June 18, 2005
By Jau Reeves The Associated Press
MOUNTAIN BROOK, Ala. — Natalee Holloway's family, not Aruban police, first identified and located a Dutch youth now held as a suspect in the disappearance of the Alabama teen, according to a friend who helped with the search.
The family's quick work - a combination of hunches, tips and amateur detective work on the Caribbean island - also led to two of the youth's friends who also were taken into custody. But it ultimately was met by frustration when authorities failed to quickly arrest the trio, which included the son of a prominent Dutch ministry official.
"She had been missing less than 24 hours and we had all three names and addresses, so it's just disappointing that they weren't able to move faster," said Jody Bearman, who organized the trip to Aruba for 125 students from Mountain Brook High School and seven chaperones.
The three weren't taken into custody until 10 days after Holloway's family knew of them, and the search continued today for Holloway, an honors student and Mississippi native set to attend the University of Alabama on a full scholarship this fall.
Aruban authorities have defended their work in the nearly three weeks since Holloway failed to show up for the trip home to Alabama. Police work takes time, they have said.
Mariaine Croes, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office in Aruba, declined comment today on how authorities initially learned of the three suspects.
"We have to wait for the investigation to finish," she said. A fourth suspect, the DJ from a party boat, also is in custody.
Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press late Friday, Bearman said Aruban authorities weren't totally to blame for their early failure to identify van der Sloot and the others, something she said the amateur sleuths did in less than three hours in Aruba.
"They did not know what was going on," she said. "We were there on a mission."
Terrified after hearing news any parent dreads, Beth Holloway Twitty landed in Aruba about 12 hours after learning her daughter Natalee had vanished during a graduation trip.
Accompanied by her husband and friends including Bearman on a donated corporate jet, Holloway Twitty had a few bits of information from Mountain Brook graduates who were on the trip, most importantly a physical description of a Dutch teenager - a judge's son, they thought - with whom Natalee was seen leaving a bar, Carlos' N Charlies', on May 30, the night she disappeared.
Bearman said the group also was told that Holloway's friends had seen the same teenager in the casino at the hotel where they were staying.
With help from some locals, Holloway's mother and the others determined the youth had been in the casino playing in a Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament, according to Bearman.
Players had to sign in, she said, and that gave them a name and initial: Joran V.
"After talking to enough people, we were able to deduce that it was Joran van der Sloot," she said. "Once we got the name we were able to track the address through people and we got the police. They escorted us and we went straight to the house."
Van der Sloot's father, Aruban judge-in-training Paul van der Sloot, said his son was out playing poker when the group first arrived at the house around 1 a.m., Bearman said. Still accompanied by police, the group went to a couple of places looking for van der Sloot before returning to the father's house and finding Joran van der Sloot there with one of the two Surinamese brothers who later were held, she said.
"Basically we interrogated him," Bearman said. "He never denied being with her."
Van der Sloot described dancing with Holloway at the bar and said "she wanted to go with me" at closing time, according to Bearman.
Van der Sloot claimed he left Holloway outside the Holiday Inn resort where the group was staying after they took a late-night trip to a scenic lighthouse, Bearman said, and he even accompanied the family to the hotel to show them the exact spot where she was dropped off.
His story didn't add up, though, according to Bearman.
"We started pressing him on that because we had students who were in the lobby until 5 a.m., and she never arrived," she said.
While Aruban police were present during the questioning of van der Sloot, which lasted until about 3 a.m., officers left the talking to Holloway's family until things began to get "heated," Bearman said.
Van der Sloot and the Surinamese brothers - Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18 - were interrogated by police the next day and released. While later taken into custody, no one has been charged.
Two one-time security guards were taken into custody because van der Sloot and the brothers said they saw Holloway outside the hotel with a security guard, but both have since been released.
The fourth person in custody, Steve Gregory Croes, 26, played music on a tourist party barge called the "Tattoo," but none of the Mountain Brook teens were known to have gone on the boat, Bearman said. An employer of Croes said the disc jockey knew one of the Surinamese brothers through an Internet cafe.
No luck.