Natalee Holloway - Case Discussion Extended Thread 4

PVDS = Paulus (Paul) van der Sloot (Joran's Father)
AVDS = Anita van der Sloot (Joran's Mother)
JVDS = Joran van der Sloot - 17 year old suspect
DK = Deepak Kalpoe - 21 year old suspect
SK = Satish Kalpoe - 19 year old suspect
MSM = Main Stream Media
Beth or BT = Beth Twitty (Natalee's Mother)
Jug or JT = Jug Twitty (Natalee's Step-Father - married to Beth)
Nat or NH = Natalee Holloway
GVS = Greta Van Susteren (FOX)
VDS = van der Sloot
LE = Law Enforcement
SG or SG's = Security Guards
MJ = Mickey John's (Security Guard)
SC = Steve Croes (Boat Deejay)
CC = Charles Croes (Owns Rental Cell Phone Co)
BOR = Bill O'Reilly (FOX)
NG = Nancy Grace (CNN)
HNN = Headline News Network
CNN = Cable News Network

Transcript: Greta in Aruba
INTERVIEW WITH NADIRA RAMIREZ, SATISH AND DEEPAK KALPOE'S MOTHER
INTERVIEW WITH ANITA VAN DER SLOOT BEFORE PAULUS VAN DER SLOOT IS ARRESTED
INTERVIEW WITH RUFO SOLOGNIER, STEVE CROES' UNCLE
This is a partial transcript from "On the Record," June 23, 2005

Tragic Trip?
This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," June 15, 2005

Some case info to go along with this map...
(as far as I know this is all correct)

B-1 = California Lighthouse - where the boys claim they took her first after leaving the Bar.

D-3 = #4 is the location of the 2 Marriott Hotels - where the 2 brothers (and now Joran) claim they dropped Joran and Natalee off after leaving the lighthouse - the 2 brothers claim they went home to Hooiberg after that.

D-3 = #19 is the location of the Holiday Inn where Natalee was staying.

G-5 = Where the red #2 marker is pointing to is the area that the Carlos & Charlie Bar is located

D-4 = Township of Montana is where Joran lives

F-7/8 = Hooiberg (Haystack Mountain) - The 2 Kalpoe brothers live in this area at the foot of the Haystack Mountian.

C-9 = By the Natural Bridge on the map is the location where the sharks hang out as they are fed at this location. This is the Shark Infested Feeding Area.

E-3 = Wetland in the Bird Sanctuary is the location where they found the Condoms/Condom Wrappers - Duct Tape (looked like black electrical tape to me) - Female Flowered Panties - and a String or Strap from a Bikini or Halter Top.

I am asking that everyone either post just a link to the pictures they wish to share or reduce the size of the picture when you use the img src tag.

This will help greatly for us who are on Dial-up.

Examples

Just a link to a picture like this...(this is the simplest method)
http://www.arubavacationhouse.com/images/arubamap.gif

or reduce this image size like this (you need to know HTML to do it this way)

Just a reminder that...
THIS IS A NO LARGE
PICTURE POSTING THREAD
(please do not post large pictures on the thread - small pictures are fine - as well simple links to the pictures)

This is a discussion thread about the daily occurrences in the Natalee Holloway Case.
It is located in "Chat" on Free Republic
It is not a thread for bashing Natalee - Natalee's Family or Natalee's Friends.
It also is not an ongoing discussion thread for any other cases.

some one may have brought this article over to this thread already ... from your posting the link on "Claudia" ... they desperately want to find their daughter.

It has many similarities to Natalie in regard to cover up and incompetence by the local police.

an interesting read
this article appeared in the Scotsman

At this time of the year
the breathtaking Seven Mile Beach near the resort town of Negril on Jamaica’s southwest edge will be filled with winter-fleeing tourists soaking up the welcome sun.

But the beach town’s famous golden sands are now the centre of a strange mystery which hangs over the whole area like a dark cloud.

At the end of May last year an attractive 29 year-old Manhattan-based woman named Claudia Kirschhoch quite literally vanished off the face of the earth from this stretch of coastline. To date, despite an energetic police hunt, an unprecedented FBI investigation, wide media appeals and a vigorous campaign organised and carried out by her US-based family, Claudia’s whereabouts have never been discovered.

