Police deny report of confession over teenager missing in Aruba
ORANJESTAD, Aruba – The news from a police chief – later denied – that “something bad happened” to a missing Alabama honors student when three young men took her to the beach fueled tension and rumors Saturday, forcing the woman’s family to announce that no body had been found.
Natalee Holloway’s family rushed late Friday to California lighthouse, an old stone beacon beside Arisha beach where three young men arrested in the case said they took the 18-year-old in the early hours of May 30, after a night of dancing and drinking.
“I knew she wasn’t there,” said her step-uncle Tom “Jar” Twitty, who went to the lighthouse after the statement from Deputy Police Commissioner Gerold Dompig. Dompig told the Associated Press that one of three young men arrested in the case admitted “something bad happened” to Holloway and was leading police to the scene.
But no one has been charged in the case, and statements later Saturday seemed to leave the investigation where it was several days ago.
A statement from the office of Attorney General Caren Janssen late Saturday said “Information given by non-official sources jeopardizes the ongoing investigation and creates expectations and situations that are not based on fact.”
Holloway vanished hours before she was expected at the airport to end a five-day trip to the Dutch Caribbean island with 124 classmates and seven chaperones celebrating their graduation from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, Ala. Her U.S. passport and packed bags were found in her hotel room.
Police refused to say Saturday whether they discovered anything that would lead to Holloway, who was last seen in the early hours of May 30.
Referring to Dompig’s statement, prosecution spokeswoman Vivian van der Biezen said Saturday: “We neither confirm nor deny any information coming from other sources … (about) alleged statements of suspects in this case.”
The night Holloway disappeared, she spent part of the evening partying at a restaurant and then in the back seat of a car kissing a 17-year-old Dutch student, according to lawyers quoting from testimony from two Surinamese brothers – friends of the Dutch boy – arrested in the case along with him.
Antonio Carlo, the lawyer representing the Dutch minor, said he is confident his client is “100 percent innocent.”
“My client has not confessed to any crime,” he told the Associated Press.
Police also have detained two other men – former security guards at a hotel near the one where Holloway was staying.
One of their court-appointed lawyers, Noraina Pietersz, said her client also was innocent.
“Five suspects are being held,” van der Biezen said. “We are at a very crucial, very important moment in our investigation.”
Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, is feeling the strain, her brother-in-law told the AP on Saturday morning. Tom “Jar” Twitty said: “She has had amazing stamina up until now.”
Holloway’s family believes she is alive, Tom Twitty said. Rumors that she is dead are “an aggressive interpretation” of what police are saying, he told the Associated Press.
Prime Minister Nelson Oduber said on national radio Friday night that if something happened to Holloway, it would damage the reputation of this island of 97,000 people, which depends on tourism and is considered one of the safest spots in the Caribbean.