[teengeekgrrl]

o.O

[poochee]

Hope they can solve this. I can just imagine how awful her family feels.

[angelize56]

poochee: The really sad thing about this case is...no one is covering the cases of many, many, many more children/teens missing both in the U.S. and the world....know what I mean? They're just as important!

Dutch to Send Jets to Find Missing Teen

By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 3, 7:20 AM ET

ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Holland will send three F-16 warplanes rigged with search equipment to find Natalee Holloway, Aruban authorities said Saturday, as U.S. lawmakers increased pressure on the Aruban government to do more to find the Alabama teenager nearly five weeks since she disappeared.

The three planes, equipped with infrared and sonar-scanning capacity, were expected to arrive Sunday afternoon, said Aruban government spokesman Ruben Trapenberg.

Trapenberg said the planes were being sent after Aruban Justice Minister Rudy Croes requested more help from Holland, the Dutch Caribbean island's former colonizer.

"Both the justice minister and the prime minister feel that Holland can help us reach a resolution with this," said Trapenberg.

This week both Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, wrote letters to Aruban Prime Minister Nelson Oduber urging the government to do more and let the FBI play a larger role in the investigation.

"With every passing day, I become increasingly concerned that the current investigation has reached a dead end," Shelby wrote in a letter dated July 1. "It's unfathomable that the Aruban government would not take advantage of the full spectrum of resources, personnel and expertise of the FBI."

Seven FBI agents have had an observatory role on the island since a few days after Holloway disappeared on May 30, but have repeatedly said they don't have jurisdiction to direct the searches or investigation.

Trapenberg, the government spokesman, said calls for an increased FBI presence don't make sense. "It's fine to have the FBI here, but if you send in more agents are you saying the ones here are not any good?" he said.

The U.S. teen's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, said the U.S. pressure showed that family members aren't alone in their frustration with the pace of the investigation.

"It has become increasingly difficult to simply wait and see what happens," Holloway Twitty, a 44-year-old speech pathologist, said in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press.

The mother said the family was "graciously pleading" with the FBI and Holland to do more to find her daughter.

"It would be comforting for us if they were more active in this investigation," said Holloway Twitty. "We must demand and expect that Natalee be returned to her country."

Holloway, 18, from Mountain Brook, Ala., disappeared on the last of a five-day graduation trip with 124 classmates.

Island-wide searches — which have included Aruban police, the FBI, Dutch Marines, a rescue group from Texas and thousands of volunteers — have produced nothing.

Three men have been detained in the disappearance: Dutch teenager Joran van der Sloot, 17, and his friends, Surinamese brothers Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18.

Trapenberg said Friday that the three young men have not been formally charged but could be as soon as Monday.

The three were the last ones seen with Holloway the night she disappeared. They were arrested June 9 and on Monday were expected to go before a judge who would decide whether to extend their detention an additional 60 days while prosecutors prepare their case.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050703/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[poochee]

Angel that is true there are many you hear very little about....I have heard this discussed on Cable.

Her mother is the motivator in this coverage. She is not going to let go until the bitter end and I don't blame her. A gutsy lady!! I suspect this would have not been pursued without her pushing. I think she is dead and the father helped dispose of her to save his son! And the Arubian government would have liked for it to go away.

[angelize56]

Hi poochee: Take Shasta and Dylan Groene for example....a few days in the news and practically forgotten...until Shasta turned up.....just seems unfair some get more coverage than others...especially those from well-to-do familes...like Elizabeth Samrt as an example...

[poochee]

Originally Posted by angelize56

Hi poochee: Take Shasta and Dylan Groene for example....a few days in the news and practically forgotten...until Shasta turned up.....just seems unfair some get more coverage than others...especially those from well-to-do familes...like Elizabeth Samrt as an example...

That seems to be true. Or, if the person is good-looking. Or not a minority.

[angelize56]

As if this a surprise...I think we all agree that van der Sloot is the criminal here!

BREAKING NEWS

Aruban Judge Frees Two Holloway Suspects

Monday, July 04, 2005

ORANJESTAD, Aruba — Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, the Surinamese brothers detained in the Natalee Holloway case, were ordered freed Monday by an Aruban judge who ruled authorities had no grounds to hold them another 60 days without charges.

That left Joran van der Sloot, the 17-year-old Dutch-born son of a justice official, as the sole person in custody in connection with the disappearance of the 18-year-old Alabama woman.

Van der Sloot, Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18, have been detained since June 9 but have not been charged.

Aruba's chief government spokesman, Ruben Trapenberg, said last week that the three could have been formally charged with a crime at the detention hearing Monday, but their lawyers said that did not happen.

