By PETER PRENGAMAN Associated Press Writer The Associated Press
Texas volunteers searched for a missing U.S. teen for a fifth day Wednesday but found no sign of the high school honors student more than four weeks after she disappeared.
Rescuers led a Border Collie tracker dog over large swaths of land while sonar technicians and two scuba divers scoured a handful of coastlines.
The searches, which began Saturday, have allowed the private rescue group to eliminate many areas and prepare for more intense investigations of other places where 18-year-old Natalee Holloway´s remains could be found, said Jessica Marish, assistant director of Dickinson-based Texas EquuSearch.
Marish said the group also began a partial pullout from Aruba Wednesday, with nine of the 27 volunteers returning home, including five of the original seven divers and three of the four dogs.
"Many people had to go back to their families and jobs," Marish said. "But we are working on getting more people and dogs back down here."
Marish said the 17 remaining volunteers would be on the Caribbean Dutch island at least through Sunday and possibly longer.
Each day leaders had to assess their chances of finding Holloway against how much money they had to continue working, said Marish, declining to give funding details.
The group came after Holloway´s uncle, Paul Reynolds, asked for help after weeks of massive searches by FBI agents, Dutch Marines, Aruban police and thousands of islanders produced no trace of Holloway, a recent high school graduate from Mountain Brook, Alabama.
Meanwhile Wednesday, friends of the Holloway family in Alabama began a letter-writing campaign seeking more Dutch assistance in the search.
Holloway family friend Sunny Tillman said relatives are distributing e-mails asking people to pen short notes and mail them to the Dutch ambassador in Washington. The suggested text reads:
"America wants to encourage you to do all you can to help find Natalee Holloway by supporting the use of state-of-the-art technology in the investigation, and continuing to lend other technical support to the effort. We all thank you very much for your help and your concern."
Prime Minister Nelson Oduber filed a request Tuesday with the Netherlands to send in a new contingent of Dutch Marines to help in the search.
Spokesman Ad van der Linde of the Dutch Defense Ministry said about 70 Dutch Marines from among several hundred based on the island had assisted in three previous search missions. "They are definitely prepared to provide additional assistance," he said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, they hadn´t rejoined the search, however.
Holloway disappeared the night of May 30, the last day of a five-day graduation trip with 124 classmates. Three young men, including the 17-year-old son of a top justice official on the island, have been arrested in her disappearance, but no one has been charged.
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Associated Press writer Jay Reeves contributed to this report from Birmingham, Alabama.
"Each day leaders had to assess their chances of finding Holloway against how much money they had to continue working, said Marish, declining to give funding details."
http://www.texasequusearch.org/
Again I'll ask, does anyone know what it will take to get the cadaver dogs in to search the VDS property?