First of all we should all have at least a little consideration for the family of Nat. Millions go missing in America and all have a chance of being found.
Why isnt there a physic in Aruba covering the case. There has been several cases that have been aired of tv and physic's have played a huge roll in finding missing individuals.
Has anyone considered it? Why is it taking them this long.
If Nat's gone. Give her a decent burial and let her rest for she will be in a safer place.
I cant believe how our people can be so cruel and shame on you TOBY!
27 -
concerned parent
Aug 17, 2005 at 3:13 pm
I saw a blurb on the bottom of the tv screen 2 nights ago on a news channel that said an arm washed ashore in Venezula and they were going to see if it was Natalees....didn't get the channels news id and haven't seen it on any site...did anyone else see this?
28 -
mari
Aug 17, 2005 at 4:18 pm
i think Joran, his ugly dad,and the kalpoes know what happenned to natalee. thier lying about the whole thing and blaming each other that they did it. i just hope they find natalee and give her a proper way to be buried. i feel for her family and friends. Hope is all their family needs.
I,m so sick of seeing the natalee holloway story on tv I feel like throwing up . whats so big deal about one white girl from alabama missing,maybe she ran away from her her step father who probably was doing her in for last few years.nobody ask how was relationship between step father and natalee .I got feeling about him. anyway I just want to know if this was a black or hispanic girl would the white american media give it the same coverage .I doubt it ,I hope they never find the bitch who told her to get in car with three stangers in a foregin island in the middle of the night ,she was looking for some action ,.and beth holloway is hogging up the news media every night n prime time.She think she is important and she is not.
30 -
ANON
Aug 18, 2005 at 2:17 pm
I JUST HAVE ONE THING TO SAY, HOW DARE YOU PEOPLE CALL THIS GIRL A B****!! ONE DAY YOU WILL HAVE CHILDREN, DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD DESERVE THIS? I DONT THINK SO. AS HAVING TWO KIDS, I WOULD DO THE SAME TO PROTECT MY CHILDREN AND I WOULD "HOG" AS YOU SAY, THE MEDIA. YOU PEOPLE ARE JUST SICK AND YOU NEED TO FIND JESUS.
31 -
bryan
Aug 18, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Is he missing in Aruba too ?
32 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 18, 2005 at 3:58 pm
I pray that everyone in this world especially teens will learn from what happen to Natalee Holloway. I pray for God to watch over our children and keep them safe today and every day. Its a scary world out there, but one reason it is so is because we have all stop being our brothers keepers. Each of us have to wary of the sadistics in the world. Teach our children to be aware of whats going on around them each day and to pay attention to what they are doing, when they are doing it. I pray that justice will come to light for Natalee's Father and Stepmother, her Mother and Stepfather, her other relatives and friends, and everyone who has been supporting and praying for her. This is most definately a wake up call, just like 9-11 was for all of us. God is speaking to us through these tragedies, He is giving us a message on the wall, but we are too busy being in our own little world and ignoring every thing around us until He shakes us up and brings us back into reality. We as Americans need to learn to act civilized and unite for justice, all while praying for peace on Earth. Thank God I live in America a place I call home. I wish nobody else would ever come up missing, murdered or sold into slavery of any kind, but until we unite as one nation under God and stand up for the rights of everybody in the USA, this will probably keep happening. You could be the next victim, but I pray you are not. Let us all start being more neighborly and keep an eye on the less fortunate. I thank you for your time.
33 -
Jazzy
Aug 18, 2005 at 5:43 pm
After Joran left nat on the beach, some one else could have came along and took Nat. There is a lot to come out i think the mother and Jug wants to put the blame on Joran and the Brothers, just to close this, so they could go home. in the states when someone in the family comes up missing, the first thing the Det. question the family that is closes to the one missing to clear them first. Look at the Peterson case.Aruba needs to investigate the Twitty s.
please people enuff aready. there are more importance thing in life like bushes lies, high gas peices, and just trying to live now a days. the hell with some little drunk, partying, stupid slut who got in a car with 3 guys to start with. shes shark bite and her stupid mother needs to just take her ass home. i know the people of aruba are damn sick and tired of her.
36 -
Deb Redden
Aug 18, 2005 at 10:18 pm
If Natalee had been KISSING a boy
earlier in the day or week could
THAT show up as MALE DNA on
her toothbrush the next time she brushed her teeth?
There might be more to this
toothbrush thing than I first thought.
Maybe a good way to catch someone else
(or the original 3 boys)in another lie.
37 -
Stephanie
Aug 19, 2005 at 3:27 am
Oh Please!! To people like "Michael" who wine and say "black's and hispanics are treated this way and that"...... they've got their very own country and they are free to go back to them at any given time.
The people who got the real shitty deal was the native American Indian. Do you know what native means? This WAS their country and you don't hear them crying about their injustices, and they have every right to. They have been totally forgotten. They are the ones who are owed an apology, and so much more. What a great American history we have. We should be so proud, and people like you add so much to it!! Natalee's case is not about racism or minority---it's about an American teen who is missing in a foreign country.
38 -
nichole
Aug 19, 2005 at 8:48 am
Does anyone have any news on the arm that washed up in Venezuela??
39 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 19, 2005 at 4:01 pm
The United States government should inact some type of international policy that will help an American citizen who falls prey or victims in a foreign country, while they are on vacation or doing business. This way the FBI could step in and do its on investigation, without a foreign government saying that they have no jurisdiction or keeping us in the dark about how the investigation is developing. We should all be able to be represented by our government no matter what country we are from.
40 -
Althor
Aug 20, 2005 at 2:46 am
Is “Media Gone Wild” over missing “Girl Gone Wild” finally calming down ? ( Watch out! The “Big Top” is falling!)
Well, unbelievably as it may sound the Natalee Holloway media circus may actually be grinding down to a halt, in spite of their best efforts by Beth Holloway Twitty and her camp, the pundits at Fox News, and Nancy Grace and other pundits at CNN, to feed, and keep the ratings generating media monster alive!
As surprising as it may sound to those of us who have watched in dumbfounded amazement how Beth Holloway Twitty, and other members of her entourage, would be regularly interviewed, and Natalee’s disappearance hashed, and rehashed, with nothing new to add to the scant facts known, nor being there any new significant developments to report, at least three times per show on Fox’s prime time lineup: “Hannity & Colmes”, “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” (who has actually devoted several whole programs to the subject and bragged about “owning” the coverage on the fiasco), and to a lesser extent on “Bill O’Reilly,” and then on Nancy Grace on CNN, who like Greta, would usually devote her entire show mostly to speculations on Aruba, the number of “Beth / Aruba” interviews on said programs is actually declining!!!