Under Dutch law that governs Aruba, a protectorate of the Netherlands, detainees can be held 116 days before being charged by a judge, but prosecutors need to go to court periodically to renew the detention.

Holloway's relatives arrived at the courthouse about the same time as the detainees and stayed for about an hour in their first appearance at court proceedings in the case.

The three men arrived at the Dutch Caribbean island's only courthouse in unmarked cars and were escorted through a side door.

All three were seen being escorted out separately at different times about two hours later.

Lawyers for the Kalpoe brothers told reporters prosecutors had requested permission to hold the brothers for another 60 days but presented no evidence.

"They did not present any new evidence against my client," said one of Satish's lawyers, Elgin Zeppenfeldt. "I believe they'll have to let him go because it's getting harder and harder to hold him."

Ruud Oomen, a lawyer representing Deepak Kalpoe, echoed that sentiment.

"The further we get, the more it shows my client had nothing to do with any crime," he said. "What was presented [in court Monday], in my view, was beneficial to my client."

Van der Sloot's lawyer, Antonio Carlo, would not comment on whether investigators had presented new evidence against his client, but he said a judge did approve a motion letting attorneys be present during interrogations. Carlo said previous motions requesting a lawyer's presence had been denied.

"It's important for me to say again today that my client maintains his innocence," Carlo added.

The Kalpoes' mother, Nadira Ramirez, expressed hope for her sons' release as she waited outside the courthouse along with a handful of curious tourists and hordes of news media.

"We are hoping and expecting them to be released because they are innocent," she said. "They don't have any evidence against them."

Holloway's stepfather, George "Jug" Twitty, said the family felt it was important to attend the hearing as well.

"It was comforting for my wife to be in there today," he said of Holloway's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty. Holloway Twitty did not speak to reporters.

A lone protester walked back and forth in front of the courthouse with a sign reading "Let them go. They are innocent. This is a setup."

She identified herself as Myriam Croes, but would not comment further.

The three detainees have acknowledged that they were with Holloway in the early morning hours of May 30, the day she disappeared. Van der Sloot's mother, Anita, said her son told her he was alone with Holloway on a beach but he did not harm her. (Yeah he didn't harm her...he probably killed her!)

The Kalpoe brothers have told police they dropped Holloway and van der Sloot off near the Marriott Hotel about 2 a.m. and that was the last time they saw the blond, blue-eyed high school graduate from Mountain Brook, Ala.

Authorities said they have no physical evidence suggesting Holloway is dead, but Attorney General Karin Janssen has said that it would not be impossible to argue a criminal case even without a body.

Holloway vanished the same day she was to catch a flight home after a five-day vacation celebrating her high school graduation with 124 other students from Alabama. Numerous searches by Dutch marines, Aruban investigators and volunteer rescue groups have failed to turn up any trace of her.

Holloway Twitty arrived in Aruba within hours of her daughter's disappearance and has been on the island ever since, distributing fliers, monitoring searches and appearing on national U.S. television shows to keep up the pressure on investigators.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161501,00.html

[angelize56]

With all the goofs in this world...this will probably turn out to be a hoax!

Hair to Be Tested in Aruba Disappearance

By MARGARET WEVER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jul 18, 5:28 PM ET

ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Investigators said Monday they will conduct DNA tests on blond hair attached to duct tape that was found along Aruba's coast to see if it came from Natalee Holloway in a possible break to the six-week-old mystery.

A park ranger found the duct tape while collecting trash Sunday on rocks at Boca Tortuga, an inlet near a series of caves on Aruba's northeast coast, said National Park Ranger Service spokeswoman Dilma Arends.

Boca Tortuga is on the opposite side of Aruba from where the 18-year-old was last seen in public, and her father expressed little hope that the find would yield an important clue.

"We've had a lot of information that turned out false," David Holloway said as he prepared to leave Aruba and return home to Meridian, Miss.

The ranger who made the find, Mario Rasmijn, said there were several strands, each about 12 inches long, and that some were light blond and others were dark.

The hair will be sent to the Netherlands for DNA analysis, said police spokesman Edwin Comemencia. Aruba, a Dutch protectorate, doesn't have a lab to conduct the genetic testing.

A separate test will be conducted by the FBI at its lab in Quantico, Va., said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela in Miami.

It was unknown when the results would be disclosed.

Searches by Dutch marines, Aruban police, and some 2,000 volunteers have found no trace of Holloway, of Mountain Brook, Ala., who was last seen in public in the early hours of May 30, at the end of a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island.

A volunteer group from Dickinson, Texas, that had searched for three weeks left the island Sunday.

