AL Teen Missing in Aruba
 

Alabama teen missing for fourth day in Aruba
FBI, Aruba police, volunteers search for student
Friday, June 3, 2005 Posted: 9:10 AM EDT (1310 GMT)

Senior Natalee Holloway disappeared on the last night of a trip to Aruba.

ORANJESTAD, Aruba (AP) -- Natalee Holloway disappeared on the last night of a trip to Aruba to celebrate her graduation from high school. Four days later, the Alabama teenager is still missing, despite an extensive search of the Dutch Caribbean island.

"Honestly, at the beginning, we were hopeful the girl would come back," said police Superintendent Jan van der Straaten. "Today, we are more and more thinking about the possibility of a crime."

On the island remarkable for its absence of violent crime, hundreds of residents and tourists posted flyers to help the hunt.

FBI agents helped the Dutch military and Aruba police scour outlying scrubland with helicopters and all-terrain vehicles but found no trace of the 18-year-old.

Aruba radio and television stations broadcast a reward offer from Holloway's family, though they did not specify an amount. The family promised to reward anyone who brings her safely to a police station or hospital.

"Everybody has been quite supportive," the teenager's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, told The Associated Press. "I am not leaving. I am going to have Natalee with me."

Holloway came to Aruba for a five-day excursion with 124 seniors and 40 chaperons from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, Alabama. She was last seen around 2 a.m. Monday, Attorney General Caren Janssen said Thursday.

Police discount the possibility she left the island, because they found her passport in her hotel room, van der Straaten said.


Link

I hope she is found alive, but I'm sorry...no one should ever be so stupid as to get into a cab with strangers, especially in a foreign country. Where the hell were her friends?

I don't know how many 'fights' I've gotten into with friends after leaving a club because my friends were too fucking drunk to realize that going someplace with a guy they just met that night was a bad idea.

That was my first thought. I heard that the police interviewed TEN of her "friends" who saw her get into the cab with the "locals", but none of them came out and said, "Hey, you think that just might be a BAD idea?!"

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

The little bit that I saw on today's news didn't sound exactly promising, though.

This is so sad. :( I really hope that they find her, but your chances of being found alive after you've been missing like 36 hours or something dramatically decrease.

I cannot believe that with 140 classmates and 40 chaperones she still managed to go missing, that's so sad that with all those people she knew no one stopped her from leaving with strange men.

It says that police have arrested two men though so hopefully they will at least be able to tell what happened, even if the outcome is not good her family can at least get some kind of closure. :(

A few years ago, a couple of teens from here managed to sneak out to the beach in Mexico on a heavily chaperoned school trip. They drowned.

The parents didn't blame the school--how could they? You can't watch the kids 24/7! These 2 waited 'til about 3 AM to get out. Still, it kept a lot of us from wanting to take students on school trips for years.

You're a good friend, S.
One of my friends, M. does the same thing, only if the friend insists on going with the guy, she MAKES the guy show her his ID and she writes down his name, address and other pertinent information. Yeah, it's funny, but he'll think twice about murdering someone and dumping the body when someone else out there knows EXACTLY who he is.

This whole situation rubs me the wrong way. I don't see how all of her classmates would let her go off alone with random people. I hope she is alright but I heard something about divers being sent out.

I agree, but I just heard a news story of a woman being "found" working in a Sam's Club in KY after being missing for 7 years! Seems she was a student at a college in Texas (A&M? A&T?), got in a fight with her mother and then left. This doesn't sound like the case here, but you never know!

Isn't that CRAZY?!?! Have everyone worked up and she's chillin' in KY! :mad:

Did Natalie not see the A&E 'City Confidential' about the girl on the trip to the Bermuda who left with a few locals and ended up dead? It was the exact same deal as this.

HS kids should have to watch that before they go to the carribiean on a trip.

Unfortunatly she is probably dead.

Paradise can suck.

If she is not found by now, forget it, look for Her remains and hope the People Of Interest will say something meaningful to even find Her.

Now, My question is Why in the Hell would Her Parents allow an 18 yea old girl to out of the country with all of the crap that goes on?:(

If she was so sweet, why did she leave with someone she didnt know?:confused:

Here in Birmingham, this really has a lot of the locals shaken. Some of the biggest questions that we educators have are the following:

1) Why would her friends let her leave alone? What happened to the buddy system?
2) What chaperone, in their right mind, would leave a country without one of their charges? Can you imagine the phone call to those parents? "We're back from Aruba..and by the way, your daughter is not with us.."
3) What about room checks?

