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NANCY GRACE Day 85 in Natalee Holloway Case

Aired August 22, 2005 - 20:00:00 ET

NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, day 85 in the Natalee Holloway case, the 18-year-old girl missing from her high school senior trip. This week, Natalee would have started classes at the University of Alabama, full scholarship. And tonight, Aruba`s prime minister -- that`s right, the PM - - admits Aruban authorities blew the investigation into Natalee`s disappearance.

Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace, and I want to thank you for being with us tonight.

But first: Aruba`s prime minister admits Aruban authorities bungled the Natalee Holloway case from the get-go. With us tonight in Aruba, Jossy Mansur. He is the managing director and editor of "Diario" newspaper. In Philadelphia, defense attorney Joe Lawless. In San Francisco, defense attorney Daniel Horowitz. In New York, forensic scientist Dr. Larry Kobilinsky and psychotherapist Lauren Howard.

But first, let`s go to WBMA reporter Anastasiya Bolton. Anastasiya, bring us up to date, friend.

ANASTASIYA BOLTON, WBMA: Nancy, first of all, welcome back.

GRACE: Thank you.

BOLTON: Now, the Aruban prime minister did meet with Beth Holloway Twitty over the weekend. And she went on to say that he did admit that the investigation was badly "botched," quote.

GRACE: Whew!

BOLTON: Now, there is some war of words going back and forth now. The spokesman for the prime minister said that the prime minister did agree that the beginning of the case could have been better handled, but he never said it had been botched. Nevertheless, the prime minister does promise that the Aruban authorities will not rest until the resolution in this case is found.

I`ve spoken with sources from the prime minister`s office today, and let me make one thing clear. The prime minister really does not have the authority over this investigation. He is over the executive branch, and there`s the prosecution. Prosecution and police are over completely separate branches of that government. So he really does not have the authority to tell...

GRACE: OK. I get that, Anastasiya. Don`t leave. With us, WBMA-TV reporter Anastasiya Bolton.

But Joe Lawless, isn`t that like saying, Well, now, listen, Bush has nothing to do with what the district attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, is going to do with a murder case? Well, theoretically, of course not. But when you`ve got the PM saying you botched the case, although now they`re definitely backing off the "botched" word, the B word...

JOE LAWLESS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, yes. If you`re the president or the prime minister, you`ve got a bully pulpit. You`ve got an opportunity to exert pressure on investigative authorities. And Nancy, I think what`s key here is when someone says, in what I think now, unfortunately, is a homicide investigation -- when you`ve botched the beginning of a homicide investigation, you`ve pretty much botched the investigation because if those aren`t solved or if you don`t have some key clues locked in at the beginning, it makes it much harder to get a resolution down at the end.

I think the prime minister can exert a lot more pressure, if only because of public opinion, if nothing else, and I think he should keep doing it.

GRACE: Speaking of exerting pressure, back to Anastasiya Bolton with WBMA-TV. Anastasiya, didn`t the prime minister also tell Natalee`s mother that she should be careful in her comments regarding the Aruban authorities?

BOLTON: I have not heard that. I understand that he just did reassure her that everything is going to go, well, fine, or he`s just saying that they`re going to do an absolute best to keep the investigation going. Let me also mention, again, the...

GRACE: Anastasiya...

(CROSSTALK)

BOLTON: ... Aruban government told me today that it is good news, that the authorities are still saying that they`re working on this case and they`re not calling this a cold case. So he said...

GRACE: Well...

BOLTON: ... indeed, that there is some good news in all of this.

GRACE: Anastasiya, I really do appreciate that they`re claiming it`s not a cold case. But I`ve got in front of me, Anastasiya, a report from the AP, Associated Press. Now, unless the AP is lying, this is what they report, that the prime minister said he urged Holloway Twitty, who has been critical of the probe into her daughter`s disappearance, to be careful about her remarks regarding the island`s judicial system.