On his August 16th program Bill O’Reilly on the pretext of “an update on the case” interviewed Beth’s husband “Jughead” Twitty, and “Diario” editor Jossy Mansur (who long ago sold his journalistic soul to the Twitty camp, and the sensationalist media) on the “breaking development,” that there seemed to be no new “breaking developments” in the case! Jug made some half hearted comments concerning how he wasn’t getting as much information about the investigation as he previously had received from Aruban authorities, and Jossy responded to a question about having any other “surprise witnesses” coming forth, with a vague reference to there not being other “gardeners” with testimony to give to the Aruban courts at the present time!
To top it off, Bill, on his “Thursdays with Geraldo” segment on the following day, discussed the Natalee Holloway case with Geraldo Rivera, and both commented, or kept making reference to how the investigation seems to have “hit a brick wall.” Geraldo went as far as to assert that at this point extracting information about the case was like “trying to squeeze more juice out of a grape that had turned into a raisin” (I wonder if it was the relentless, over-the-top media over-exposure under the hot Aruban sun that sucked dry the case into a shriveled raisin!!!)
At any rate, following the Factor, Hannity & Colmes only did one “Aruba” interview (miracle of miracles!), and Greta though touching on the subject a couple of times, did not devote her entire program to the case (as she has often done in the past), dispelling the pernicious rumors being bantered about, that it seemed Fox was under some kind of contract to interview Beth and her cronies “X” amount of times per day throughout their prime time programming, regardless of wether they had something new to add to the case or not (well, or at least apparently the contract is expiring!).
On Larry King, world renowned Forensic Pathologist Dr. Henry Lee, even went as far as to assert that “the case had grown cold,” and that Beth’s circus of volunteers, tourists on “Agatha Christy Mystery Solving Vacations” helping the search, teams of local volunteers, “Equusearch” members, private investigators, and other sundry search parties coming and going, had so dug-up, stumped, and trampled all over Aruba over any possible evidence in their mostly uncoordinated, unprofessional efforts, that in their zeal they had most likely destroyed any evidence the Aruban investigators may have found to actually break the case with! So much for Beth’s Aruban circus!!!
Then on Friday the 18th the Nancy Grace Show announced that tensions were running high in Aruba, and that there was “bickering,” and “in-fighting” amongst the “search and rescue” teams brought in by the Twittys to the island, which appear to be competing with each other, and getting in each other’s way rather than enjoining in a consorted, coordinated effort (as if finding the remains of Natalee would be some kind of “trophy”!) to the point where one of them is threatening to “sue” the other. How ridiculous does it have to get????
How ironic that after so much criticism, and so many vile, and malicious attacks from the Twitty camp upon Aruban officials and investigators (of whom they often have publicly referred to as “unreliable,” and “inept,” since the very beginning of the investigation), for them now to be turning on each other with the selfsame viciousness, like a pack of rabid dogs, when facing failure!!!! “Poetic Justice” I should say!!!!
If you couple this, to the many others who have joined the search in Aruba at the behest of Beth and her husband, who have brought into it such “advanced disciplines”, and are relying upon such “high-tech” equipment as “Dowsing Sticks”, “Talking Oracular Coffee Pots”, “Mysterious Boxes” capable of pinpointing human remains down in 180 feet of water from 200 feet away on the shore, and “Psychics” ??? I honestly, and truly marvel how anyone could possibly get offended, that someone would label the sum total of all this flurry of “activity,” “charlatanry,” and “chaos,” in conjunction to the “excessive,” and “inordinate” amount of media coverage it has been given for almost three months now, anything other than a “circus”???? What else comes even close to resembling this menagerie, that you could possibly call it?!?!?
So, unless the web “chain-prayers” of all those faithful followers of all things Natalee on “Nat’s Place,” the “MSN Boards,” and other such sites on the web are answered, it seems that there will not be sufficient evidence to prosecute Joran, the Kalpoe brothers, or anyone for that matter in the case, and that come October the Aruban authorities will be forced to set Joran free, and Natalee’s disappearance will remain unresolved. This, by the way, was also the opinion of no lesser a “Legal Luminary”, and all-around “Master of Sensationalism” than Geraldo Rivera himself, in the aforementioned O’Reilly interview! Things are beginning to unravel, and fall apart in Aruba!
So, at last it seems this “media circus”/“soap opera melodrama”/ “television news reality show” following Beth, her cronies, and their antics all over Aruba, which has hijacked our news channels for the last two moths, and captivated the banal attention of millions, will finally be coming to an end (about time!).
Let us hope that television news coverage may not have been permanently damaged by these previous “Natalee Holloway/Aruba” excesses, and all the “extravaganza,” and that it gravitates back to some semblance of objectivity, journalistic integrity, and professionalism in future coverages, that once again we may focus on “real” news, and “issues,” affecting all of us as a Nation, and be able to get on with our collective lives!
As for Natalee and Aruba, as in many folk tales concerning hauntings attributed to unresolved crimes, I will always look back with a certain amount of apprehension over my shoulder at my television set as I walk away while the news are on, lest the “phantasm” of Beth’s image may come to haunt us like a wailing Banshee in her shrill voice once again, on our screens!!!
Althor
41 -
Althor
Aug 21, 2005 at 4:19 am
Aruba Paper Calls Natalee Holloway an Indecent Young Woman
Aruba daily publication A.M. Digital maligned Natalee Holloway and her Mother Beth Twitty in Friday's issue and suggested the island needs to move on from the case in an extended piece with Psychologist Tony Green.
“Frankly, we are tired of the Natalee Holloway story. It is as if it is the only important thing in life in this country.”
The psychologist went on to criticize Natalee herself, suggesting she was at fault in her own disappearance and possible murder and that Mother Beth Twitty cannot accept that Natalee was not a "decent" girl.
“She gives the impression that a corrupt Aruba caused this to happen.” The psychologist emphasized that this cannot be “...further from the truth.” He also emphasized that if the young lady was as “decent” and “correct” as her parents paint her to be, today we would not be searching for her.
“Decent and correct young ladies do not enter a car with people that they have just met in a strange country that they are visiting for the first time and certainly not in the wee hours of the morning and without knowing where they are going.”
Green remarks that he does not know any 18 year old, neither any 28 year old Aruban girl that would accept a ride from a stranger at midnight in Aruba, not to speak of, in a strange country.
Green goes on to denounce both the chaperones on the trip for not being responsible, and suggests that American journalist Nancy Grace is ignorant and Aruba should not allow in any additional search teams - pronouncing the entire effort a "joke," before suggesting the incident is actually good promotion for the island.
“Beth Twitty must pack her bags and go home and let Aruba continue its job without her interference, or that of the US, or that of the countless search teams that wish to go on digging , and running around with barking dogs.”
“The immense fortune that this joke is costing Aruba is not justifiable in view of all the ridiculous propaganda that is being spread of Aruba by the US press. In spite of the negative propaganda that we are receiving, it still is good promotion for Aruba and will not affect us in the long run.”
This post is also available at Blogger News Network.
