecutor's used to justify the re-arrest of the three suspects in the Natalee Holloway case was a bit of chat log retrieved from the computer hard drive belonging to one of them. In the chat, one of the suspects said 'The fact that she's dead is not good', referring to Holloway.

There was no further discussion of Holloway's death or how she died. Other evidence included two new witnesses but they were only witnesses as far as the behavior of the suspects after Holloway's disappearance, not of the deed itself.

One other piece of evidence included a conversation about what happened that night after the authorities bugged the Kalpoe home.

So, apparently that one report at FOX News was right in that Hans Mos did an interview today but wrong in the fact that they have closed the case barring any new evidence.

What gets me is the fact that it is an admission that they know she is dead and had something, no matter how small, to do with it, yet are now just considered persons of interest in the case since they refused to talk to the prosecution.

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