What is known is that Claudia was staying at one of the all-inclusive resorts which stretch along the sand, in this case Beaches, and that she probably vanished at some point during the day between the dates of May 27th and June 1st. What little details there are seem simply random and odd: she was not robbed - none of her possessions in her room were disturbed; nor she does not fit the case pattern of the type of individual who would walk-out on her old life in search of a new one; although the police suspect some witnesses may know more than they’re saying, evidence of an actual crime is scant; and, if the worst imaginable thing has happened – she’s been the victim of a terrible murder – then it’s unusual that her body has never turned up.

It would seem, at first glance, as if Claudia Kirschhoch has simply melted into the hazy afternoon thin-air of a Caribbean summer’s day.

The strangest twist in this case is the nature of Claudia’s visit to Jamaica: she was no lonesome late twenty-something girl having a Sex and the City weekend jaunt to the Caribbean to escape from the perceived stresses of Manhattan life. On the contrary, she was as one friend commented, definitely: ‘ not in a party-mode: she was in a professional mode’. That profession, ironically, was the travel-business: Claudia Kirschhoch was an experienced editor/writer with the world-famous New York-based Frommer’s travel guide read by 7 millions people annually worldwide. She was in Jamaica by default, not by choice. A planned press-trip to Cuba had fallen through at the 11th hour so she’d ended up marooned in a strange country until a flight back to the States could be organised.

Her parents’ welcome home message on her answering machine on Friday June 2nd never reached Claudia’s ears.

‘She came by this opportunity to go to Cuba through someone else…’ explains Fred Kirschhoch, Claudia’s 58 year-old father, ‘she wasn’t originally offered the trip.’

I meet Fred and his wife Mary Anne Kirschhoch in their New Jersey hometown of Morristown. It’s a quiet, discreetly affluent, typically upper-middle class American neighbourhood. Claudia attended an all-girls school in Morristown before leaving for Virginia to study Political Science at the state’s prestigious Washington & Lee University. Lately, she’d had lived in the spacious family home until the beginning of 2000 - then she moved into her new apartment near Manhattan where Frommers was based. New York city is about an hour away from the family home.

‘Then they offered the trip to Claudia. So she was all excited and she presented it to her boss, at Frommer’s the Travel Guide, and they were very excited because they don’t have a book on Cuba and they figured that Cuba will the up and coming place…’ Across the room sits Claudia mother Mary Anne, who bears a resemblance in dark attractive looks and petite build to her daughter.

Claudia was dispatched to Cuba to research the new tourist attractions for her company.

Her journey began on Wednesday, May 24th 2000 at JFK airport. She flew from New York to Montego Bay on Air Jamaica. The plan was for Claudia and other press members to change planes in Montego Bay, then continue to Cuba where they would stay in a new Sandals resort.

America at this time was gripped by the fate of the young Cuban Elian Gonzalez who had been snatched from relatives in Miami during an infamous raid by the FBI. The incident and subsequent decision to send him back to Cuba caused chaos within the whole exiled US-based anti-Castro Cuban community. Cuba, in contrast, rejoiced in state-led celebrations. US-Cuba relations froze over. Management at Air Jamaica and Sandals tourism empire – owned by one man, white-native Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart, the richest and arguably most influential man in Jamaica –decided it was the wrong time to send members of the press to Cuba.

This was a blow to Claudia who was settling into her role at Frommer’s and who’d worked hard in the weeks prior to the trip researching various aspects of Cuba she wanted to explore. Claudia was a serious-minded professional and she regarded the trip as strictly business. ‘One of the things she was worried about was she wanted to make sure she had a long skirt, she figured they were still back in the fifties in their culture, and she didn’t want to be standing out as an American…’ her mother explains sadly.

Jamaica Air officials –having interests in both the safety of their guests and the image of their company – told Claudia and her colleagues they were simply not going to Cuba. Within that group of four a couple rebelled and insisted a flight be arranged – by whatever means – within the next day or so. Claudia however, and a 63 year-old New York-based veteran freelancer she’d met named Tania Grossinger, faced with no option, had to stay for a time in Jamaica before returning to the USA.

On hearing she was not going to Cuba Claudia characteristically called and updated her parents. Ironically they expressed relief their daughter wasn’t going to volatile Communist Cuba.

The journalists were booked into hotels in Montego Bay for the night. Busy summer schedules meant flights back to the States weren’t immediately available. They were offered free accommodation at an all-inclusive resort in the beach town of Negril until plans could be made. Tania Grossinger however, managed to change her plans and get a flight back to New York on Saturday - only 48 hours away. Later it’d emerge arrangements were made for Claudia to return to the USA on Monday 29th but these were not relayed to her parents who still expected her to return, as originally planned, on Thursday, June 1st.