Unfortunately, many are inclined to believe that she probably met a guy or two, and went to meet them someplace for a drink after curfew. Should she have left her hotel room? Not without one of her friends.

The entire city of Mountain Brook, where she is from, has ribbons on their doors, hoping and praying for her return.

I think she is probably turning tricks in Mexico. I figure there is a big demand for blonds down there. She probably didn't leave voluntarily.

Cute, Really Cute!:confused:

I agree with trojangal, why did Her Friends let Her do what she might have done to put Her self in Harms way!:(

Well maybe it is because The Parents Let Their Kids Go There!:mad:

Stupid isnt it?:(

Hello Parent Hood!:p

I know everyone keeps saying why did her friends let her go but I mean she made the decision to do it. Her friends are not her parents. Now they could've discouraged her...but how many times have your friends told you something was a bad idea and you shrugged it off.

You know the scary thing...I mean young people meet other young people on vacation all the time. When I was on Senior trip my friend and I met some guys and they hung out with us all week...and we never thought twice about it. It may have been a bad idea, but when you meet other young people (who seem like other normal teenagers) you never think about stuff like that.

Maybe she was too trusting of these people that she met but how can you ever really tell?

The buddy system is a good idea...but if that's the case then we could be looking at 2 missing teens. It really makes you question your own judgement. I mean I can think of PLENTY of people I know that this could've happened to.

True...the talking heads were saying the other day that at this point it's likely she's either dead or sold into the sex trade.

The Brookies (and really all the BHM area kiddies) on campus are going nuts over this.

I saw this in ShopTalk which is a broadcast journalism bulletin board.

I think it was written by a St. Louis radio personality.

While I think it's harsh to lump all 18 year olds together, I'm afraid this does fit some...

"RE: Missing In Aruba at 18

In the Natalee Holloway story, here's something that no one else has brought up.

Why would any parent allow their kid to go on one of these trips? A vacation like this is nothing more than a spring break trip, which until a few years ago was something you did in college. Now, 18 year olds are going off just days after graduating high school, a hundred at a time, to a place where the drinking age is 18, and they're a little lax on checking IDs at the bar.

It's essentially beach at day, party at night, and their parents don't see the potential for problems. I don't care if your kid is an honor student, a "good kid." That's what they've said about Natalee, and she was out partying at a local bar until 1:30am, when she left with three local guys she had just met, and the missing-girl story began.

Why would she do that?

Because 18 year olds are idiots. I was, you were, they all are. At 18, you're told you're "an adult," and given some adult responsibilities, but you don't really know what it's like to live in the grown-up world yet. You think you do, you think you know everything, but you don't. Many of these kids are away from home for the first time without adult supervision -- I don't care how many chaperones there are, they can't keep track of a hundred 18 year olds! -- and, even if they're not looking for trouble, it will find them.

Given the chance, your average teen wants to act cooler, richer, and older (which is not the same as more mature) than they really are. A co-worker pointed out to me Tuesday that trips to places like this used to be activities reserved for the upper-class or for adults who had saved for years. But now we have an entire middle-class generation of kids who have been influenced by MTV's
outrageous spring break antics and the lifestyles of Paris Hilton and her ilk, with parents willing to pay the freight so their kids aren't left out.

That's not to say that kids shouldn't go away at 18, whether it's off to college, or to do some domestic or international travel, or to enjoy a vacation. But when you send your kid off to a place where there's very little to do besides hang out in the sun until night falls and the parties begin, you're being naive to think that your little darling won't get caught up in the "fun."

Or don't you remember what you were like at 18?

Paul Harris"

I just talked to someone on Aruba and the case is causing quite a bit of commotion there as well. Locals and tourists are helping in the search for the missing girl and everyone is feeling for her family and friends.

Don't know if you have ever been there but it is generally considered one of the safest places in the Caribbean. Nothing much ever happens on Aruba. I have been there quite a few times and I have never felt unsafe. It is called "One Happy Island" for a reason!

I guess it shows that bad things can happen in good places too.

I am really concerned though, it is such a small island, with only so many places to hide so you would think that if she were alive, they would have found her by now.

Not ready to give up hope just yet though.....

High school kids have NO business being at Carlos 'N Charlie's until 1:30. There's an incredible amount of drinking that goes on there, lots of flashes of nudity and general debauchery.

Carlos 'N Charlie's is fun, but I was 23 when I was there. Not graduating high school

I don't know who the chaperones were, but you can bet the girls parents will be trying their damndest to have them also held liable

Arrested teen had met Holloway day before she vanished

Friday, June 10, 2005 Posted: 9:05 AM EDT (1305 GMT)

ORANJESTAD, Aruba (CNN) -- A teen being held in connection with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway met the Alabama student at her hotel's casino a day before she vanished, according to police.