A 17-year-old Dutch resident of Aruba, Joran van der Sloot, has been detained in connection with Holloway's disappearance, but no charges have been filed.

David Holloway said he tried to visit van der Sloot in jail Saturday because "I wanted Joran to meet with me and tell me face to face what happened."

Authorities did not allow the meeting and Holloway ran into the detained youth's father, a judge in training on the island, outside the jail.

Holloway said he gave the elder van der Sloot, Paul, three books to pass along to his son — the Bible and two Christian inspirational works. It was not immediately known if Joran received the material.

Paul van der Sloot was detained on June 23 for allegedly aiding his son, but released four days later by a judge who ruled there was not enough evidence to hold him.

Outside the jail, the two men exchanged a few words. "I said I was a forgiving person," and the Dutch father's eyes filled with tears, Holloway said.

"He said he understands my situation, that he's a father, too, and that he'll do anything for his son," Holloway said.

Authorities can hold van der Sloot until Sept. 4, when he must be charged or released. Six other men detained at various times during the investigation have been released.

Also over the weekend, the missing teen's family posted a new reward of $175,000 for her safe return in addition to the $50,000 already offered for a tip to her whereabouts.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/aruba_mis...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[teengeekgrrl]

.

[angelize56]

By MARGARET WEVER Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

ORANJESTAD, Aruba Jul 27, 2005 — Aruban firefighters were draining a pond Tuesday in the search for an Alabama teenager who vanished nearly two months ago while vacationing in the island.

Edwin Comemencia, a police spokesman, confirmed that the draining of the pond across from the Marriott Hotel was part of the investigation into Natalee Holloway's disappearance but would not comment further. A jailed Dutch youth has said he was with Holloway in the area the night she disappeared.

The draining was expected to take up to 24 hours.

Earlier Tuesday, Holloway's stepfather, George Twitty, said two new witnesses had come forward with information about the night she disappeared.

One witness told investigators that he saw Joran van der Sloot, the 17-year-old who has been detained as the main suspect, driving to a nightclub across the road from the Marriott Hotel around 2:30 a.m. the night Holloway disappeared, Twitty said.

The witness said van der Sloot tried to hide his face with his hands as he drove to the Racquet Club with two Surinamese brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, Twitty said. The Kalpoe brothers were detained as suspects and later released.

The stepfather said the account places the three individuals near the hotel beach where van der Sloot says he left 18-year-old Holloway alone the last night she was seen in public.

"What's interesting is the time 2:30 a.m. when the three were supposedly on their way home," said Twitty, referring to their previous accounts to investigators.

The witness, a gardener whose name was not disclosed, gave his account to investigators on Friday, Twitty said.

http://www.newsalerts.com/news/article/go:top3:244249

[angelize56]

I still think the hair and duct tape thing was nothing but a cruel hoax........I wouldn't doubt the pond thing was another hoax.....

Tests Show Hair Not From Ala. Missing Teen

July 28, 2005 7 p.m. EDT

ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Strands of hair found in Aruba did not come from missing U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said Thursday.

The hair, which was found attached to duct tape on July 17, was subjected to genetic testing at the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Virginia, and the results showed they did not come from the 18-year-old who has been missing for two months, said spokeswoman Judy Orihuela.

"The results were negative," said Orihuela. "It wasn't Natalee's hair."

A park ranger found the duct tape on July 17 while collecting trash on Aruba's northeast coast — the opposite side of the island from where the Alabama woman was last seen in public.

Testing was also conducted on a sample of the hair at a crime lab in the Netherlands, but the results were not immediately available.

The news came as authorities in Aruba neared the end of an effort to drain a pond near a hotel and tennis club that has become a focus in the investigation. Holloway disappeared on May 30 on the final night of a high school graduation trip to the Dutch Caribbean island.

Crews expected to finish draining the pond on Friday, said Gabriel Kelly, a spokesman for the island's fire department, which was coordinating the effort.

"So far we haven't found anything out of the ordinary," Kelly said.

A lawyer for Holloway's mother and stepfather said the search was prompted by a witness who came forward last week and reported seeing three young men, including the Dutch youth who has been detained in the case, near the pond on the night of the teenager's disappearance.

The witness told investigators that he saw Joran van der Sloot, 17, and two Surinamese brothers driving near the pond on May 30 between 2:30 and 3 a.m. — a time they previously told investigators they were already home — said the attorney, Vinda de Sousa.

Holloway, from Mountain Brook, Alabama, vanished after an evening at a nightclub that she left with the three young men, hours before she was to fly home at the end of a trip with 124 classmates.