Althor
42 -
KVanbrimmer
Aug 21, 2005 at 7:36 pm
You all should be ashamed of yourselves. Here you are shouting about how great America is at solving crimes, and how van der Sloot should rot in prison - don't you know that one of the founding principles of the American justice system is that one is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law? Do you want to set the precedent that if we don't like the way a country is handling a case we'll say "screw your system - we're barging in to implement ours!!" No wonder the world hates Americans!! What about the thousands of unsolved missing persons cases right here on American soil? Quit complaining about the Holloway case for a minute and give the Aruban authorities a chance to run things through their justce system!
43 -
Althor
Aug 21, 2005 at 9:56 pm
I couldn't agree more KVanbrimmer!!!
We do not even know what the conclusions of the on-going Aruban investigation will be, but throughout almost three months all we have done is "malign" the Aruban authorities, "balk" about their
"ineptitude", flood the air-waves with "negative coverage" of Aruba, "boycott" their tourist industry, ask for the US and other Foreign Nations to "intrude" upon Aruban Sovereignty by "intervining" in their internal affairs, and "lust" for the "blood" of joran Van Der Sloot, when the evidence against him is only one of association, being one of the last three persons known to have been with Natalee that night. Of course, we have to admit, that Beth, and her cronies had abit of a "hand" in all of this!!!
Shouldn't we allow Aruban authorities to complete the investigation first, before we get all paranoid, and rush to write the Ambassador, the Senator, the State Department, declare war on Aruba, and invade???
Or is all of this "hooplah" about Aruba, perhaps, because they are not feeding the "scandal mongering" media's appetite fast enough, that keeps entertaining so many of us with such "tid-bits" of information as to keep us salivating at the mouth in anticipation like Pavlov's dogs at the sound of a bell?
The Jon Bennet Ramsey murder here in the States has never been resolved, and there were truckloads of evidence on that one, versus the scant circumstancial evidence in Aruba.
Shouldn't we boycott ourselves, and shut down the Ski Resorts in Aspen then, and perhaps declare war on Boulder, and invade Colorado, telling them IT'S NOT GOING AWAY WITHOUT SOME ANSWERS???? WE WANT TO KNOW WHO KILLED JON BENNET RAMSEY!!!
It's preposterous!
Althor
44 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 22, 2005 at 1:34 pm
When in Rome do as the Romans do...and what is that, you may ask? Pay attention to your surroundings, know where you are and what you are doing, and be in the know. Most importantly don't let your guard down. Wake-up it is Monday and thus starts a new week. Lets all start being aware of what is going on around us at all times. Let's all take time to smell the roses and let's all be thankful we are alive. Now has come the time to lay to rest the media noise and focus on what lays infront of us. A unnecessary war, which needs to end, a uncertain future on gas prices, and a rocky economy. Welcome back to normalcy...and life continues with uncertainty of what may become of all of us. Just remember beauty is only skin deep but ignorance lasts for ever.
45 -
Jazzy
Aug 22, 2005 at 2:10 pm
I Just wanted to share this with all the people on Natalee Holloway Case. I think Natalee`s Mother and Jug came down here and tried to pin this case on Joran. Does Beth realize that Joran is a teenager too. He has a Mother and Father also. please tell her and Jug that you are not guilty until provin guilty. after joran left Natalee that night. any Tom, Dick, and Harry could have came along and picked Natalee up. and it`s untelling where they took her too. I hope and pray she is alive and they will find her. Aruba should let Joran out of jail and don`t let the Americans down here pin this on him just to get the case over.
46 -
Bryan
Aug 22, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Innocent till proven guilty is the concept not the practice in the US.
About 37% of defendants charged with any crime in Alabama and represented by pro bono are incarcerated for more than a year through a plea bargain. Jury trials a a rare exception in the US.
Judges, DA,s and chief of police members are elected by conviction rate.
Birmingham Alabamas murder rate has junped 40% in 2005 vs 2004.
Beth is staying in Aruba to avoid the crime at home possibly.
I think the Twitty Holloway cartel has about run out of the thing that makes the courts and media work - money.
When they let Joran go, Beth will be arrested eventually for assault of some kind.
47 -
Althor
Aug 22, 2005 at 6:07 pm
I have often been ostracized in the past, for saying that the ambiance into which Beth allowed her daughter to go, basically unsupervised, was a “Girls Gone Wild” environment, that this was elemental in bringing about this tragedy, and that with a bit of parental discretion on Beth’s part, and of common sense on the part of both, she, and her daughter, it could have been prevented.
According to these latest revelations, I hate to say it, but it appears that I was right!
Beth has blamed everyone and everything for her daughters’ disappearance: the Aruban authorities who supposedly “fumbled” the investigation from the get-go, the boys last seen with her daughter - Joran and the Kalpoes, the “slow pace” of the search ( bad Arubans!), the Dutch for not sending the “Marines” earlier, the Aruban Judiciary for their practice of withholding information on an investigation to protect the integrity of a possible prosecution (sorry, that’s how it’s done down there!), and the US for not invading Aruba, and taking over the investigation (perhaps we should invade Boulder, Colorado, that way we can resolve the murder of Jon Bennet Ramsey while we are at it!), but the one area of the investigation, that from the very beginning of this fiasco, was in her power to “elucidate”on, that’s the one that remains the foggiest to this day!
Before Natalee left with Joran and the Kalpoe brothers, what had been going on that night at Carlos & Charlies?
That Natalee had been drinking is a given - to what extent of inebriation we don’t know - why? because that is a “taboo” subject Beth will not allow anyone to touch upon! For Beth anything concerning her daughters’ behavior, or the circumstances surrounding her before she left with the “boys” is “taboo”!
At the outset of this melodrama we were told, that Natalee’s roommates, and fellow classmates from Mountain Brook, would not accede to being interviewed, on account that they had been asked not to do so by the FBI (absurd, since at that stage it was solely an Aruban investigation), until the on-going investigation would be completed.
Now information has surfaced that indicates, that it was Beth who had asked the girls not to comment on the particulars of the events taking place that evening in Aruba, in particular, on her daughter’s condition, or behavior prior to her disappearance that night. Why? Why did Beth want them to shut up?
Everyone ever related in the most “incidental” way to Natalee has been assiduously interviewed by the “leads-ravenous,” sensationalist media running out of “updates” to “report” about the case (seems they’ve even interviewed the gardener that mowed the Twitty’s lawn, the Convenience Store clerk who saw Natalee come in a couple of times into the store back in Alabama, the lady clerk at the store that sold her the bathing suits for the trip, her second grade teacher...), so how come the “chaperones” who were supposed to be (am I being redundant here?) “chaperoning” her, and the other kids that were with her from Mountain Brook have not been interviewed; how come no one familiar with what was going on that night, and during the whole trip in Aruba in general, has been interviewed other than the few chosen (they always seem to be the same girls), possibly well “coached” classmates ?