Until those Saturday and Monday flights arrived, the two women would have time to kill in Negril.

Claudia was well travelled. Her family went regularly to Europe and she’d lived for a period in Paris. Her family had faith in her judgement and abilities. At the very least they knew she’d glanced at her employer’s own travel guide to: It states - ‘Jamaica can be a tranquil and intriguing island, but there’s no denying that it’s plagued by crime and drugs. But many visitors are unaffected: they’re escorted from the airport grounds and to their hotel grounds and venture out only on expensive organised tours… Those who want to see ‘the real Jamaica’, or at least see the island in greater depth should be prepared for some hassle… Should you go? By all means, yes. Be prudent and cautious, just as if you were visiting New York, Miami or Los Angeles.’

In theory, an all-inclusive resort in one of the better locations in Jamaica should have posed no threat to a well-travelled, streetwise woman from New York. But it did and within two days she’d vanish.

The grim truths underneath the sunny Jamaican brochures may go some way in explaining why this disappearance occurred and why its investigation has been controversial.

Journalists like Claudia Kirschhoch are normally well looked after on such press trips. That’s the point; they’re cared for so they’ll write flattering articles.

The Sandals chain is worth US$250m and have swept the boards in travel industry award. It’s not hard to see why. I stayed in Sandals, Negril briefly in 1999. Like other journalists I was extremely well taken care of during my 72-hour stay. The organisational abilities of the chain were awesome. All standards were high. The complaints I had weren’t original: Sandals is a couples-only chain, often for on-site weddings, so the place often has a Stepford-Wives’ feels to it; and it also felt weird, even briefly, to be confined to a fancy compound, not my personal first-choice destination. My stay at the Sandals otherwise uneventful and I interviewed its owner Butch Stewart who I found to be charming and full of cheery salesman-bombast in a Richard Branson – a friend of his unsurprisingly – kind of way.

What was apparent however – and must have occurred to Claudia Kirschhoch too – was that the rumours of the enclosed nature of these resorts are indeed very true. They felt claustrophobic. You sensed you were being protected. Claudia would have felt this.

And Jamaica’s fortunes have, to say the least, looked rosier than they did in the summer of 2000 when she and her colleagues arrived. At that point over 570 murders had been committed – most admittedly in the Kingston area – but still a frightening figure. By the end of the year it would rise further.

Literal crime meltdowns have occurred regularly in Jamaica in the very recent past. There were problems immediately after my trip in 1999. Army and police unites were deployed on the streets. One senior Jamaican tourism insider confided he fully expected imminent social and economic breakdown and that the police wouldn’t have stand a chance in the ensuing chaos: I got the impression he’d already organised the bank account and getaway if this occurred. I was also given a very fast tour of some of the worst inner-city drug gang-run areas of Kingston in the weeks prior to this explosion. Despite reassurances from my host the palpable tension reminded me of the dark mood preceding Northern Ireland’s marching season.

So for most tourists, from the moment that you arrive until the moment you leave you are living in a false, though comfortable paradise. Butch Stewart’s wallet benefits from this set-up since it’s been stated that two-thirds of the money flowing in and out of Jamaica has a connection to one of his business empires. Stewart of course would prefer the streets to be safer since it would mean more tourists and an easier life. High crime directly and indirectly threatens his financial dealings. Butch Stewart simply characterised the current state of the country, in relation to violence as: ‘A disaster… gun-crime and tourism mix together as oil and water…’

Last August, after an Air Jamaica ticket office was robbed at gunpoint in Montego Bay, Stewart blew his top. Using his power, he warned that he’d take his business elsewhere if things didn’t improve politically and in terms of security for residents and visitors. This is dangerous talk from the man who single-handedly saved the Jamaican economy in 1992 by lodging US$1m in the bank at a time when every else was withdrawing theirs; he also found US$4.7m in 1997 to sponsor the West Indian cricket team; and spent US$14m bailing out and regenerating the national airline which he still owns 47% controlling stake in. Stewart condemned the recent rising crime and publicly asked for outside help – e.g. from the USA – to control crime. In percentage terms the Jamaican gun-crime rate five times higher than the USA’s. One Jamaican newspaper commented: ‘Any country that is not at war, that has no declared terrorist organisation, that has no insurrectionist movement but has [so many] of it’s citizens murdered… has a major problem’.