No one has been charged in the case and van der Sloot is the only person detained as a suspect. The Surinamese brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, were previously held and released.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050728/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[poochee]

I suspect Aruban law enforcement tried to do a cover-up because of Joran's father....But Natalee's mother is not going to stand for it!

[angelize56]

Nothing in the pond...now they're tearing up the landfill because a "witness" saw a car there and maybe saw the dumping of a body....and....give me a break! The3 Amigos killed her...took her to the part of Aruba where the man-eating sharks are...disposed of her body...Natalee wii never be found...in my opinion....

[angelize56]

I've always thought the media dwells on a person such as Natalee while other missing women you might hear about as only a short story on the news....I don't think it's a race issue as this article seems to stress...I do agree that people are more enticed by stories of missing rich and middle class women....as far as missing men...the missing groom on the cruise ship is the only one I'm aware of in the news at the moment...and they've had on about him quite a bit....even on "A Current Affair".

I think the media can overkill a story...it does get repititious hearing about Natalee EVERY day and EVERY night....you kind of mute out any more news on her....and this has been since May....I do wonder why I rarely see any mention of other missing women....the latest one I see on the media is the missing black pregnant woman...and of course she is very pretty....so the media probably is very biased...but not only based on race...

Not only Natalee is missing
Is the media inattention to missing women who aren't white due to deliberate racism or unconscious bias?

By Anne-Marie O'Connor
Times Staff Writer

August 5, 2005

As one of America's new breed of media critics, Philadelphia blogger Richard Blair watched for weeks as the media devoted intense coverage to the story of the May 30 disappearance of Natalee Holloway while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba.

Then, on July 18, another young woman went missing, this one in his hometown. Photos of LaToyia Figueroa, 24, show the kind of smiling, attractive young woman whose disappearance has become a staple of television news coverage, particularly cable news, in recent years.

Except for one thing, a growing chorus of critics say: Figueroa, five months pregnant and the mother of a 7-year-old, comes from a lower-income black family, while the missing women regularly portrayed on television are overwhelmingly white. Her frustrated family had resorted to picketing on a busy street corner to draw attention to her disappearance when Blair and other Philadelphia bloggers took up Figueroa's case.

"Certainly Natalee Holloway's story is tragic in its own right," Blair said. "But what makes it more newsworthy than a five-month pregnant mother?"

"I think this is part of a larger discussion: Who's news, who's newsworthy, and who's making these decisions," Blair said. "I think race is a factor, as well as economic status."

Criticism of the media disparity has increased with the growth of the news genre focusing on missing women. While the media seem to focus on a parade of attractive disappeared white women — from Laci Peterson and Chandra Levy to "runaway bride" Jennifer Wilbanks, the scores of missing black and Latina women garner little or no national attention, critics say.

The decapitated body of Evelyn Hernandez, 24, who was nine months pregnant, was discovered in the San Francisco Bay a few months before Peterson, but she did not touch off a firestorm of coverage. Nor did the disappearance of Ardena Carter, 23, a pregnant black graduate student who was last seen alive on her way to the library in Georgia in 2003. The remains of Carter and her unborn child turned up in the woods two months later. (I never heard of either! )

"I don't think a media director is sitting around saying, 'Hey, there's this black woman in Philadelphia and she disappeared and we don't care,' " said Todd Boyd, USC professor of critical studies. "It's an unconscious decision about who matters and who doesn't.

"In general, there is an assumption that crime is such a part of black and Latino culture, that these things happen all the time," Boyd said. "In many people's minds it's regarded as being commonplace and not that big a deal."

Mark Effron, vice president of MSNBC News Daytime Programming, disagrees. Effron said the stories of missing women typically bubble up from local network affiliates who are covering the stories based on the public outcry they generate in their home communities.

"It's not like there's a kind of cabal where MSNBC and CNN and Fox get together and say, 'Boy, this is a good one. That's not a good one,' " he said. "Usually, there's an involved family that tends to be sophisticated in how to use the media.

"I'm not disputing numbers. What I'm telling you is that we have never, ever, ever turned down a story based on race or any of those factors."

This week, he said, the network has devoted daily coverage to Figueroa's disappearance.

However, he said, since the controversy began, "we have had discussions with our staff, [saying] 'Let's just make sure. I know we're not doing anything purposely or maliciously or based on any kind of racial or age profiling, but let's just make sure,' " he said.

Concern over lack of attention to some cases is not just an issue of fairness. Early coverage of abductions can be crucial to finding the victims alive — a factor that the Philadelphia blogger said promoted his campaign.

"I have a daughter that's not much younger than LaToyia," said Blair, who posted the news on his blog, www.allspinzone.com. "In this kind of thing, every minute's crucial."