On the one occasion some of Natalee’s companions appeared on the Bill O’Reilly Factor, a few weeks after her disappearance, their deportment was not one of someone distraught, and grieving for a missing friend, but rather one of fidgeting , evasiveness, and apparent complicity; lacking in emotion, as if concealing shame, or the knowledge that whatever happened, she had brought upon herself (and the usually caustic, and blunt-to-the-point Bill seemed only to have asked non-intrusive, “polite” questions. Why, was he warned not to ask “certain things?”) . How much do they know about what went on that day, that they are not telling?
Later when after over two months with no “new leads”, the ominous silence from Mountain Brook was becoming “louder” in everyone’s mind, finally Greta was “allowed” to interview those girls that were with Natalee in Aruba (same girls we all had briefly seen before) that we have so often seen in the pictures on TV.
The interview was carried out in a very “sanitized” manner. Greta, the “incisive reporter” did not ask any “incisive” questions, and even when she asked one of the coy students wether Natalee had been drinking that night, in the face of their hesitancy to answer straight forward, she had to “prod” them saying “...come on, we’ve all been young, we’ve all done it”, to which a “coy” reply attesting that “yes...but she wasn’t drunk or anything” followed at last, from one of the “coy” participants in the roasting (she was so cute - the very image of innocence dimples and all!).
So now with no new leads in the case, and the search, and investigation, specially those being carried on by the Twittys and their camp, are falling apart, isn’t it appropriate to ask: “What dark secrets lie lurking inside the walls of Mountain Brook, why this deafening silence within its somber Halls?”
What was going on that night that Beth won’t let us know - doesn’t want us to know - as if we could not guess it ourselves even in the face of the little evidence that there is?
Was it really the “cold blooded- calculating-premeditating- monster of a psychopath seventeen year old Joran” (bad Joran you were drinking, and gambling!) who murdered Natalee (and then dissolved her body in a tub of acid in his evil-laboratory with the help of Igor!)?
Or is it possible perhaps, that say... the guy at the bar erotically caressing with a cube of ice the warm, sensuous body of the “caucasian” girl laying on it, trying to reenact the Aruban version of scenes from two Hollywood movies: “9 1/2 Weeks” and “Jungle Fever”...could have been the one who raped, and killed her? No! It has to be Joran! Momma Beth says so!
I think it is time that those that were with Natalee come forth and speak the truth. We don’t care if she was drunk, or stoned, or was intent on carrying out a “menage a quatre” with Joran and the Kalpoe brothers, but to get to the truth, investigators as well as people have to know what really happened, who she was associating with, what she was doing, who else she might have been involved with, and not for Beth to keep “sanitizing” the events of that night, while at the same time blasting everyone else for not solving her daughter’s disappearance, when she, herself, in the information she’s been suppressing may be holding the key!
Althor
48 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 23, 2005 at 8:48 am
Has anybody else thought about that maybe the reason they cannot find a body in Aruba, is because the body might have been packed in suitcase and shipped to Alabama? Maybe there is a jealous friend of Natalee that did away with her. Maybe this girl did something at the spur of the moment, which cause Natalee's death. Maybe its the cute girl(innocence dimples and all!) that told Natalee's mom that Natalee got into the car with Joran and the Kalpoes, to throw them off track, while her body was in her suit case(s). Who knows there has been stranger things that have happened in other murder/mysteries. Beth is so naive herself, although she is a teacher? She is simply gullible, but trying to play it smart. Does Beth even except her own stupidity for allowing her daughter to go to Aruba without her? Does Beth just live in her own little world (that nothing ever bad can happen to me, because I have money and privilage)and actually has no clue what goes on in the real world? I think so. Money can buy you a lot of things, but it cannot buy you common sense. It is evident that Natalee, although an honor student, did not have any common sense either. What do you think?
49 -
RK
Aug 23, 2005 at 11:15 am
I agree with many of the points....and have found that many parents, who think they know their children's behavior -- in essence, do not! Didn't Natalee have any boyfriend(s) back in AL? Sure would like to hear from them without Beth's intervention or presence. They might be able to explain why she left with 3 dudes she hardly new...
Its an unfortunate situation that every parent should never face -- but I believe Beth is running out of options and tactics.
What ever became of the arm found in Venezula??
50 -
snow
Aug 23, 2005 at 1:11 pm
I get sick to my stomach when i read and read and read the opinions of a certain person ALTHOR who chooses to hear what you want to hear about the Natalie Holloway on going investigation. I could go into a lot of things that you did not happen to ramble on about cause you seem have a strong belief already. I myself am not going to say if VAN DER SLOOT or the KALPOES are guilty or innocent. I am not going to sit here and type paragraph after paragraph about my opnion. Let's be honest do any of you really care what i think? most likely not.
I will ask you this thou. Do you have children? After reading maybe the first entry of yours i stoped and thought to myself that you are a heartless individual. If you do have children i feel sorry for them. Lets just say this happened to you? You let you 18 year old daughter go with her school for a graduation trip and she unfortuantely went missing? Would you or would you not want all the media attention and help that you could get? Of course you would. By the looks of all your entries you seem to be an attention getter who voices your opinion and thinks that everyone is listening to your every word
What i say to you is if you don't like to hear about Natalie Holloway then turn your television off. Who are you to say that to much is being done for this 18 year old girl.
51 -
snow
Aug 23, 2005 at 1:20 pm
TOBY YOU ARE A SICK PERSON.
52 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 23, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Haven't heard anything about the arm. I am almost certain it is not Natalee's arm.
The truth of the matter is a great deal of parents live in denile. Even if the police came to their house and told them they have their child in the back seat of the patrol car, the parents first response is my child did not do anything wrong, my child would never do anything bad, you've got the wrong child.
Its amazing how parents will turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to their own children's behavior. I have heard parents say things like "boys will be boys" meaning what it is exceptable in society for boys to act out or be distructive, but it is not for girls?
I have also heard parents say "it's a phase they are going through and they will grow out of it." Like if their child(ren) go out do drugs, drink, and hang out on the streets all night, that they as parents feel they are benefitting society by condoning their child's behavior.
But, when the child gets caught or arrested the same parent is their defending their child to the bitter end (while not knowing anything about their child). It irks me to no end about the lack of common sense most parents lack to raise a child.
Look around folks, these so called innocent children of today will certainly be the terror of our future. Is this what we have become. They talked bad about generation-x, yet they except this bread of hellions with open arms.
It is not only the parents problem it's society in a nut shell! It seems to me that Natalee came from a well-to-do back ground but that doesn't mean she was innocent in her behavior in Aruba.
Her mother wants closure, this is understandable, but she saw in her daughter what she wanted to see, and her daughter showed her mother only what she wanted her mother to see. Now Beth is doing the same to us, she only wants us to see Natalee the way she wants to portray her in the media. Beth can't even except the fact that Natalee was at a bar drinking, she is definately in denial. Don't you think?
Alabama is about twenty years behind in times any way, so the parents in Alabama need to catch up to times and stop living in the eighties. Wake-up and see what your child is up to.