Even the bullet-proof vest wearing Jamaican cops are scared. A Washington DC-based research group recently produced a corporate-commissioned report which stopped just short of hinting that the Jamaican police force might be better off being disbanded and reorganised. The force is undermanned and poorly equipped. Their technical skills are marginal. Corruption is rife. (I was told that the force were given 100 new police cars in 1998 – 30 vanished overnight). Crime prevention was non-existent. The courts were disastrous. Community trust didn’t exist. Attempts at improvement highlight their ineptitude: For the first time ever the police have established a national Missing Person’s Bureau. Hundreds of reports of missing persons literally went unfilled nationally since as far back as 1995. About 1100 cases are recorded: but even that’s uncertain since, according to the Police Commissioner Francis Forbes’ strange claim while in the USA asking for help that, ‘some people genuinely want to be missing…’

He did not say was that bodies occasionally turn up in the hills of Plantation heights and Ferry, St. Catherine – bodies which often have no identity, nor anxious relatives claiming them.

Against this backdrop Claudia Kirschhoch arrived in the Butch Stewart-owned Beaches resort in Negril around noon on Thursday, May 25th. Her older colleague Tania Grossinger accompanied her.

Beaches Negril is an impressive resort – a sister to Sandals which caters to couples and is located a mile or two along the coast - and it’s designed exclusively for families and to a lesser extent, singles.

Both of these Stewart operations are also a world away in atmosphere from nearby resorts like Hedonism which also share Seven Mile Beach: they encourage the booze-and-sex free-for-all, Toga-party, pseudo-orgy swinging scene so-beloved of recent late-night British network TV ‘factual’ series. Guests at the Stewart resorts normally don’t veer off their own beaches – they don’t need to. But it is possible. To walk through to somewhere like Hedonism guests have to sign out of one beach and into another – the process is reversed on the return journey. Tourists are meant to feel safe with such safeguards. On my first night in Sandals Negril however, I was offered both hard and soft drugs. Security personnel I reported this to stated it was a regular and difficult problem: the dealer who’d approached me had apparently used a boat.

That’s the atmosphere – both pleasant and unpredictable – Claudia walked into when she and Tania arrived at Beaches.

Later that night they went to one of the beach bars inside the compund. The ‘all-inclusive’ deal means all drinks are free. Staff wear ‘Don’t Tip Me’ badges on their chests. No cash is in sight. The atmosphere becomes unreal, since normal limits don’t seem to apply, and sterile – there’s no money, there’s no temptation for pilfering – making guests feel as though they’ve stepped into a strange cashless, limitless scene from Fantasy Island.

Interviews with Tania later established they watched an American basketball game on TV at the bar. They stayed for about three hours. During that time Claudia chatted briefly to a local 16 year-old who was setting up some entertainment with his family. He later told her family she was interested in tracing old reggae records. Claudia also told another American tourist at the bar she was keen on visiting Kingston to buy old reggae vinyl recordings and visiting the Bob Marley Museum – this tourist tried to dissuade her because of Kingston’s bad reputation.

Claudia, according to later police interviews, also chatted to the barman that night – a Jamaican named Anthony Grant – and he said she drank four or five vodka and grapefruit juices he served her. Later it would be ascertained that Anthony Grant – despite his initial denials, which he later reversed - and Claudia (after Tania left for bed ) went off together: Claudia liked reggae music and a bar along the beach had some live music. As usual plenty of marijuana was being smoked at the performance.

Tania told police that Claudia told her about all of this the following evening Friday 26th May when they met for dinner, she also said Claudia had mentioned going skinny-dipping with Grant afterwards in the sea – that she’d tried some dope as well – and then he’d taken her back to the hotel, but dropped her off short of the entrance for fear of violating the staff/guest mixing rules and thus losing his job. She told Tania he’d asked to meet her again that night, Friday 26th, but she’d turned him down. Tania said goodbye to Claudia the next morning, Saturday 27th, when they met for breakfast and left for her flight back to the US: Claudia still had two days before her flight left on Monday, 29th.

That breakfast with Tania was the last confirmed sighting of Claudia Kirschhoch.

For three days Beaches staff came and went to room 621. They noted the bed had not been slept in. Towels went unused. The luggage hadn’t been disturbed. Yet they told no-one.

Not until Tuesday 30th, May was the alarm raised. Even then little was done. This was an extraordinary situation by normal standards – but even more bizarre given the company’s PR reputation for keeping a close eye on its trade-guests. Somebody had slipped up.

