Local Firm Hired by Holloway Family
Reported By: Jennifer Leslie
Web Editor: Manav Tanneeru
Last Modified: 7/19/2005 7:18:09 PM
The parents of Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teenager missing in Aruba, have hired an Alpharetta firm to begin a private investigation.
The teen, who was in Aruba to celebrate her high school graduation, was last seen in Aruba six weeks ago.
“I was watching this case just completely start falling apart, and I felt bad for the family,” said T.J. Ward, a private investigator with the firm Investigative Consultants International.
Ward traveled to Aruba at his own expense earlier this month to meet with the Holloway family, and they then hired him to return this week to begin a private investigation.
"There's somebody out there who knows about this investigation, who knows about the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, and we're going to try to establish that on behalf of the family,” Ward said.
One of the tools he plans to use is layered voice analysis, which is essentially truth-telling technology that can be used to test live or recorded voices.
"With layered voice analysis, all we have to do is have a casual conversation with you, and we can tell whether you're telling the truth or you're hiding something,” Ward said.
Ward provided showed 11Alive News an example of how the technology works using a taped interview with Scott Peterson before he was charged and later convicted with his pregnant wife's murder.
Layered voice analysis shows stress, high tension and inaccuracies throughout.
"This is a probability of what he's saying is false,” Ward said. "This is a good way to build your investigative case against somebody."
Ward says he has already evaluated interviews with some of the suspects in the Holloway case, and turned over his findings to the family.
Although he'll work for them, he plans to cooperate with local authorities.
"I assure you that if we find evidence that leans toward any defendants or new defendants, we'll turn that over to the FBI or Aruban authorities immediately,” he said.
Like a polygraph test, layered voice analysis is not admissable in court, but Ward says it is becoming more popular as an investigative tool for local and federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service.
During his recent trip to Aruba, he showed the technology to prosecutors and police, but they told him they couldn't use it since Aruban courts do not allow the technology either.
Ward will travel to Aruba Wednesday to begin his work for the family.
Thx TK, as always, for your great work. This was the article I saw. Had it been posted earlier?
I hope this firm provides some evidence of what has happened to Natalee. Clearly, the Arubans are in a stall mode hoping that the media forgets about the story. Then everyone gets away the crime.
Even if Urine and the Alpo brothers are innocent, the Aruban police don't seem particularly interested in solving this crime [yes, I know that there is no evidence that we know of that a crime has been committed].
Having said that, the behavior of the Aruban police is consistent with a "protect the powerful" model of behavior. I suspect that Urine murdered Natalee, but will eventually be released thanks to the intentional Keystone Kops behaviors of the police.
Of course, an alternative explanation is more severe. Was she kidnapped and were Urine and the Alpos involved? Was one of the casinos involved (targeting candidates)? This would, of course, destroy the tourism business in Aruba and the Aruban police would have a hard time bringing themselves to admit this scenario. [Remember when Acapulco was accused of covering up shark attacks that occurred on the beaches near the resort hotels after several people went missing?] I admit that the kidnapping scenario is a long-shot, but as soon as the Arubans/Dutch engage in perhaps intentional incompetence in solving a disappearance, you can't really trust any of their institutions.
For your notes:
Mario "Buchi" Rasmijn (Aruban Park Ranger = APR)
Greta kept calling it "a hair" and the APR corrected her and told her "It not A hair" it's duct tape that I found on the rocks here on the coast. He says "ahhhh it's look like two colors of hair. One lighter than the other one, or ah you can say one is darker than the other one.
Found on Sunday at 11:45am during his regular shift patrol and he was not "tipped" off about it.
Greta asked him he could see the hair pretty easily on the duct tape? and he responed "not really". (so he saying that you could not see it easily but that there was hair on the duct tape - I take it also that that the hair is 2 toned and not that one hair is a different color than another, even though he tried his best to descibe it for Greta. The guy was having a rough time understanding what Greta was after with her questions. English is probably not is native language.)
The Transcript should be up sometime in the next few hours.