Stop dropping them off at the mall and using the mall as a baby sitter. Be in their lives and take on responsibility for rearing a child in this world. Who's the child and who's the parent?
You have to have a license to drive a car, to go fishing, to get married, but you don't have to have one to be a parent!!! Go figure.
53 -
snow
Aug 23, 2005 at 3:00 pm
Of course parents will turn a blind eye to the behaviour of a child. As parents we concentrate on the best side of our child not the worst so i can see why Beth would choose not to look at the worst in Natalee. My god it is possible that her daughter is dead so that would be the last thing she would want to think.
So because her daughter went to a bar, maybe got drunk or even had sex with a strange boy does her actions that night mean that she deserved to die?
54 -
Jazz
Aug 23, 2005 at 6:18 pm
On the Natalee Holloway case. She could be on some other Island. or after seeing and hearing all of these things that Beth the mother of Natalee and Jug say on Tv. watching their body reaction, when talking I`m truly concern rather they knew the Vander Sloots before they ever went to Aruba. Could the missing of Natalee be a Dope Deal between Beth and Jug and someone in Aruba gone wrong. simple because Beth and Jug was to anxious to blame Natalee missing on Joran and the brothers. they claimed these Boys were the last ones to see Natalee. Wait that may not be true, someone came along and if Natalee was drunk she could have got in a car and took off. by blaming these boys I think is wrong Beth or Jug are not Lawyers. they are barking up the wrong tree.
55 -
Althor
Aug 24, 2005 at 3:40 am
Typical News Broadcast of the last three months:
“Good morning, welcome to the morning news, later we will go to our correspondent in London, where it is reported that a few minutes ago three, perhaps four apparently simultaneous explosions took place in the London Underground, in what appears to be coordinated terrorist attacks. No words on the number of casualties yet, though there are confirmed fatalities. But first to our breaking news of the morning: New rumors concerning the case of missing teen Natalee Holloway...”
“Thank you for being with us for fair, and balanced news analysis. And now, our panel of experts is here to discuss the most pressing issues of the day. We will later talk about the apparent impasse in the “Six way North Korean nuclear disarmament talks” and where do we go from here. But first: In Aruba, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway ...”
“Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us at Channel 8 News. Later on in our program: In India, devastating floods, and mud slides due to torrential rains have raised, or buried entire villages, and the Red Cross estimates that over one thousand people are presumed dead, but first to our Headlines: Searchers looking for evidence in the Natalee Holloway...
__________________0______0______________
It’s not about “changing the channel”, as so many followers of all things “Natalee” are prompt to “suggest” when anyone dares
to challenge the “media circus” surrounding this case, but about our priorities as a Nation, and the “questionable integrity” of our means of communication, or “media”, whose role it is, in a Democracy, to keep us well informed of the news, and developments taking place here, and around the world, that may very well impact our future, and all of our lives.
Natalee’s disappearance, however tragic, is not such an event, and does not deserve the exorbitant, and persistent amount of media “exposure” it has received, journalistically speaking. Nevertheless, it has hi-jacked our news coverage for the last three months!
When Natalee Holloway was first reported missing, it was news, and as such it merited to be reported. But the media’s blatant “obsession” with this “non- news” item three months after the fact, and its continuing over the top, excessive, coverage, due not to the “journalistic merits” of the story, but because of no higher altruistic motives than the “ratings war” coverage of the case has sparked amongst competing networks, is not only bad journalism, and unprofessional, but irresponsible, and immoral!
That Beth Holloway Twitty, Natalee’s mom, would avail herself of the “ media’s attention”, and exploit it in the interest of keeping the search for her daughter in the limelight is to be expected, but the media’s failure to show better judgement, restraint, and objectivity in the handling of the coverage of this case, is highly reprehensible!
The story has sparked the public’s imagination because, in the words of a fellow blogger, it has “...taken the dimensions of a mystery novel, with possible romance, a possible crime, and a cast of characters I don’t think even Faulkner could have invented!”
This coupled to the incessant melodrama surrounding the search teams, and volunteers in Aruba all vying for attention; the constant spin of allegations, rumors, and innuendos of the Cable pundits; Beth’s soap opera performances; and the ubiquitous cameras following her like a TV reality show all over Aruba, have turned the tragedy of one family into a Nation’s morbid entertainment! To the “ratings driven” networks, its “good television!”
Now, are we to infer from this, that the disappearance of this one girl is more important to us as a Nation, than all those who died in the London terrorist bombings, or the over one thousand that died in India in those floods , the millions threatened with nuclear annihilation by the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, or for that matter, than the life of all the other children, and persons, who like her are missing, but that unlike her, the media has chosen to ignore ????
It is understandable that it may be so to “Beth”, her mother; but it ought not to be to us as a Nation. Natalee’s disappearance has to be placed in its proper perspective!
As much as we may all empathize with Beth Holloway Twitty and her loss on a personal level, this is a “family” tragedy, and not a “national” or “international” event, and should no longer be at this point, the “all-consuming” focus of the entire Nation, specially facing, as we do, all the challenges here and abroad, that we face today! Let us switch our attention to far more pressing matters, and go on with our lives!
Enough is enough!
Althor
56 -
snow
Aug 24, 2005 at 6:54 am
I Will ask you again. Do you have children ALTHOR? This case is not just about a white girl who went on a wild summer trip. This is about a girl who went on a graduation school trip with classmates to celebrate her graduation who went missing in a different country. This is an intresting story because appraently this has never happened to the Arubian people before. So for the Americians and Natalees parents to just sit back and let the Arubian police and investigators "do their job" is a real joke! It is very evident that they do not know the first think when it comes to conducting an investigation. So no i do not blame Beth Holloway for trying anything and being on t.v everynight. I myself, if my son or daughter when missing in a foreign country would be on t.v as much as i could. Everyday and everynight! Dame right! It is evident that you do not have children and it is sad to know that we have people like you walking the earth. So i say to you "enough is enough" and have a heart.
57 -
Althor
Aug 24, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Aruba, Summer 2005. A nation held hostage. By CNN and Fox.
I couldn’t find Natalee anywhere I looked. In fairness, I only looked in the bar, but she wasn’t there. She isn't at the pool, either. She is, however, on every American news channel the satellites could beam down to Earth. The stations trumpet every increase in reward money, as though terrorists are holding Natalee until the reward reaches just the right amount. (“When it gets to two million, Ahmed, sell!”)
You can't avoid talk about her, of course. It’s just that - it's only the Americans talking. The Arubans aren't avoiding the issue. I asked a few women working at the resort what they thought. Nearly all shook their heads as if to say “my three daughters are stuck in a Colombian whorehouse back home and I’m earning a dollar an hour to buy their freedom. You think I give a shit?”
The Arubans are sensitive to the story. They are sorry for the family. They are embarassed by the negative attention the Aruba police has been getting. And they can’t for the life of them understand why their island is being portrayed as if Dr. Moreau were in charge.