Juron Van Der Sloot -- the teenage son of an Aruban judge -- was among three people taken into custody early Thursday. Two brothers, Satish and Depak Kalpoe, were also arrested.

Authorities have said the three were the last ones seen with Holloway, 18, when she left Carlos 'N Charlie's, a popular nightclub in Oranjestad, about 1:30 a.m. on May 30.

Also Thursday, authorities said the investigation has spread beyond Aruba -- with police forces in nearby South America contacted. They did not say where those forces were or why they were contacted.

Police said Van Der Sloot met Holloway on May 29 at the casino in the Holiday Inn where she was staying with classmates who had traveled to Aruba to celebrate their high school graduation.

Holly Brown, a friend who accompanied Holloway to Aruba and was at Carlos 'N Charlie's the night she disappeared, said she found Van Der Sloot to be "very different."

"We noticed he was in the casino all by himself," she told CNN in Alabama. "He lied about his age, and when we went on the (Carlos 'N Charlie's) Web site, we found pictures of him there one week before at the same place, wearing the same clothes."

Police interviewed Van Der Sloot and the two brothers shortly after the disappearance was reported, but they waited until Thursday to take them into custody. At their homes Thursday, police confiscated various items, including a computer and a car believed to have been the one Holloway left the nightclub in.

Link

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New article (didn't want to post three times in a row :) ):

Ala. Teen Went to Aruba Beach With Student
By MICHAEL NORTON, Associated Press Writer
46 minutes ago

ORANJESTAD, Aruba - A missing Alabama honors student went to an Aruban beach with a Dutch teen the night she disappeared and had sexual contact with him in the car, a defense lawyer representing one of five men arrested in the case said Friday.

Natalee Holloway, 18, drove with the Dutch teen and two Surinamese brothers to Arashi beach, on the northern part of the island, Noraina Pietersz, a court-appointed lawyer representing one of two former security guards arrested in the case, told The Associated Press. Pietersz read from testimony given to police by the two brothers last week.

Five people — the Dutch student, two Surinamese brothers and two former security guards — have been arrested in the disappearance of Holloway, who was last seen in the early hours of May 30. She was in Aruba celebrating her graduation from high school in Mountain Brook, Ala.

Holloway disappeared hours before she was to take a flight home. Police found her passport and packed bags in her hotel room.

Authorities have not said Holloway was a victim of foul play and have not ruled out any possibilities, including that she may have drowned.

"We think she's alive," said Holloway's stepmother, Robin Holloway, who added that authorities told the family they had expanded the search to other nearby islands.

After Holloway and the three men went to the beach, they drove her back to her hotel, where she stumbled and was approached by a man wearing a security guard uniform, another defense attorney, David Kock, told the AP.

His comments came after Holloway's stepfather, George "Jug" Twitty, told the AP she met the Dutch student in the casino of her hotel and flirted with him two days before she disappeared.

Aruba Prime Minister Nelson Oduber said finding Holloway was the "No. 1 goal" on the Dutch Caribbean island, where volunteers, police, coast guard officers and Dutch soldiers continued their search Friday.

Twitty told the AP he met with the Dutch teen and Surinamese brothers early Tuesday, and they told him they were with his stepdaughter at Carlos'N Charlie's nightclub restaurant Sunday night, shortly before she disappeared.

The men said Holloway had been dancing and flirting with the Dutch teen, the son of a high-ranking Dutch judicial official in Aruba, before they dropped her at the hotel, Twitty said.

She was drunk and stumbled when she tried to get out of the car, the boys told him. When the Dutch teen tried to help her she refused, saying, "I can stand on my own," the men told Twitty.

He said the meeting was arranged by the police.

Link to rest of article

As far as why would someone leave the bar with a total stranger and why would her friends allow it . . . ?

Thats a little naive.

I know literally hundreds of girls that have done it and no one ended up dead or hurt. The worst they usually had was a one night stand they could relate to their friends as a good story later.

And lets be honest, unless you are a paranoid, if you stop your friend from leaving with a guy at a bar its usually to prevent her from getting laid. For whatever reasons girls like to do that.

James, the key phrase that is in your statement is "a total stranger". Natalee left with three total strangers. A key phrase that's missing from your statement is "While in a foreign country". I don't care that Aruba is Where Happiness Lives!

A good friend - be the friend of the age of consent or not - would have AT LEAST asked her if she knew what she was doing and checked to see how drunk she was - and stopped her if she wasn't in control of her faculties.