Now, speaking of exerting influence, Daniel Horowitz, what do you make of that comment by the Aruban PM? This is the same guy that didn`t even spell Natalee`s name correctly in the last letter that he issued.

DANIEL HOROWITZ, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, we might as well change his name from PM to PR. He`s a public relations person for a resort community. Nancy, I`ve been saying this, and it really hurts me to say it, but in two weeks, Joran Van Der Sloot is going to be let go, and they`re doing damage control. They`ve been trying to dig up dumps, go find witnesses, all to say, Look how much we`ve done, and, Oh, we care so much. Bottom line is they blew it. Americans should go to the U.S. Virgin Islands for a vacation...

GRACE: Hey, so Daniel...

HOROWITZ: ... where American law applies.

GRACE: Daniel...

HOROWITZ: Yes?

GRACE: ... I plan to see America first. If I have to hop a Greyhound, I will see America first before I head down to Aruba after all of this.

Let`s go to Jossy Mansur. Maybe he can help us out. He`s the managing director and editor of "Diario." Jossy, is it true that the Aruban prime minister told Beth Holloway Twitty, according to this report by Associated Press, that she should be careful regarding her comments about the Aruban judicial system?

JOSSY MANSUR, MANAGING EDITOR, "DIARIO": I believe he did say something in that sense, but I believe that what he meant was that she should be more reserved in her comments as far as the criticism is concerned towards the Aruban authorities.

GRACE: Why is that?

MANSUR: Because he`s the prime minister. This is his government. He presides over five to seven other ministers. And he has a big responsibility towards the public here.

GRACE: Well, speaking of what the Aruban authorities are doing, they`re not helping search the landfill, Jossy. It`s been the group from Texas and other Americans, right, Ellie (ph), searching the landfill.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And Aruba search and rescue, as well.

GRACE: Aruba search -- well, I`m glad to hear that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

GRACE: Hey, Jossy, take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETH HOLLOWAY TWITTY, NATALEE`S MOTHER: It`s just so unfair that whoever made these crucial mistakes, whether it was due to a cover-up, just blatant, inept -- I don`t know which one played the larger role, and -- but I know things went terribly, terribly wrong in the beginning, and we are still to this day going through, you know, feeling the repercussions of that.

What`s so sad is, look at all the people that have been involved in this and have put forth so much effort, from dive teams to Equusearch to family members. And our lives are -- have just been turned upside down, all of our friends and family in Mountain Brook and Birmingham, and gosh, all the people that have been involved all over the U.S. It`s just such a tragedy that we`ve all had to go through this because of those first few days of the investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: I can`t stress enough how important the first few days -- actually, the first few hours -- of an investigation are, if you want results.

And remember, this week, today, tonight, should have been Natalee Holloway`s first week away at college, full scholarship! Who on this panel, as esteemed as you all are, can say you had a full scholarship to go to college, that you were that smart, that you made grades that good, to go be a doctor and help other people! My little nephew took off for college last week. Of course, we`re all in tears about that. But she should be in the bookstore tonight. She should be -- about right now, she should be leaving the cafeteria with a group of girlfriends, deciding if they`re going to the library, for Pete`s sake. Her mom should be making sure all of her little clothes are folded up and put in those horrible metal drawers in your dorm.

But instead, the speculation is this girl is deteriorating at the bottom of a landfill or out to sea, where she will never be recovered.

You know, Jossy Mansur, I`m still disturbed that the Aruban prime minister told Beth Holloway Twitty that she should be careful -- those were his words -- about what she says about the Aruban government. And it`s my understanding that Aruban search and rescue has looked into that landfill, that the Texas group, Equusearch, has searched it, that another group is planning to search it. Where`s the Aruban government when it comes to the landfill?

MANSUR: Well, there hasn`t been much cooperation in that field over there. The only cooperation that was received in the beginning was that half day off for the public workers so that they could go en masse and help search for Natalee. The rest has been done by the Equusearch from Texas, the Golba team that is here now, and the Aruba search and rescue team, and other private members of the community.