A FORWARD-THINKING BACKWARDS PAPER
There is a cute local newspaper in Aruba called “Aruba Today.” It is full of wire copy, which occasionally leaves the web links in the text. (Suspicions were aroused when entire hyperlinks appeared in the newspaper copy. As much as I tried, I could not click through.) The over-enlarged, artifact-ridden pictures scream “I was a crappy little 80x80 pixel graphic! I am not meant to be a quarter-page!” The apostrophe takes a beating, especially next to the letter “s.” It’s like a little tow-headed kid with a lisp.
Seriously, it’s adorable.
“Aruba Today” has ads for escort services right next to its editorial page. It’s given out for free at the hotel - on the days it arrives, anyway. It is every inch a teeny tourist rag; it is full of articles like “Harry and Jessica Wed on Eagle Beach” and “Marriott introduces new sous chef.” You could publish a better-looking paper with a 1990-vintage Mac Classic and Aldus PageMaker. The newspaper is barely a newspaper.
One other thing that separates it from our media? “Aruba Today” is showing perspective and restraint on the Natalee Holloway story.
BLOWING A STORY INTO PROPORTION
My first reaction after reading a couple of days worth of Aruba news was that the island was trying to cover up the obviously important Natalee story. I mean - don’t they see the posters? Don’t they see the tons of American journalists outside the Aruban Parliament Building? (It’s next to the mall and the Renaissance Hotel with the roof pool and private island. No self-respecting journalist could possibly miss it.)
But no. This was more insidious. The Aruban journalists (and I am not sure if using the plural of that word is, in fact, accurate) are daring to cover the Natalee story exactly as it should be covered: a tragic but minor event in an otherwise remarkably safe, polite, affordable nation of happy people and Dutch cigarettes.
You kind of feel sorry for the Aruban media. (I still don’t know what the singular of “media” is - and don’t give me any of that “medium” crap.) They obviously have a LOT to learn about overblowing and over-reporting. Aruban media knows squat about hyping a story to the point where it could do major damage to a small state’s entire tourist-reliant economy.
One day, “Aruba Today” dared to lead with the London bombings investigation over the Natalee story.
Savages.
CUTE WHITE GIRLS: A SWEEPS DREAM STORY
God, Nancy Grace really can’t shut up about Natalee. Nancy Grace can’t shut up normally, but on this story she REALLY can’t shut up. She is the answer to the question “What does terminal verbal diarrhea sound like?” And of course, everyone’s favorite career Dad-In-Mourning, John Walsh, is trying to add something “new” to the two-month-and-holy-shit-they’re-still-counting days of coverage.
And we get lots of “new details” here. “CNN Larry King Live” just informed me that there are “still many more questions than answers.” One reporter told me she saw a helicopter go “up and down several times.” Really? A helicopter went up and down?
I was told the “massive search” of the island “goes on around the clock” with “helicopters lighting the way.” I’m glad they told me, too. I haven’t seen any of that. I did see a cop car, but it turned out to be the one behind me as I was making an illegal left while trying to hide my Balashi beer.
One night on the tube, Dr. Henry Lee, he of OJ trial fame, said “they are running out of leads.” I don’t know if he was talking about the investigation -- or the news.
I can’t blame the Holloway and Twitty families, some of whom remain here. If it were my daughter, I would turn the island upside down. Aruba’s not that big - it could be done. I would scream and shout every night the television news people would train a camera on me. I would try to keep the story in the limelight as long as possible, if it meant an entire island’s police force would spend an extra minute looking for my kid. I would increase the reward by a hundred grand every day it would buy me another second of TV time. I would. I would. I would.
But if I were a news director, I wouldn’t listen.
If Natalee is dead it is a terrible loss for her family. Terrible. I can’t imagine life going on after the death of a child. But Natalee’s death is not a tragic loss for our country. It is not worth damaging the Aruban economy over. It is not worth some bumpkin Alabama politician’s grandstanding bullshit that everyone in his state should boycott Aruba until “they do something about Natalee.”
A more stupid person may think, “Natalee is just one person. What’s the biggie?” Well, she’s not one person. She is a symbol. Natalee is getting international - international! - coverage for one reason: she’s a Cute White Girl. American news loves a cute, virginal blonde in distress. We’re such slaves to Cute White Girl stories that we should just abbreviate the phrase: CWG.
Nancy Kerrigan was a CWG who only had to be hit on the knee to merit round-the-clock coverage. Denise Brown Simpson? Well, a formerly cute WG, anyway. Take a twofer like Laci Peterson and you’ve got a jackpot; first she was a Missing CWG, then she was a Dead CWG. The tragedy of Missing-And-Presumed-Dead Only-To-Be-Found-With-Religious-Wackos CWG Elizabeth Smart is that the hype of her disappearance and miraculous recovery is giving false hope to a lot of people.
CONTEXT? WHAT CONTEXT?
On November 1, 1994, I was at a crash scene in Cozumel, Mexico. A helicopter carrying American tourists from a nearby ruins site suddenly went into the drink. 12 people, all Americans, died. Accompanying a State Department vice-consul, I stayed in a hotel room with the dead's belongings. Let me tell you nothing will send you to the hotel bar faster than trying to sleep next to a dead couple’s matching luggage and water-logged pictures of their children.
It wasn’t the only time a tourist chopper took a sudden dive. A few months later, ABC News ran a story on helicopter crashes in Hawaii, Mexico and other tourist locations. People were going on honeymoons and dying because of bad maintenance records, ill-trained pilots and dirty motor oil. And these trips were still being booked.
In Cozumel that day we had an actual tragedy, and it exposed an actual danger facing actual people. Helicopter crashes were killing Americans just out for a good view. This had to be told. CNN had the item on the news late that night. It was a copy story. The dead made a critical error: they weren’t six CWGs.
Journalists, good ones anyway, are supposed to do more than report facts. (And thank me for not putting “facts” in quotes. The Natalee story seems full of “facts.”) We are supposed to put stories into proper context. We are supposed to use stories of individuals to tell a larger tale. We are supposed to examine a story, hold a critical light to it, and see how much coverage it merits, if any at all.
So far, only “Aruba Today” seems to understand that.
by Steve Safran
- Oranjestad, Aruba. July 30, 2005
58 -
snow
Aug 24, 2005 at 3:45 pm
I give up. It does not matter who you are ALTHOR you do not get it. You come across as a very smart person when it comes to writing but you still don't get certain points people try to make to you. And you simply ignore them
59 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 24, 2005 at 4:01 pm
I heard that Deepak was at Carlos and Charlies and spotted by a camera crew at 1:00 am. I too wonder why this establishment would allow him back in their place of business, knowing that he is still a suspect. It is almost as if they are proud to have him there as some sort of celeberity.
Still have not heard anything about the arm, though.