Put this all together, and you have a drunk high school girl, in a foreign country, who left with three men. This is NOT a formula for a Romantic Evening to Remember!!

Well, one of the suspects has apparently confessed to killing Natalee.

The girl's dead.

ETA: CNN's taking back what they initially reported -- saying that one of the suspects just said that "something bad happened to the girl".

Still, she's probably dead.

I gotta agree with HC on this.

Seriously, I'm a grown ass adult man and I wouldnt even get in the car with some locals. I dont care if they were offering cake, a local tour, and all the sex I could want. Ya just dont do it. SIsnt her parent sa warn her about thi sstuff? So now its the US governments fault or concern becasue THEY dint educate hear about precautions she should take, like not being a dumb ass. So if I am a fucking tard, I should expect the government to send 200 FBI agenst to start the search for me.

Seriously, and this is the harshest thing I have ever said on GC, its darwinsm and she got what she deserved. If she was dumb enough to get in a car with some locals, than whatever happend is her fault. EXCEPTION: if the toxicology results show she was drugged than I can understand. Booze is her fault tho. I've been hella drunk. Thats no excuse. We go to mexico here all the time and ya take extra percautions because its another country. Ya really use the buddy system, ya make friends and dont leave anywhere without your partner. If stupid ass alabamans and their inept chaperones couldnt figure that out, they had no business taking students there.

Hooker is dead. Its her parents and chaperones fault.

I'l be in Cancun in November and AGAIN, am a grown ass man and wouldnt get in a car with a local. I'm not a fucking IDIOT.

i had a good friend in high school and college who wouldn't listen to any of her friends. we would go out at night, and then when we were ready to leave, we'd realize she was nowhere to be found because she had left with a guy. there was no way for us to get through to her. she made us worry one too many times so we stopped going out with her. i still speak with her, but we haven't gone out together in several years. natalie may have been the same way--headstrong and stupid.

i really don't understand why high school seniors need to go to aruba as a senior trip, especially with only a handful of chaperones. haven't they ever heard of disney world or the beach??

for a girl who was in the honors program and given a full ride to a university, she was not too smart. they were saying that she was spotted kissing in a car and doing "other" things.

this morning on the news, it looks like there is a confession that she was killed.

Why does it matter that she was in a foreign country? I wouldn't do what she did in my own hometown--Mayberry on the Gulf of Mexico. You don't go off with strangers anywhere. True, her guard should have been up considerably in another country, but a young woman should be careful at all times.

Like PM Mama said, things have changed a lot. The HS I graduated from just sponsored a trip to Cancun for the graduates--not something that happened for my class! Also, Mountain Brook, where Natalee is from, is the most affluent area of Birmingham. I wouldn't be surprised if all of these kids were all very well-traveled.

I'm sorry if this has been answered before, but was this trip affiliated with the school in any way? Or did a gang of people just get together, decide to go and some parents decided to be chaperones?

If it's the latter, I hope that they stop referring to it as a "senior trip" - it makes it look like it was sanctioned by the school when it wasn't. And not that teachers are perfect but I would guess they have more experience chaperoning a bunch of kids than some random parents who were probably having some fun themselves. This was a disaster waiting to happen.

From what I'd read, it's not like she just met the guys that night -- she'd been hanging out with them all week. Thus, her classmates probably wouldn't be too alarmed by her leaving with them. Furthermore, it is not her classmates' responsibility to take care of her drunk ass. For all we know, they could have been just as drunk or drunker than she was -- or she could have disappeared while their backs were turned for a split-second. Any of you who have ever tried to watch out for a drunk 18-year-old will understand how tricky they can be. Hell, I've been that drunk 18-year-old. And even if she had gone somewhere with a friend, I doubt that would have prevented ANYTHING -- you'd probably just be looking at two dead teenage girls instead of one. Yeah, great idea.

Holding the chaperones liable is equally stupid -- unless, of course, they didn't do their job. But did any of you actually go on high school trips? It's not like sneaking out after room check is unheard of. I also don't think that leaving the country when one of your kids is missing is that weird. I don't know how many people were on this trip, but can you imagine forcing them all to pay for new tickets home just because one kid went missing? I can see -- maybe -- one chaperone staying behind, but that's it, and even that's a stretch. When I went on high school trips, we signed contracts to the effect of, "If I'm not there when the transportation leaves, it is not the school's fault and I will have to find my own way home, etc." I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case here. You can't hold up a whole trip worth of high school kids -- at their financial loss -- because one of the kids was being irresponsible and didn't show up.

