Hal Lacey (left) assists Mike Zinszer, Florida State University's dive team diving safety officer and director of FSU's Advanced Science Diving program, and Dan Walsh, the team's technical engineer, as they discuss a dive plan before entering a quarry in Aruba. EMILY BARNES/The Times-Union
INTO THE DEEP: DIVING FOR NATALEE
Divers from Florida State University search for Natalee Holloway, the Alabama 18-year-old who vanished in Aruba in May
By BRIDGET MURPHY, The Times-Union
ORANJESTAD, Aruba -- Waves crash on the craggy coast as Dave and Robin Holloway corral logs that the sea spit toward the California Lighthouse.
Casting them back, the couple watches the Caribbean swallow them whole, a cave below the white-sand shore sucking them into its abyss.
In the 40 days since Dave's daughter and Robin's stepdaughter Natalee Holloway disappeared during a vacation on this Dutch Caribbean island, this 50-foot wide underwater cave is one of the few places search and rescue workers haven't scoured for signs of the 18-year-old Alabama woman.
But within hours, a team of elite diving detectives from Florida State University's Panama City campus will make the plunge, using a blend of science and crime scene protocols to explore the cave. With a 10-pound, sonar-equipped remotely operated robot, they'll also record images of the cave's crannies as they master a danger-filled dive natives of this 19-by-6-mile island shy away from.
The underwater crime scene investigators, recruited by a non-profit Texas group coordinating the volunteer search, are here to do what no one else can: check the places declared not checkable.
The team came together about three years ago after the university won a $300,000 Homeland Security grant. Government investigators found insufficiencies in America's ability to probe underwater crime scenes in the wake of the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, a blast that killed 17 sailors and injured 39 others. The university got money to start a unit that would remedy that, program officials said.
Reputed as the only team of its kind in the United States, its Aruban mission is to rule out areas where the woman could be, to support the volunteer search and recovery corps' goal: bringing Natalee back home.
'We don't go halfway'
"No luck, huh?" Dave Holloway asks the divers.
Hours after the underwater crime scene investigation, or UCS, team finishes diving the cave and a lagoon on another part of the island, the Holloways are with them at Brickell Bay Beach Club to talk search strategy.
The high-rise hotel is a five-minute walk from the Holiday Inn, where the Holloways occupy room 7114. It is the same room Natalee slept in during her vacation with more than 100 fellow graduates of Mountain Brook High School before she went missing after leaving a nightclub with a local 17-year-old boy.
"One more off the list," diver Mark Feulner reassures Holloway, boosting his spirits after another failed day of searching.
Feulner, 34, is the dive team's details man. An underwater archaeologist born in New York and raised in Florida, Feulner is two semesters short of a Ph.D. in criminology. A technology specialist, Feulner learned during his first dive in 1989 the importance of meticulous pre-dive preparation. He and his dive group arrived at a Florida spring to find another diver suffering from an embolism after making a mistake underwater. A paramedic in Feulner's group started first aid when the other group's divemaster didn't know what to do. The rookie diver never forgot, and be it a body bag or extra batteries, he is the man with the mental checklist.
"We gave it a real good look," diver Dan Walsh, the team's technical engineer, tells the Holloways as he introduces himself.
The guts of the team, the cigar-chomping retired Coast Guard diver has 25 years of military scuba ops under his weight belt and is a few classes away from earning a master's degree in criminology. The 47-year-old Long Island, N.Y., native's diving resume includes recovering astronauts' remains after the Challenger explosion in 1986. He got hooked on diving in 1978 when he took his first plunge after carving a hole in the icy crust of a Pennsylvania quarry.
Before they watch a video the underwater robot captured of the team's sea cave dive, the Holloways also greet another team member, Professor Dale Nute.
FSU dive team members discuss plans for a dive. They'll use a blend of science and crime scene protocols to explore the area. EMILY BARNES/The Times-Union
Nute, 64, is the brains of the team's operation. Born in New Jersey and raised in Florida, the trace evidence specialist has a Ph.D. in criminology. Nute worked 15 years at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's crime lab in Tallahassee before working another 15 years as a private forensic consultant. Later he became the online program manager for FSU's criminology masters program.
Feulner, Walsh and Nute join Mike Zinszer, 42, the team's diving safety officer and director of FSU's Advanced Science Diving program, in the search for Natalee.
A cocksure ex-Navy diver working on a Ph.D. in education, Zinszer's military career included diving to recover victims in the debris field off Long Island, N.Y., after TWA flight 800 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 1996. The Philadelphia-area native's blend of book smarts, braggadocio and charisma make him the heart that powers the pulse of the forensic-diving foursome.
But if the 18-year-old is in Aruban waters, the divers, a team of overachievers like Natalee herself, have perhaps the best shot of finding her where others failed. Natalee was bound for the University of Alabama to start a pre-med program on a full academic scholarship.
Before the Holloways leave the Brickell, the team tells them about plans for the morning to dive a quarry near the airport, where a cadaver dog sniffed possible human remains. The day after, they'll board a 55-foot vessel for a dive on the open ocean near the lighthouse, where investigators think those involved in Natalee's disappearance could have dumped evidence.
It will be a tricky operation amid 10-foot swells in waters that island boat captains sometimes refuse to navigate when tourists charter their pleasure craft, intent on hooking marlins.
"Once we go somewhere," Zinszer says after the Holloways leave, "We don't go halfway."
'Pray for Natalee'
Dan Walsh jumps in after Mike Zinser to begin a search. They are diving in the sea off Aruba's north coast. EMILY BARNES/The Times-Union
Two teams of FSU divers are searching in the muck, sweeping their hands like windshield wipers as they hover over the bottom, hoping to dislodge any weighted objects. With gentle fin kicks, they creep through a 12-foot-deep section of water dodging rebar and tires that spill from the quarry's banks and spindly tree branches that fork through the quarry's surface.
