Natalee Holloway: recent news

Some of the new evidence is pretty interesting, but apparently it is still not enough yet. Except for the underwater search there doesn't seem to be much happening in Natalee's case right now (it has been closed, after all), so most of this is basically opinions and retrospection.

From http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/12/21/holloway.case/index.html?section=cnn_latest:

updated 10:19 a.m. EST, Fri December 21, 2007
Holloway case in 'new phase,' prosecutor
says
ORANJESTAD, Aruba (CNN) -- The investigation into the disappearance of
Natalee Holloway is not closed but has entered a new phase, as four detectives
continue to look for evidence, Aruba's chief public prosecutor says.
Charges
were dropped against Joran van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe,
prosecutor Hans Mos said, not because he didn't have a case but because he
couldn't be sure of a conviction.
The decision not to prosecute doesn't mean
"there is not a file in which these three people are primary persons of
interest," Mos told CNN.
He said his office remains determined to find the
truth. "We believe justice will prevail one day, but we cannot force that right
now."
Mos on Thursday laid out the evidence authorities have in the Alabama
teenager's disappearance on May 30, 2005.
In an Internet chat shortly after
Holloway vanished, one of the three suspects said she was dead, Mos said.
The chat, retrieved from a computer hard disk, was among new evidence
prosecutors used to justify re-arresting the three in November, he said.
New
technology that was not available in 2005 was used to find that chat and more
between two of the three suspects, as well as others, he said.
Judges,
however, ruled the new evidence was not enough to keep the suspects behind
bars.
In the chat, Mos told CNN's Susan Candiotti, one of the suspects said,
"The fact that she's dead is not good," referring to Holloway.
Other chats
written before May 30 were also found, in which the suspects discussed "picking
up American girls and what they plan to do with them," Mos said. Such chats gave
authorities an idea of how the suspects operated, he said.
But, he said,
authorities did not find any further discussion of Holloway's death or how she
died. "If we had that, we would have been much further [along] than we are now,"
Mos said.
Other evidence against the three included two new witness
statements. In one, a female friend told authorities that one suspect called her
about five hours after Holloway was last seen leaving an Oranjestad, Aruba, nightclub with van der Sloot and the Kalpoes.
The female friend said that she could tell during the conversation that
something was wrong, Mos said. When she asked about it, the suspect -- whom Mos
did not name -- told her that "he didn't want to cause her any trouble, and that
what had happened couldn't be discussed over the phone," he said.
Police
wanted to ask the suspect what he meant by that statement, he said, but after
their re-arrest, all three men exercised their right to remain silent and
refused to speak to authorities. See a timeline of how the case has developed »
A second
witness statement came from a teacher who said that another one of the suspects
exhibited "very peculiar behavior" the day after Holloway's disappearance,
including making or receiving a lot of telephone calls, Mos said.
A fourth
piece of new evidence came when authorities bugged the Kalpoe home in June and
picked up a conversation about what happened that night, he said, but did not
elaborate.
Holloway, 18, disappeared while visiting Aruba with about
100 classmates celebrating their graduation from Mountain Brook High School in
suburban Birmingham, Alabama, and was last seen leaving the nightclub with the
three suspects.
All three suspects were arrested and released in the case in
2005. They were rearrested November 21, with authorities citing new and
incriminating evidence against them.
In freeing the Kalpoes from jail
November 30, judges from Aruba's Court of Appeal wrote that there was no
evidence that Holloway died as a result of a violent crime or that the suspects
were involved in such a crime. Using similar reasoning, a judge released van der
Sloot a week later.
All three have maintained their innocence. The Kalpoes
have told police they dropped Holloway and van der Sloot off near a lighthouse
on the northern tip of the island after leaving the nightclub. Van der Sloot's
mother, Anita, has said her son told her he was on the beach with Holloway but
left her there because she wanted to stay.
What authorities needed, Mos said,
was for at least one of the three to explain what happened that night. That's
why, he said, his office went to the expense of transferring van der Sloot from
the Netherlands, where he is attending college, after arresting him again in
November -- out of hopes that he might talk.
"You never know whether a person
two years later will, yes or no, open up," he said.
Mos acknowledged the new
evidence against the three was circumstantial, and arresting them again may have
been a long shot, but "we had to give it a shot."
"I would never have
forgiven myself," he said, and never would have been able to answer the question
"Why didn't you even try?" given the new evidence.
"And that's exactly what
we did. I'd rather give it a try and not succeed than not give it a try at all.
We gave it everything we got. We cannot torture these three guys and make them
tell what happened."