At the end, there is no one to blame but Natalee. (I was going to say "and her parents for not realizing that she wasn't mature enough to be on a trip like this," but the girl was 18 -- they couldn't have stopped her from going.) Does that mean I don't feel for her? Of course not. I don't go home with random men, but I've still done plenty of stupid shit while drunk that could have gotten me into equal amounts of trouble, and let's face it -- if you drink regularly, you probably have too, regardless of whether or not you go home with strange men. Like James said, it's pretty naive to say this is a horrible decision when plenty of women do it all the time with no thought to the consequences. So it was in a foreign country? How does that make a difference? I don't think the streets of Pittsburgh are inherently safer than those in Aruba . . .

To sum up -- it's not her friends' fault. It's not the chaperones' fault. It's not her parents' fault. It's her own damn fault. She made a mistake, and she paid dearly for it. A nice little moral lesson for everyone tied up in a neat little bow.

I don't think it was necessarily HER fault. Who knows if those guys drugged her drinks? I don't think anyone can say until they find out what happened.

I feel so badly for her family.... I saw her mom and dad on 2020 last night, and I have to say I really admire their perseverance. Also they said wonderful things about the Arubian people despite this whole ordeal. I don't think I would be that big of a person in the same situation....

Oh, I agree it's ultimately her fault - I just am stating that (although kids do sneak out and such) I wouldn't trust my kid with someone who's not used to taking care of large groups of high school kids on such a trip. Then again, if my kid asked to go to Aruba for senior trip, I would probably say "you're going to Kennywood and you'll like it. Now STFU."

I agree that anyone who doesn't think that anything that happened to Natalee was ultimately her fault is terribly naive - but I do think that there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say, "If only I had stopped her," for the rest of their lives. When someone one knows is a victim of a crime, and you are even remotely involved (seeing them go off with someone, not answering their text message, etc), one can't help but feel even worse about it.

The contracts we signed at my school said that we would be at wherever the bus to the airport would be waiting, or we would be responsible for holding up the whole trip. In other words, if one person was late, the whole tour would be held up, and the guilty party would suffer the consequences. Different schools do things differently, and at this time, none of us know what was in Natalee's contract.

As for a foreign country, I could have easily said a different city. No matter what anyone thinks, only people who have worked for Mapquest or Rand McNally or such know every neighborhood, even in their own hometown. What was she there, a week? I doubt very much that she knew Aruba so freaking well that she knew where she'd be safe and where she wouldn't. Yes, her guard should have been up the entire time she was there - I find it incredible that someone would think I thought otherwise!

OK, this really rubbed me the wrong way.... You can't possibly blame an entire island because of what a few individuals did.
That is the same as Europe holding the entire USA, or the entire state of Florida responsible, for the European tourists that were killed there in the early/mid nineties. (I think they were mainly Germans).

Like I said earlier. The island is truly feeling for her family and friends, and why wouldn't they? Wouldn't you feel terrible if anyone from out of town disappeared, and is feared dead where you live?

If my daughter went a a foreign country and was probably murdered, and then the govt. was more worried about what it would do to their tourism then getting down to the investigation, and then govt. officials kept releasing information and retracting everything they said, yeah I'd probably hate that country. I'm sorry if that angers you, but at least I am honest.

That is completely bogus, especially since the parents of the girl are NOT having any problems with the authorities on Aruba so your point is completely besides the issue!

Are you seriously making shit up and pulling it outta your ass and then posting it onto GC?

I don't think I've ever heard her parents, family, friends, and loved ones talk bad about the Dutch government at all. All I keep hearing is that they were "working closely" to get some answers.

I also can't recall a time when any reporter, be it CNN, MSNBC, the AP, mentioned that the Dutch government was just trying to save their asses to protect their industry.

Keep in mind that we're most definitely not hearing the whole story...but that doesn't mean the same for the Holloways. They probably know more than we do because the Dutch government's disclosing more info to them in order to protect the progress of the case.

Unless you can provide us with some proof, I'd suggest that you not make shit up. Just because you'd go apeshit and you don't agree with how things are being handled, you really don't have the authority to assume that the Dutch government (not the Aruban government, because there IS non) isn't doing everything they can to assist the Holloways just so they can protect their tourism. :rolleyes:

The people of Aruba will continue to enjoy a profitable tourism industry for many more years, regardless of the outcome of the Holloway case.

Okay hold up! I'm not trying to "make things up" or make anyone mad. It was MY perception that the the Aruban govt was downplaying the seriousness of her dissappearance when the reports first surfaced. My perception is not fact, and I am sorry if I made anyone angry. I won't post about it anymore, period.