Back in the USA Claudia’s parents and colleagues – not knowing a flight had been arranged for her on Monday 29th, a flight she’d not turned up for because she was missing – still expected her to return to Newark at 8.30pm Thursday June 1st, the date originally planned for the return-leg of the ill-fated Cuban trip. Her parents didn’t expect her to call late on Thursday, but when they still hadn’t heard anything by the following day, Friday June 2nd they called her apartment in New York and left a message. It wasn’t picked up. They called her office to learn she hadn’t arrived. They immediately knew something was wrong. They called Jamaica and spoke to someone at a Beaches office in Montego Bay: he prevaricated, initially suggesting Claudia had extended her stay. Her parents told him that was nonsense – she’d have told them. The Kirschhochs now think the staff were trying to cover-up the fact they’d lost track of their daughter. More calls followed until finally they were told her room had been entered and the discovery made her bed hadn’t been slept in, nor her belongings touched recently. Ominously the safe-deposit box contained her passport, return ticket, credit cards and $180 in cash.

It would be later ascertained that Claudia was probably wearing a striped blue bikini and carrying a small radio when she vanished on Saturday 27th May. A security man on the beach may have seen her walking along it that afternoon.

Events then took a more sinister turn when a ‘PR person’ Mr Kirschhoch spoke to at Negril’s Beaches claimed Claudia had failed to meet Tania when she was departing. This was characterised by this PR man as ‘typical’ since ‘she [Claudia] never showed up for anything that we did [for her].’ This employee also allegedly claimed he’d seen Claudia on the Sunday and that’s she’d failed to show up for her ride to the airport on Monday. All of this would later turn out to be demonstrably false claim the Kirschhochs. It would be proven that the last person to see Claudia was indeed Tania on that Saturday morning. The PR man’s claims were nonsense. He’d ‘lost track’ of Claudia and would later be proven to be simply covering himself.

The family began calling their local political representatives in Washington for help. Claudia’s publishing company got involved and the following Wednesday flew her parents by charted plane to Kingston. A reward of $25,000 was established. Posters were distributed to local press and various establishments. The family made radio appeals. Butch Stewart gave the family accommodation and covered some expenses. Crucially the family also spoke to the FBI – they were already worrying about the Jamaican police force’s abilities in solving the crime and wanted the bureau’s help. Their Congressman in Washington threw his weight behind the case and attached a rider to a bill giving funds to Jamaica which stated that these would be withheld if the FBI weren’t allowed on the ground. By early July 2000, for the first time in Jamaican police history, six FBI agents were investigating the disappearance in their country of an American citizen: Claudia Kirschhoch.

They turned up crucial but, until proven otherwise, inconclusive evidence which cast doubt upon the bartender Anthony Grant’s evidence. They also found inconsistencies in other individuals’ evidence.

At one press conference, filmed by ABC TV for their 20/20 series, a senior Sandals PR man stated that Tania had alleged privately to him that Claudia had said she’d had sex with the barman after their outing to the reggae concert. This shocked the family deeply. It also shocked Tania Grossinger who ‘vehemently denies’ ever stating such a thing. Claudia’s character was suddenly in question. The PR man’s claims they believe had been relayed to him from his local man on the ground in Negril who in turn fabricated them to keep his job and denigrate their daughter by shoving her into the ‘sex-and-sand’ bracket of tourists who head to Jamaica to ‘Rent-a-Dread’ (a phenomenon with several websites devoted to it, including one for US women who’ve sought local company only to end up attacked and robbed) for the night. Butch Stewart reprimanded both his staff and called the family after the conference to apologise. The media picked up on these references though and began suggesting Claudia had perhaps ‘broken loose’ and ran off into the hills with a Jamaican. Her family classify this as almost beneath contempt: in other cases, depending upon the person they could see it happening and they know there’s been a couple of vaguely similar instances where women have vanished then reappeared, but with their daughter – given her life, occupation and nature of her trip, the chance is less than zero. Anyway, the Kirschhoch’s told me: ‘When confronted by the FBI [the Sandals PR man] was found to be lying repeatedly, he explained he did this for the good of Sandals and to save his job. He lied about talking to Claudia on Sunday May 28th, and many other statements meant to purposely portray her as irresponsible and frivolous. Butch Stewart admitted to the FBI that [the PR employee] told him he’d lied.’

The barman Anthony Grant has since been fired.