What about the girl who hired an attorney and went to talk to Beth twitty, about her ordeal or incounter with Joran Van der Sloot. It would appear that a pattern of his misbehavior or "boys being boys" is surfacing to rear its ugly head.
I hear now that there are other "victims of Joran" coming foward as well.
The girl hired an attorney first because she does not even trust the Aruban police. That says a lot to me.
I pray that more than a pattern of Joran's lifestyle is brought to light. I hope they will find a way to break his silience and that he will talk about what happened, whether he did anything to Natalee or not. If it is not him, then maybe if he starts to tell the truth (if he knows what the truth is), then maybe we would get the answers we are all looking for.
From the get go (whether you feel Joran is guilty or innocent) Paulas Van der Sloot told his son and the Kalpoe brothers basically "no body, no conviction", so that tells me there that even Paulas Van der Sloot knows something. He should still be interrigated along with his son.
Beth knows that Joran is a teen, but as a teen Joran has thrown suspecion on himself. From my experience a "hit dog barks", which simply means only a guilty conscience speaks out in defense even if nobody accuses that person of any wrong doing.
This could explain why he cannot keep his story straight and his father runs away from the media.
Now it seems all of his wrong doings to girls in the past are coming out of the woodwork, to be a splinter in his side. Its time to fess up.
60 -
bryan
Aug 24, 2005 at 4:10 pm
This army of Joran rape victims might be after some money. A tad late are they.
Just like Kobe maybe.
Whose money has elucidated all these victims. Twitty money or Fox money.
Do not think I do not know what rape of child is like. My step daughter was raped and court let the bastard go.
Facing facts was hard.
Twitty not close o facing facts yet.
Bryan
61 -
Susan Smith
Aug 24, 2005 at 5:55 pm
Maybe I just got on to the wrong comment page about Natilee Holoway. First, it does not matter whether it was stupid to get into a car with someone she had met at the bar or not. She did not ask to disappear as a result. Then if you do not like all of the coverage that is given to this case, watch something else. I cannot believe how heartless and negative all of your comments are.
62 -
Althor
Aug 24, 2005 at 8:55 pm
QUOTE: "I give up. It does not matter who you are ALTHOR you do not get it. You come across as a very smart person when it comes to writing but you still don't get certain points people try to make to you. And you simply ignore them."
My Dear Friend,
I have repeatedly stated my positions as clearly, and precisely, as my humble abilities as a writer have allowed me, yet I think it is you, and not me who in the face of all the reasons I have given, and elucidated on, to explain why this “media circus” about Natalee Holloway is wrong, are “ignorant,” and chooses to believe what you wish to believe rather than look at the merits of the situation dispassionately. You are the one who just simply doesn’t get it!
The disappearance of Natalee Holloway, no matter how much you may sympathize with Beth, and her family, is primordially a “family” tragedy, and it ought not to “mesmerize” an entire Nation in these troubled times.
From a “journalistic” perspective, when Natalee’s disappearance happened it merited some coverage, and it was given. But after three months of nothing but “soap opera,” staged “melodramas”, and cameras following Beth’s every move like a “News TV Reality Show,” even the most ardent supporter of Natalee and Beth must admit the coverage has been “excessive,” and “over the top” because “it” is an uncontroversial “fact” which has been staring us in our collective faces from our television screens each night for three months now!
In the words of Professor Jeffrey M. McCall, Professor of Communication at De Pauw University, Indiana: “Journalism textbooks highlight the concept of "high impact" news. This is the notion that news should focus on events that affect a large number of people. Beyond the emotions we feel over stories like Natalee.... few people beyond immediate family and friends are affected. Nobody's political priorities, economic decisions or social behaviors are affected by gawking at the latest Natalee update or following.... for days on end. Raising the profile and coverage of these highly emotional stories erodes the line between news and entertainment.” He concludes his observations by reminding us: “ First Amendment framer James Madison once said, “A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.” Knowing all there is to know about Natalee.... will hardly contribute to maintaining our freedom..”
Now, if you wish to watch Natalee Holloway TV programming all day that it’s fine, if it were shown on “Court TV,” or “Aruba’s most wanted,” or the many other sensationalist “tabloid” shows on TV. That is your choice, and prerrogative. But that networks news still be “hi-jacked” by Beth and her cronies at this point, is unobjective, unprofessional, and simply wrong on the part of the media!
Wisen-up!
Althor
P.S. By the way, we don't mind you expressing your opinions here, as a matter of fact we welcome it! But please, by the same token, do not try to censor the rest of us either!
63 -
Heloise
Aug 24, 2005 at 9:16 pm
What kind of circus is America coming to that reams of video are spent and everyone has to surf past that bleached-bald Nancy Glass talking and crying over Natalee on CNN ad nauseum!
And all for some Alabama trash who wanted to have sex on an island with a couple of natives...She is probably in a white-slavery sex ring as we speak...or in a new body.
While literally MILLIONS of others have gone missing without a peep from media coverage!! Don't make me mad.
Heloise
64 -
It's Me
Aug 24, 2005 at 9:36 pm
I just want to say I am fascinated with the Natalie Holloway story. I think if we have one American that is lost on foreign or home soil for that matter, we should not stop until every stone is over turned. You who are such non-sensitive creeps would be first to feel that the family is doing everything right if it were one of your loved ones. This story goes much deeper than one missing beautiful american girl, and if you can't see that you need new glasses. Insensitive pricks
65 -
snow
Aug 24, 2005 at 9:51 pm
"IT'S ME" i totally agree with you. I am assuming by the way people are talking being a journalist or not are heartless and very uncaring people. I agree with you that the story does go much deeper. Beng a parent myself feel that Beth is doing what all caring and loving parents would do for their children. She seems to be a very strong individual who will not quit until Natalee is found or justice is served.
You go girl!!!!!
66 -
snow
Aug 24, 2005 at 10:00 pm
to Althor or anyone i might have pissed off i am very sorry if i have said something wrong. I have two girls of my own and i could not imagine what my life would be like if something happened to either one of them. That is why i feel sooooo bad for Beth Holloway. Imagine not knowing where you child is. And as days go by and nothing. I just can relate to her in a way.
67 -
Althor
Aug 24, 2005 at 11:28 pm
QUOTE: "Beng a parent myself feel that Beth is doing what all caring and loving parents would do for their children. She seems to be a very strong individual who will not quit until Natalee is found or justice is served.
You go girl!!!!!"
What is really sad, is that this tragedy could have easily been avoided, by a bit of common sense, and parental discretion, on Beth’s part!
Beth Holloway Twitty’s decision to unleash her daughter (no matter how level-headed, trustworthy, and deserving she thought she was, which apparently she wasn’t; and, or how much she may have wanted to join her classmates) into this Aruban “Girls Gone Wild” environment fraught with alcohol, readily available drugs, and plentiful gonads, with little or no supervision, is what set the events in motion which culminated in her disappearance, and possible death!
Would you as a "loving" parent let your daughter go under similar conditions to Aruba?