GRACE: Right. Right. Aruban search and rescue is not a government group. And now we`re hearing that the prime minister did not say "botched," Lauren Howard. But isn`t this parsing words?

LAUREN HOWARD, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: From day one, Aruba has taken an extremely defensive posture. They have closed ranks, protected their own. They do not have crime on this island. And the immediate response was not, Let`s find out what happened, the immediate response was, Let`s gather together into our sort of closed community and take a defensive posture and not have the world -- world opinion pointing a finger at us as an untoward place to go.

GRACE: Well, you know what? Let`s get right down to the actual investigation of what is going on tonight. Very quickly, back to Anastasiya Bolton with WBMA-TV. We were all told that once the gardener -- who was discovered, actually, by Jossy Mansur, who is with us tonight -- gave his sworn statement to a judge, the Kalpoe brothers, and I was hoping the judge, Paulus Van Der Sloot, would be brought back in for questioning.

Now, according to my flow chart, Joran Van Der Sloot hasn`t been questioned since a week ago Thursday, and these two Kalpoe brothers certainly have not been taken into custody, Anastasiya.

BOLTON: That`s right, Nancy. First of all, let me address the Kalpoe brothers. The Kalpoe brothers, we did expect them to be rearrested, and as of last Monday, a week ago, the gardener gave the sworn testimony which was, indeed, in line with what he said previously, that he saw the three men on the beach at 2:30 in the morning the night Natalee Holloway disappeared -- he, of course -- the brothers have not been, obviously, arrested. We were told by our sources in law enforcement that they do expect that the Kalpoe brothers will be arrested.

GRACE: Oh!

BOLTON: Obviously, that hasn`t happened. I`ve spoken to the...

GRACE: I`m sorry. That was me groaning because, Anastasiya, no offense, but you told me that about 10 days ago. We`ve heard that over and over. The Kalpoe brothers are going to be re-questioned. What are they doing down there?

BOLTON: They tell me that they`re continuing with their investigation, that they maintain that they still continue with the investigation, even though, as you have mentioned, Joran has not been questioned for over a week now, almost 10 days, and they`re not saying when they`re going to be questioning him again.

GRACE: OK.

BOLTON: Although -- although, Nancy, I have to point out that the Dutch behavioral specialists...

GRACE: Oh!

BOLTON: ... are working on what they call a new strategy for questioning. They`re going to try to...

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: You told me that two weeks ago!

BOLTON: ... we don`t know.

GRACE: Anastasiya, I know you`re just the messenger, therefore I will not kill you. But the reality is, you told me that two weeks ago, that there was a Dutch team of specialists devising, cooking up a new method by which they would re-question Joran Van Der Sloot. Hasn`t happened. Hasn`t happened! We`re going on two weeks. How long does it take to devise a new mode of questioning?

And very quickly, before we go to break, to Jossy Mansur with "Diario." Jossy, what about the severed arm~! I mean, I was out in the middle of a bird sanctuary last week, and I heard about the severed arm. Hasn`t anybody reported they`re missing an arm? I mean, what`s the hold-up with analyzing the arm?

MANSUR: I don`t know. That`s a question for Venezuelan government to decide. You have to remember that when they sent the arm to Caracas for examination they had a very serious and tragic plane crash and the technical police were very busy with that, as well as with other normal activities that they have in the lab.

GRACE: Well, I know we had the Venezuelan air crash.

Dr. Larry Kobilinsky, forensic scientist, let`s just get down to it. We saw this in the Laci Peterson case. When a limb or a body has been at sea for this long, there`s no flesh left to use for a DNA comparison. Or is there?

DR. LARRY KOBILINSKY, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: Well, Nancy, you`re right. The likelihood of having soft tissue, even muscle, attached to the skeleton is slim. But there is bone, and bone contains DNA. And of course, we can do mitochondrial DNA analysis. Now, that is a much more complicated method. It requires sequencing. It`s a longer-term process. It can take weeks.

