Natalee hunt yields remains
Remains in Aruba might be Natalee Holloway’s
HUMAN REMAINS have been discovered in the long-unsolved disappearance of Natalee Holloway.
Holloway, 18, was with friends on a post-high-school trip to Aruba in 2005 when she vanished — leaving her heartbroken loved ones wondering for years what happened to her.
Speculation landed almost immediately on Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch national last seen with the Alabama teen at a tourist bar on the Caribbean isle, and has swirled around him ever since. Now information from a friend of one of his friends may finally break in the case.
Holloway’s father, Dave, and private investigator T.J. Ward said Wednesday on NBC that the information led to the discovery of remains that have been confirmed as human.
They’re now being DNA-tested to determine whether they are Holloway’s.
“We’ve chased a lot of leads and this one is by far the most credible lead I’ve seen in the last 12 years,” Dave Holloway told NBC, showing hope that the mystery that’s tormented him for more than a decade may be coming to a close.
He said the discovery was the result of an 18-month investigation with Ward — a search that was documented for an Oxygen TV show that debuts Saturday.
Previous theories posited that Holloway’s body was hidden in a construction site or dumped in the sea. A previous informant told “Inside Edition” two years ago that he saw Holloway being chased into a building by van der Sloot, who emerged a short while later carrying her in his arms. But his story was discounted when an investigation showed the building didn’t yet exist. The new informant, a man Oxygen identified only as Gabriel, said the lost teen was buried at an Aruban park.
Gabriel said he lived with a friend of van der Sloot’s named John, who relayed that Holloway began foaming at the mouth and died after being given a date-rape drug.
Gabriel’s account claims van der Sloot’s father, who was training to be a judge at the time, was also involved in the burial.
Van der Sloot is serving a sentence of nearly 30 years in a Peruvian prison for the murder of a young woman there.
The now 30-year-old admitted to police in 2010 that he strangled Stephany Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room after she learned of his connection to Holloway’s disappearance.
A transcript of Van der Sloot’s confession shows he said he could give information about the Aruba case to police in exchange for a deal on the Peru killing. Peruvian authorities rebuffed the offer.
Federal prosecutors in the United States also filed charges against Van der Sloot in 2010, alleging he tried to extort money from Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, by giving her false information about the whereabouts of her daughter's remains.
We’ve chased a lot of leads and this one is by far the most credible lead I’ve seen in the last 12 years. — Dave Holloway