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Skriven 2010-07-28 14:30:26 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
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Ärende: Joran Van Der Sloot's Story Unravels.
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Remembering Natalee Holloway's Case as Joran Van Der Sloot's Story
Unravels

July 27, 2010

What started as a fairy tale graduation trip ended in tragedy for Natalee
Holloway, whose disappearance sparked an international media frenzy and
five years of ongoing investigation by U.S., Aruban, and Dutch officials.
Holloway's parents have never given up hope that answers will be found.

Natalee Holloway graduated on May 24, 2005, from Mountain Brook High
School in Mountain Brook, Ala. She joined 124 of her classmates and seven
chaperones on an unofficial graduation trip to Aruba. Witnesses say
members of the group were drinking and partying during most of the trip.

Natalee was last seen leaving a popular restaurant and nightclub, Carlos'
n Charlie's, with three young men who lived on the island. She did not
show up for her flight on May 30. Shortly after the missed flight, the
investigation into her disappearance began. A massive search of the island
and surrounding waters continued for almost a month. Volunteers from the
island and the United States searched the coastline. The Dutch Marines and
three F-16s from the Royal Netherlands Air Force equipped with infrared
technology continued the search. A pond near the hotel where she stayed
was partially drained to search for her remains. All of these efforts
turned up nothing.

Ten suspects were arrested during the investigation, and three of them
were arrested several times. Each was released when it was determined
there was insufficient evidence to hold them. Three of the suspects -
Joran Van der Sloot, Deepak Kalpoe, and Satish Kalpoe - remained at the
top of the list throughout the investigation and were arrested and
released several times. These three were the young men seen leaving the
night club with Holloway. They presented a unified front at first, all
telling the same story. However, as time passed, the stories changed and
the focus shifted to Van der Sloot. Some of the other seven suspects,
including Van der Sloot's father, were implicated by these three during
different stages of the investigation.

Prosecutor Hans Mos declared the case closed with no charges filed on Dec.
18, 2007, because there was a lack of evidence. The Kalpoes and Van der
Sloot were still people of interest in the case, but they were no longer
legally suspects. That should have been the end of the story.

The case continued to attract media attention due to the high profile it
had garnered when it was open and its unsolved status. Dutch crime
reporter Peter R. de Vries stated that he had solved the case and would
make his solution public on a special television broadcast on Feb. 3,
2008. The program included clips of footage shot by hidden cameras of Van
der Sloot and Patrick Van der Eem, talking in a car while smoking
marijuana, which included Van der Sloot's admission that he was with
Holloway on the beach when she began convulsing and died. He also stated
that he called a friend who told Van der Sloot to go home while he
disposed of the body.

On Feb. 1, 2008, the Aruba prosecutor's office announced the reopening of
the Holloway case after hearing a report of the confession. Van der Sloot
retracted his statement, claiming it was the marijuana talking and that
the confession was a lie. The friend Van der Sloot mentioned in the video
stated that he was at school in Rotterdam at the time of Natalee's
disappearance. The prosecutor's office tried to obtain an arrest warrant
based on the taped confession, but the court ruled that the statements
were inconsistent with evidence already obtained in the case. Van der
Sloot met with Aruban officials in the Netherlands but denied the
statements on the tape and maintained that he left Holloway on the beach
by herself.

Van der Sloot once again entered the spotlight in November of 2008 when he
alleged, during an interview with On the Record, that he sold Holloway
into sex slavery in a Venezualan human trafficking ring. He stated that he
received $10,000 when she was taken and another $10,000 later to keep
quiet. He claimed he shared $1,000 with each of the Kalpoe brothers to
keep them quiet. He also alleged that his father knew of his involvement
in the trafficking and paid $50,000 to two Aruban police officers who
learned of this deal. Van der Sloot offered an audio clip to the
interviewer, claiming it was a conversation between him and his father. In
the clip, his father expressed knowledge of his son's involvement in human
trafficking. The clip was later repudiated, and authorities believe that
the "father's" voice was actually Van der Sloot talking in a much lower
tone. This story did reignite interest in the father, but the elder Van
der Sloot died of a heart attack on Feb. 10, 2010.

The search reopened on March 9, 2009, when Dave Holloway, the victim's
father, flew a search dog to Aruba to explore a small marshy area that was
supposedly identified by a witness as a possible location of Holloway's
remains. The search, like so many others, was fruitless. After reports by
an American couple snorkeling off the coast raised the possibility of
finding remains, the Aruban officials once again conducted underwater
searches but came up empty.

Imagine a Peruvian mugshot of van der Sloot here.

On March 29, 2010, Van der Sloot, reportedly desperate for money,
contacted John Q. Kelly, legal counsel for Beth Twitty (Holloway) and
offered to reveal the location of her daughter's body for $250,000. He
requested an advance of $25,000, with the remainder expected after she
received the information. The FBI set up a $15,000 transfer to his account
in the Netherlands and delivered $10,000 cash to him via Kelly. The
information provided proved to be false, and the body was still not
located. The U.S. Justice Department obtained an arrest warrant and
transmitted it to Interpol after Van der Sloot was charged with extortion
and wire fraud on June 3, 2010. He was indicted on those charges on June
30.

In an eerie turn of events, on the five-year anniversary of Holloway's
disappearance, Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramirez, a 21-year-old business
student, was reported missing in Lima, Peru. She was found three days
later in a hotel room reserved in Van der Sloot's name. He was found in
Chile on June 3, arrested, and deported to Peru. He admitted to killing
Flores Ramirez when he found her looking at information on his laptop.
This information allegedly linked him to Holloway's disappearance. He also
told Peruvian police during his interrogation that he would help the
Aruban officials locate the remains of Holloway.  The Peruvian police
tried to steer the questions away from this case and toward their own
investigation. On June 11, 2010, Van der Sloot was charged with
first-degree murder and robbery in Lima Superior Court.

He is being held in the maximum security prison Miguel Castro Castro in
the San Juan de Lurigancho district while he awaits trial. It is reported
that he fears for his life in the prison, leading some to speculate that
his cooperation with Aruban officials may be a ploy to be moved to Aruba.
However, this new information makes Aruban and U.S. officials hopeful that
this case will come to a close soon. The U.S. is also working on the
details of a possible extradition on extortion and wire-fraud charges once
Peru is finished with him.

About the author:

David Lohr has been writing about crime and criminals for over 15 years.
Readers and critics alike regard Mr. Lohr as one of the most prominent
crime writers of the 21st century.

http://tiny.cc/lqtja


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