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071222/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/aruba_missing_teen_1:

Defense response to Aruban prosecutors
By MARGARET WEVER, Associated
Press Writer Fri Dec 21, 9:19 PM ET
ORANJESTAD, Aruba - A suspect in the
disappearance of Natalee Holloway never mentioned her death in an online chat,
his lawyer said Friday, contradicting Aruban prosecutors who called the comment
key new evidence in the case.
The chat log fell far short of justifying the
arrest of Deepak Kalpoe, one of three men seen with the American teen the night
of her disappearance, said attorney Ronald Wix.
A court in the Dutch
Caribbean island agreed and quickly released Kalpoe, along with brother Satish
and a third suspect, Joran van der Sloot. Now, authorities should leave the
three men alone, Wix told reporters.
"If they as much as look at our clients
too long, we'll take them to court," said Wix, who also represents Satish
Kalpoe.
The three suspects were seen leaving a bar with Holloway on the final
night of her high school graduation trip to the island.
Aruban prosecutors
detailed the chat log for the first time Thursday, saying it was a key clue that
they hoped would break open the long-stalled investigation. The men did not
speak with investigators while detained and a judge ordered their release for
lack of evidence.
Upon their release, authorities said they had reached a
dead end after two years of pursuing fruitless searches and leads, though they
could still prosecute the men if they uncover evidence.
In discussing the
online chat, prosecutor Hans Mos told reporters that one of the suspects — he
did not disclose which — wrote that Holloway, 18 at the time of disappearance,
was dead. He also said Internet messages among two suspects discussed meeting
drunk American girls in Aruba.
Wix said the prosecution misinterpreted Deepak
Kalpoe's Internet chats.
The 24-year-old native of Suriname in fact told a
friend he was upset and thought it was stupid of him to let Holloway, whom he
called a drunk stranger, get into his car, the attorney said.
Kalpoe then
commented on the death of a tennis teacher who drowned in Aruba almost three
years ago. When prosecutors translated his writing from Papiamento to Dutch,
they substituted 'the death' to 'her death,' and assumed he was talking about
Holloway, Wix said. Most Arubans speak Papiamento, a Creole language that has
absorbed words from Spanish, Dutch, English and Portuguese.
Mos was on
vacation Friday and could not be reached for a response. Another prosecutor, Dop
Kruimel, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
Holloway
vanished May 30, 2005, hours before she was to return home to Mountain Brook,
Alabama. Extensive searches of the island turned up no trace of her, but the
Aruban prosecutors have said they believe she is dead — though without a body
they admit a prosecution would be difficult.
Van der Sloot has said he
dropped Holloway off at the beach and all three suspects have denied any
involvement in her disappearance.

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071223/ap_on_re_eu/netherlands_aruba_missing_teen_1:

Holloway case suspect regrets no trial
Sun Dec 23, 6:29 PM ET
AMSTERDAM,
Netherlands - A former suspect in the disappearance in Aruba of American
teenager Natalee Holloway told a Dutch newspaper he regretted that he was not
formally prosecuted for any crime.
Dutch teen Joran van der Sloot, 20, was
re-arrested in Aruba in November for a new interrogation about Holloway's
disappearance in 2005. But public prosecutors on the island closed their
investigation Dec. 18, saying they believed Holloway was dead but they did not
have enough evidence to prosecute van der Sloot or two other former
suspects.
"I would have liked to have seen a trial so that everything could
be out in the open," van der Sloot told newspaper DAG in his first public
remarks since being released on Dec. 7. The newspaper published excerpts from
the interview Sunday. DAG spokesman Bob Witman said the interview was conducted
via e-mail with van der Sloot in Aruba, where he is currently staying.
All
three suspects denied any involvement in Holloway's disappearance.
Van der
Sloot denied there was any new evidence to prompt his arrest again last month,
as prosecutors had asserted.
"There was no new evidence at all," he told the
paper. "Dutch detectives tried to get me to talk for 15 days. They told me that
Natalee was dead."
Prosecutors say their new evidence was a statement by one
of the suspects during a tapped Internet chat in which he said Holloway was
dead. But defense lawyers denied that.
Van der Sloot said he believed his
latest arrest was intended to please American media.
"I've been declared
guilty without any factual evidence and I'm left to prove my innocence," he told
the paper.
Prosecutors said as things stand, the case can be reactivated if
"serious" new evidence emerges. Reactivating the case would be impossible
however if they were to prosecute and fail, due to rules against double
jeopardy.
Holloway was on a high school graduation trip to the island when
she vanished May 30, 2005, hours before she was to return home to Mountain
Brook, Ala. Extensive searches of the island turned up no trace of her.
The
three former suspects, who are the last people known to have seen her, initially
said they dropped Holloway off at her hotel.
After hotel security cameras
disproved that, they were arrested and van der Sloot said he left her alone on a
beach and had no idea how she disappeared.

If you know what happened to Natalee, please call the FBI tipline at 1-877-628-2533.

For more news, don't forget to check out the Search for Natalee Holloway blog at http://nholloway.blogspot.com/. The team will soon be starting the ROV (remote operated vehicle) dives.

Natalee's website: http://www.allpointsbulletin.org/Natalee_Holloway.html
Another blog about Natalee: http://blogsfornatalee.com/