To some analysts, this gets to the heart of the media's failure to fulfill its public service duty in the case of many missing minority women.

In California, for example, nearly 7,500 Latinas are missing — almost double the number of white women — but they are far less likely to receive attention.

The disparity even extends to abducted children, the critics say. While the sexual assault and murder of JonBenet Ramsey in her Boulder, Colo., home made her a nationally known symbol of a parent's worst fears, no corresponding black girl has become a household name, says author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

"When you raise the issue, people say, 'This is a tragedy and we should do more,' " Hutchinson said. "But it only lasts a hot minute. It doesn't leave any lasting imprint in the newsrooms."

One media-savvy relative says her efforts to draw attention to the disappearance of her niece, 24-year-old Tamika Huston, failed to win the attention of local media outlets whose stories might be picked up by national news. The African American woman didn't come home one day in June 2004 in South Carolina. Rebka Howard, her aunt, is a Miami public relations executive, but her media contacts and family news conferences failed to generate the kind of immediate attention they had hoped for.

Controversy over the disparity has grown in recent months as cable news formats seem to have adopted stories of the missing women as a staple news item.

"If there's a void in developing news stories, these things become the fodder for keeping ratings up on cable news networks," said Andrew Kohut, executive director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "They go for cases that attract tabloid audiences. And tabloid audiences are traditionally more interested in what happens in the lives of rich people than middle-income people and especially poor people." (Sad but true!)

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, an associate professor of English and media studies at Pomona College, said the issue is more complex. The fact that media icons of missing women tend to be attractive white women is just one manifestation of American cultural myths about race and gender that have created a very specific archetype of the kind of woman who is considered a damsel in distress, she said.

"I'm not accusing anybody of conscious racism in telling particular stories," Fitzpatrick said. "If the public were clamoring for stories about the abuse of African American women and how they're damaged by it, probably CNN would be happy to give us that story."

Some analysts also blame a lack of newsroom diversity. Twenty-two percent of the staff of TV newsrooms are minorities, according to the Radio-Television News Directors Assn. An estimated 13% of newspaper journalists are minorities, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

It is simply less likely that a reporter will hear about a story emerging in a community that has less representation in the media, said Maria Len-Rios, an assistant at the Missouri School of Journalism at Columbia and the author of a recent study about the underrepresentation of women in the media.

"I think that when you look at the composition of the newsroom and the people that people in the newsroom know, there aren't many people from underrepresented communities," Len-Rios said. "We don't pay as much attention to someone missing from a community we don't know or are not familiar with."

Erin Bruno, the lead case manager for the National Center for Missing Adults in Phoenix, said her office sends out press releases daily on the 47,828 cases of missing adults they are tracking. They are a diverse pool: 29,553 white or Latino, 13,859 black, 1,199 Asian and 685 American Indian.

Yet "what we're seeing in the national media is a lot of young Caucasian females," Bruno said. "I've heard reporters sometimes look for stories that they can identify with, perhaps they themselves are Caucasian ... or maybe they're looking at who their audience is."

And the reporters' search for the "damsel in distress" leaves another huge group ignored — men, she said. Some 25,447 missing males are being tracked by the Phoenix group, compared with 22,379 females — a gap roughly mirrored by California statistics. Said Bruno: "Women are seen more as victims than men are."

Bruno said the Holloway disappearance has generated a new demand from the media for information on a greater diversity of missing women.

Media criticism over the coverage gap is growing. "When black women disappear, the media silence can be deafening," said a July 2005 article in Essence magazine. In a poll conducted last week by Black Entertainment Television's website, BET.com, 71% of respondents said they did not believe that the belated flurry of media attention to Figueroa's disappearance meant that minority women were "finally getting as much attention as whites."

Several media organizations asked for comment on the issue declined. CNN spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg said news executives were unavailable. Barbara Cochran, the president of the Radio-Television News Director's Assn., said in an e-mail she was unavailable. Fox News spokeswoman Dana Klinghoffer said that "a lot of people are out and unavailable. I just think it's one we're going to have to sit out."

To Marty Kaplan, the associate dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, the silence on the issue "suggests they don't have any good answers and they're a little embarrassed. What are they going to say?

"It does suggest that it is seeping into their consciousness how blatant it is that only white women are covered. News directors apparently believe the public is interested in every lurid tale about a white woman and not about the bad things happening across the country every day to people who are less photogenic and not Caucasian."

http://www.newsalerts.com/news/article/go:us19:250941

[poochee]

I notice that all of a sudden Fox is coming up with diverse missing people. A man missing from a cruise, a black woman, etc., after this subject was getting discussed in the media. I agree with this article.