But Grant claimed on US TV he had sex after the reggae concert with Claudia on Thursday 25th May and also that he went out with her again on Friday 26th May. Both claims clash with Tania Grossinger’s evidence because she says Claudia ‘told her they specifically did not [have sex]’; and his claim he met her on the Friday is contradicted by the fact Tania met Claudia that night for dinner herself. The family also disbelieve him on both counts. They have serious reason to. Grant was questioned by the local police and the FBI who gave him a lie-detector test some parts of which he failed: he did however reportedly pass the question which asked if he’d harmed Claudia. This leads her parents to think he may know someone who did. Federal Agents with warrants searched his house and a hair, later identified as Claudia’s, was retrieved from the backseat of his car. It was ascertained that he’d earlier changed his car seat covers. Despite this he still denies she was ever in that backseat. (The Kirschhoch’s later drafted in a search and rescue dog from Oregon which traced their daughter’s scent to the same spot and Grant’s house which he shares wit his mother and extended family). Although Grant denied any wrongdoing apart from allegedly having a passing relationship over two nights with Claudia, police sources have told the family they, ‘Do not think Grant’s four days off [work] from Sunday [day after last sighting of Claudia] through until Wednesday and his request for sleeping pills and stomach medication are a coincidence. They and we feel he knows much more’.

Other odd facts turned up during the FBI investigation which, at the very least, as puzzling: the PR man later found to have told untruths about meeting Claudia on the Sunday at the resort, also suddenly took four days off work after Claudia vanished; he also tried to obtain a new passport at short notice. Then there was the disappearance of the resorts’ vehicle entry logs, security tapes and with them the ability to positively identify two men in a car who turned up the weekend Claudia vanished asking for her by name at the front desk: they were traced but denied going to the hotel that weekend – one of them was a Beaches jet-ski instructor. It’s also been established that Claudia’s mobile phone is missing: it was listed in the possessions found in her room but it vanished while in the safekeeping of the resort’s security chief. Film that was found in her camera in her room was seized by resort security personnel: the film, for some reason yielded nothing because, Fred Kirschhoch told me: ‘They[security] took it to be developed and totally destroyed it’.

At various times during my interview with Claudia’s parents they went out of their way to stress the fact that they acknowledge the help Butch Stewart has personally come forward with. He’s allowed TV crews into the resorts, the search dog was allowed in to search premises, he initially paid for flights and accommodation for the family during their first trips to the island and he personally matched their US$25,000 reward, thus upping it to a hefty Jamaican $2m. He’s also participated in press conferences and went out of his way to influence the Jamaican media into putting the story onto the headlines.

However some of the evidence makes them doubt the motives of a handful of his underlings they suspect may have been, if not guilty of anything criminal, at least not entirely open with all the information they may posses. They are not looking for conspiracy theories: their questioning is simply based on evidence gleaned, and questions arising, from the FBI’s enquiries. They await with interest DNA tests being currently carried out by Federal Agents on the lining of Anthony Grant’s car and a pair of gloves and boots which the search and rescue dog identified as having been in contact with Claudia’s scent during their search. The gloves were in a suitcase under Mr Grant’s bed. The results are expected within weeks.

Because of the unstable nature of Jamaica and the state of its police force, the whole issue has moved from a disappearance to being what Mary Ann Kirschhoch described to me as ‘such a political thing, it’s frightening, we’re private people’. Their obvious decency and patent horror at the predicament they find themselves in has paradoxically endeared them to many Jamaicans who’ve seen them hike up and down Seven Mile Beach handing out leaflets and Missing posters during their four visits to Negril since Claudia’s disappearance last year.

Those posters are still tacked up in various places around the resorts. They show a vibrant dark-haired Claudia, 5ft 2, 8 stones, she’s smiling beautifully, beneath the word Missing and above the word Reward. People are encouraged to call a toll-free helpline or log onto the website www.findclaudia.homestead.com. The Kirschhochs rightly and understandably cling with iron resolve to the narrow hope that, until proven otherwise, their daughter may be alive somewhere – possibly being held against her will.

They are already planning another trip to Jamaica they told me. Once there, they’ll check into a quiet, small ‘European style’ hotel they’ve found which bakes its own daily supply of bread and croissants.

Then they’ll gather their strength, lift their posters and step out into the blazing sunshine to begin their endless search. Hoping and praying with every footprint in the golden sand of Seven Mile Beach, for nothing less than a miracle.

© 2001 Eamonn O’Neill for The Scotsman.

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BReaking: The 3 suspects are charged with MURDER, per the chief prosecutor, per Fox News!!! Have been all along!

YES!