http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10650782/
'Scarborough Country' for December 29
Guest: Richard Walter, Holly McClure, Laura Schlessinger,
Ronald Richards, Stacey Honowitz, Michael Smerconish
Snip...
SCARBOROUGH: ...We're going to be talking about that case, Natalee Holloway, and much more when SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY returns.
SCARBOROUGH: Like every year, 2005 has been filled with unsolved crime stories that get so many people talking.
I will tell you, everywhere I went, people were asking me, what really happened to Natalee Holloway? Where did the honeymoon groom, George Smith IV, go? What happened to him? I will tell you, these stories and so many others captured the nation's imagination like few crime stories in recent memory, but will they ever be solved?
As we come to the end of this long year as far as these crime stories go, let's bring in Broward County prosecutor Stacey Honowitz and criminal defense attorney Ronald Richards.
You know, Stacey, it's very interesting that as we get to the end of the year, the Natalee Holloway case isn't so much about Natalee Holloway as it is about her mom. You have got Aruban authorities saying that it was actually Beth Holloway Twitty that hurt the investigation into her missing daughter. What would you say? Looking back at the year, did Beth Holloway Twitty hurt or help the investigation of her daughter?
STACEY HONOWITZ, FLORIDA ASSISTANT STATE ATTORNEY: Well, when you think about that question, it's so ridiculous, not that you're asking the question, but we had a whole scenario with Beth a couple of months ago.
How could she possibly hurt this case? Her daughter's missing. Nobody seems to have any answers for her. Everybody's leaving her out of the loop, out of the investigation. She has helped this investigation, because she has pressed forward, because if she didn't press forward and if she didn't ask for answers, nothing would be happening. Unfortunately, we still don't have an answer.
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: But I will tell you what, Stacey, what you have the Aruba authorities coming forward and saying—and, in fact, the guy who is the chief prosecutor in this case right now is saying, if she would have just sat back and shut up, they would have let kept these three boys out, let them drive around, tapped their phones, basically do the same thing that they did with Laci Peterson's husband, Scott, and caught him in this sort of web. Do you buy that?
(CROSSTALK)
HONOWITZ: Come on, Joe. Absolutely not. These people sat on it.
They let these guys go. They could have taken their computers.
They could have gotten DNA. There are so many things that they could have done that they failed to do, and that's not through the fault of Beth Holloway. That's through the fault of them not moving fast enough. We probably could have solved this a long time ago.
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: Ron, was Beth a help or a hindrance?
RONALD RICHARDS, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: A very big hindrance. I respectfully disagree, in she was not a percipient witness to any of these events.
You don't have an American person go over to Aruba and start criticizing the investigative agency.
This was the son of a judge is one of the key suspects. The boycott she's put together between Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, all she's doing is making the civil servants of Aruba angry and the people of Aruba angry.
HONOWITZ: Oh, come on.
RICHARDS: And she's been a big interference with this investigation.
No mother would jump in over here.
HONOWITZ: So, I don't understand.
So, in other words,
because he's the son of a judge, that's what you're trying to say, because he's the son of a judge we should have sat back, sat on our hands and not done anything? You're feeding exactly into what they're doing—what they're saying.
(CROSSTALK)
RICHARDS: You should have a realistic assessment of the political realities. And if you're going to go to an island like that and sit there and criticize the people that are investigating the homicide—remember, in a homicide, you have to show proof of death and agency by another person.
HONOWITZ: That's exactly right.
RICHARDS: We don't have a body. And we don't have a body, and we don't know who did it.
(CROSSTALK)
HONOWITZ: How can you say that this mother should worry about the politics of the country when her daughter is missing and three guys admitted to being with her as the last people having sex with her?
So how do you say political reason should play a part and she shouldn't have said anything? That's ludicrous.
RICHARDS: You get more bees with honey than with vinegar. That's why.
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, but come on, Ron. What if there's a cover-up going on?
And there looked like there was such a cover-up going on in Aruba. You have these guys that—again, these guys who were the last ones that were seen with her. One of them admitted recently that all three of them had sex with her on the beach. What did the Aruban authorities do? The next day, they go find two poor black guys and arrest them, while they're allowing these three punks to go around the island for 10 days.
They don't check their car for DNA. They don't check their clothes for DNA. They basically allow them to clean up all the evidence. They never check the well in the back of the van der Sloots' yard. I mean, come on, do you really think that even if Beth Holloway Twitty had used honey, as you say, that they would have ever given her the sort of investigation that her missing daughter deserved?
RICHARDS: Well, I think that if Beth Holloway took a lesson in public relations and not to go to a foreign jurisdiction like the ugly American and start running around...
HONOWITZ: Oh, my God. I don't believe this.
RICHARDS: ... throwing her weight around, and leading boycotts, she would have been in a better position.
(CROSSTALK)
RICHARDS: Look, I...
(CROSSTALK)
HONOWITZ: And God forbid it was someone in your family. You would have done the same thing. You would never have thought to yourself, let me sit back and let them handle it.
RICHARDS: No.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, Stacey...
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: God help us.
(CROSSTALK)
RICHARDS: If it was someone in my family, I would have went over there and
greased the wheel a little better.
SCARBOROUGH: God help anybody if they had done anything like that to any of my children. Then you had law enforcement officers covering it up. I don't know any parent that wouldn't have gone down there and fought like Beth Holloway Twitty did.
But let's move on to the next case.
RICHARDS: Well, who says there's a cover-up?
SCARBOROUGH: The other case is—who says there's a cover-up? Come on. Who says there's not a cover-up?
Let's move on to the next case.
RICHARDS: All right.