I know that Latin America has a group called GTOD (ph), which is a collection of countries that have DNA laboratories, and they`re there to help each other. So I think getting the job done is no problem, but the question is when. It should have been done by now.

GRACE: I know, because the arm washed ashore several days before the Venezuelan air crash, and still no answers.

GRACE: Natalee Holloway should be at college classes starting this week at University of Alabama, full scholarship. Instead, her family is wondering if in 15 short days, Joran Van Der Sloot will walk free from behind bars.

Very quickly, to Jossy Mansur with "Diario" newspaper. Jossy, what do you think about the theory that Natalee`s body was moved twice, that these three suspects allegedly left the body somewhere the night she went missing, and then they got help in disposing of the body shortly thereafter?

MANSUR: Well, I`ve heard that theory advanced here in Aruba. It was advanced by a witness that was on the beach that claims to have seen them put the body of a young woman in the back of a white pick-up, drive towards the lighthouse, bury the body and then disappear.

GRACE: OK, Jossy...

MANSUR: And then apparently...

GRACE: Question. The cadaver dogs -- were they ever brought to sniff Paulus, Judge Paulus Van Der Sloot`s car?

MANSUR: As far as I know, no.

GRACE: Oh! To Anastasiya Bolton with WBMA-TV. What can you tell me about an anonymous tipster, a jogger that was apparently jogging in the area when Natalee went missing?

BOLTON: Nancy, authorities apparently are searching for a man, the jogger, who anonymously called the hotline for Natalee Holloway, established for Natalee Holloway several days after she disappeared. He claimed to have seen something but never made another contact with authorities. Now police want sworn testimony about what he said and saw the night Natalee disappeared. Apparently, they can`t find the man.

GRACE: Jossy Mansur, I assume the police department has "star 69." Can`t they track who has called in? I mean, the feds can get a dump on a line and tell you who`s called you for the last week to your home.

MANSUR: I know that this call was made to the tip line of the police a long time ago, in the early days. I don`t know whether they jotted down or have any way to trace back this call. But they are actively searching for this supposed jogger that saw a car parked near the pond, again.

GRACE: So we`ve got two people stating the car was parked near the pond. We`ve got the gardener, who`s given sworn testimony before a judge, and this anonymous tipster, this jogger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TWITTY: I`m just going to have to wait until September the 4th. I`m just going to have to wait to experience it to see what we`re going to do.

We`re always thinking and putting different things into motion. As far as Deepak and Satish, I`m not giving up that they will not be rearrested. I just -- I still think that that is a strong possibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Welcome back, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace.

Straight down to Jossy Mansur with "Diario" magazine -- newspaper. Jossy, the gardener says he sees Joran Van Der Sloot, one Kalpoe, and a third man in a car near this pond. Hey, Elizabeth (ph), can you put up that picture, the map where we see where the pond is? So that was around 2:30 AM, Jossy. So how does that affect Judge Paulus Van Der Sloot`s story? He went from saying he picked his son up at 4:00 AM back to 11:00 PM. He backed it up five hours.

MANSUR: Well, that destroys that story completely, as it destroys also the alibi of the two Kalpoe brothers that they dropped Joran and Natalee on the beach and then went home.

GRACE: And very quickly, Jossy, are dive teams searching the water again now?

MANSUR: Yes, ma`am. Apparently, using some kind of modern equipment by an American that`s here on his own, they located some item of interest out at about a mile from the coast, and a dive -- a test dive took place Sunday with five or six divers, and then...

GRACE: Do you know what the item is? Do you know what the item is?

MANSUR: Well, apparently, they`re talking about some kind of remains, human remains, bones, for example.

GRACE: OK.

MANSUR: And then they`re planning a big, big search with between 12 and 20 volunteer divers.

GRACE: OK, Jossy.