Two ropes -- one tied to a garbage heap, one Nute holds -- are tied at the other end to a branch in the quarry's middle. The ropes mark what starts as a 90-degree swath the dive detectives think is most likely to contain evidence.
They've picked the search area based on wind patterns that stir currents in the quarry, along with a cadaver dog's interest in a barrel by the east bank, which has a steep path to the water from a dark road.
ABOUT THIS STORY
Florida State University's Underwater Crime Scene Investigation team went to Aruba for five days last week to help in the search for missing Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway. Times-Union reporter Bridget Murphy and photographer Emily Barnes chronicle the sea sleuths' mission.
It offers someone familiar with the area a chance to dump evidence with little fear anyone will see them or what they might sink in the swamp.
"I put my fingers on my mask, I don't even see my fingerprints," Zinszer says, surfacing to move the guide rope he's following through the water a few feet over.
For a moment, he removes one of his dive gloves, exposing a braided yarn bracelet on his wrist. It is one of thousands of bracelets volunteers gave out on the island, some with slogans like "Pray for Natalee," to call attention to the young woman's disappearance.
Minutes later, Zinszer submerges again. The pattern continues until after about three hours of diving, the two teams' paths meet in the middle. When they do, the verdict is clear: No Natalee.
It is a trial demanding grit and patience, like the one the Holloways endure as Aruban authorities investigate Natalee's disappearance. Since she went missing May 30, police detained seven suspects, but court hearings happen behind closed doors. Without knowing whether there is proof their daughter fell victim to foul play, the Holloways sit and wait. They hope police will file criminal charges, as they continue to search for Natalee, driving around in a rental car whose state-issued license plate announces Aruba to be "One Happy Island."
Going underwater for answers
"We feel comfortable, very confident the areas we searched are clear," diver Mike Zinszer says. "...We would have loved to recover Natalee and bring her home. Everybody leaves an operation like this empty." EMILY BARNES/The Times-Union
The 55-foot vessel Iliza rocks in the sapphire waters off Aruba's north coast, where bull sharks and hammerheads patrol below, hunting creatures like the sea turtles that pop up to the surface on 10-foot swells.
A side-scan sonar, a slim, missile-like cartridge about the length of economy cars vacationers rent here for $30 a day, trails the vessel as divers Walsh and Zinszer prepare to leap into the deep.
The technology detected a box shape 82 feet below the surface. With law-enforcement intelligence suggesting Natalee's disappearance could be tied to a rectangular dock box, the team decides to investigate.
If they find something, they won't bring it up right away. They'll take photographs and measurements to document the scene, until they are ready to remove the evidence in as close a form as possible to the way they found it. That would include preserving it in some of the water they found it in.
"All you're doing is going underwater to get the answer to the question," Nute says, when he speaks of how underwater crime scene investigators gather evidence.
Their goal? The same as detectives on land. "Let the jury see what you saw so they can make a decision," the professor explains.
FSU's elite dive team Based at Florida State University's Panama City campus, the Underwater Crime Scene Investigation team came together about three years ago after the university won a $300,000 Homeland Security grant. The team consists of Technical Engineer Dan Walsh, Diving Safety Officer Mike Zinszer, Underwater Archaeologist Mark Feulner and Forensic Scientist Dale Nute. EMILY BARNES/The Times-Union
Sometimes, the water preserves a scene longer. Sometimes, it speeds up its destruction, like a recent case in Florida when the team recovered a corpse, quickly scooping it from the water as four crabs gnawed it and a shark circled.
Back home, the team is working on two murder cases. While officials say they're struggling to get financing to continue the program, they've also started making a name for the unit, whose members also teach classes and train law-enforcement personnel at the Panama City campus.
The team also assists in high-profile Florida cases, recently helping locate first the body, then the head of a slain Florida woman in a marsh. They also helped recover the body of a firefighter killed in a helicopter crash, unit members said.
But today, as the rest of the team clings to the bucking deck of the vessel, Walsh and Zinszer discover that the box-like formation 82 feet below is just a coral shelf.
The two divers surface, and as the Holloways watch from shore, the Iliza starts her voyage back to calmer waters, another previously unchecked area checked. But still, no Natalee.
'A thread of a miracle'
Dan Walsh attaches a rope to a branch in a quarry, before a search with other divers. The rope creates a path to follow as they search the bottom of muddy water with almost zero visibility. EMILY BARNES/The Times-Union
"Sherlock Holmes says ... if you get rid of all the possibilities, anything remaining, even if it seems impossible, is true," Nute says that night.
The divers' equipment is spread around the pool deck at the Brickell, as they take turns maneuvering the Videoray, the remotely operated vehicle they used the past couple of days, through the water.
Tonight they'll eat dinner with the Holloways, before flying back home in the morning.
There's disappointment, but comfort in offering the family answers no one else could.
"Our job was to get rid of some of the possibilities," Nute says. "Now the investigators know places she's not."
"We feel comfortable, very confident the areas we searched are clear," Zinszer says. "...We would have loved to recover Natalee and bring her home. Everybody leaves an operation like this empty."
Later, over dinner at a nearby Brazilian-themed restaurant, tears will spill from some of the divers' eyes as Dave and Robin Holloway show them photos of Natalee they haven't shared with anyone else.
The next afternoon, 43 days after Natalee vanished, the Holloways flip through the same photos in the lobby of the Holiday Inn. Natalee's father believes someone on the island knows where to find his daughter but says he's not interested in justice.
"All I care about is bringing her home," Holloway says. "Whatever they do is whatever they do. And we always hold on to a thread of a miracle."
Even one from the deep.
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