As to Beth's "strength," though she did not enjoy the reasons that put her in the limelight in the first place, she now sure "basks" pleasantly in it!
And as for for such a determined
"steel magnolia" as she is, as far as I know neither she, nor her husband
"Jughead" have ever dirtied themselves looking through the refuse in the landfill for Natalee, but prefer to "delegate" that task to "experts" such as the "menagerie" of volunteers they have brought from the States, though personally I believe Beth won't get involved in the diggng through the trash, because she's afraid she might "break a nail."
And what about all the shopping and "fine dining" she's been doing? Yes it certainly seems to me like the desperate behavior of a grieving mother!
Beth seems to recall her grief, only when she's in front of the cameras!
1st new york blackout of 11/9/1965 which was 7400 days after the hiroshima bombing where new york lies on the 74th longitude and 5/30/2005 are 14447 days.
Why do you feel the need to center me out and pick on my every word or sentence? I apologized and if it seemed that i was out to pick on you i apologize. I am not sitting her and say that i agree with everything that Beth Holloway has been doing or saying. You seem to hate the fact that she is on t.v everyday and night and all i said was that if i was in her situation as a parent i would turn every rock unturned. No matter what her actions happen to be or come across as, she indeed is a mother who has lost a daughter. Who cares if she is not getting involved physically. Maybe you should hold of judging her so harshly and look more at the news stations who choose to run her story all day all the time. Myabe if you watched Nancy Grace a bit longer you would see that she focus on other topics like Olivia Newton-johns missing boyfriend, Mr. Smith who vanished off a cruise ship, the pregnant women who went missing and a few more!
70 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 25, 2005 at 11:49 am
Whether anybody realizes it or not news is entertainment. The news is there to report topics of public interests, not personal interests. It has been and will always be want the people want. You may disagree with me and that is fine, but it is true.
What about Lindbergh and the Lindbergh Kidnapping? Remember Patricia Campbell Hearst? She was the granddaughter of the legendary newspaper publisher, William Randolph Hearst. She was missing for two months, when on April 15, 1974 she was video-taped robbing Hibernia Bank in the Sunset district of San Francisco. Yet the coverage never stopped. (and this was before CNN or Fax News)
From 'The Claiming of Patty Hearst' and I quote, "The event"the political kidnapping of an heiress from a prominent family---was kept under wraps for twelve hours, and then it began to generate sensational media coverage around the world. Despite national unrest among college students, this young woman had never been a political activist or taken up a violent cause."
Each time an item makes it into the news it is considered a "news story". I ask you this, isn't a "story" for amusement or entertainment for the person whom reads it or hears of it?
So, there you go. Natalee Holloway's tragic disappearance is nothing more but a "story", yet like all stories it has a meaning or purpose.
Things happen for a reason and there is always a lesson to be learned. Like any story ever read or told, you can either be drawn into its context or chose to close the book. It is up to you as an individual.
What captivates one person's interest may not be another's cup of tea.
71 -
KATHY TRUSTY
Aug 25, 2005 at 1:09 pm
All stories have a hero and a villian, right? Well, plenty of books have been written about Jessie James and Billy the Kid and these two were suppose to be the villians, yet some portray them as heroes.
I guess you either like something about aomebody or you don't. Either you like Beth Holloway-Twitty or you don't.
She may be sitting on the side lines while others do the work, but in my opinion, if you don't know what you are doing let the experts do their jobs.
I feel Beth won't really breakdown and lose it until she receives some answers. She is in denial about the whole event that has lead up to her daughter's disappearance. Until it actually hits home for Beth, she has to be strong.
Sometimes our strength comes from trying to hold on and maintain in life during the most difficult struggles life has to offer.
Each person reacts differently to tragedies they encounter in life, for there are no set rules of conduct for how a person should respond or act during extreme emotional pressures and tragedies.
My dad loved my mother with all of his heart, but when she died of cancer, he never cried at her funeral. It's been almost twenty years after her death, and my father never dated another woman or remarried, and now I see the tears in his eyes as he reaches eighty years of age. He has always missed mom, but did not know how to show his emotions, but now he shows us all how empty he feels inside.
Natalee's mother is going about her life as usual, just like my dad did, until she decides it is time to show her true emotions inside.
Sometimes it is difficult for a person to except a traumatic experience because shock takes over and it is like the traumatic experience is happening to someone else, while you watch it unfold.
This is what I feel Natalee's mom is feeling deep inside, yet she is trying to show a stiff upper lip, by finding inner strength to over come the pain. I feel if she didn't nobody would have ever known Natalee was missing!
This is a true story, for it is happening now! God bless Beth for finding the courage to stand up for her daughter's rights.
To ALTHOR who wrote: "Beth Holloway Twitty’s decision to unleash her daughter (no matter how level-headed, trustworthy, and deserving she thought she was, which apparently she wasn’t; and, or how much she may have wanted to join her classmates) into this Aruban “Girls Gone Wild” environment fraught with alcohol, readily available drugs, and plentiful gonads, with little or no supervision, is what set the events in motion which culminated in her disappearance, and possible death!"
I feel that even though Beth was naive about what could have happened to Natalee in Aruba, does not mean she caused what happened to her daughter. My God nobody can predict the future!!!
People go on vacation every day, but if they thought about all of the bad things that could happen to them they would just stay home (where something just as bad could happen in their own backyard.)
It's like saying just because a woman is dressed a certain way or goes out to a bar with her friends, that she asks to be raped.
To HELOISE who wrote: "And all for some Alabama trash who wanted to have sex on an island with a couple of natives...She is probably in a white-slavery sex ring as we speak...or in a new body."
I do not know what State you are from, but I am sure it has its own "trash" as well. And how do you know if she "wanted to have sex on an island with a couple of natives..." Were you there? Maybe you have important information to give to the Aruban police. If not, then why bash a person who is missing and unable to defend themselves.
My God I am sure things started out innocent, but evil lie waiting in the shadows. There are a lot of things that could have happened to Natalee at some other point or time in her life, but the thing that happened on May 30, 2005, is what was in the cards for her.
This event happened for a reason. And like I said already a lesson will be learned.
72 -
snow
Aug 25, 2005 at 1:34 pm
To KATHY TRUSTY I AGREE WITH YOU 100% ON EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID. SOME PEOPLE ARE LOSING SIGHT OF THE FACT THAT A TEENAGE GIRL WENT ON A GRADUATIONS TRIP WITH HER CLASSMATES TO CELEBRATE HER GRADUATION. ALOT OF PEOPLE FEEL SHE WENT TO ARUBA FOR TWO THINGS ONLY. TO HAVE SEX AND TO DRINK. SO WHAT IF THAT IS THE CASE. THE QUESTION I RAISE IS IF THAT IS TRUE DOES THAT MEAN SHE DESERVED TO DIE? (IF THAT IS THE CASE)
73 -
Flounder
Aug 25, 2005 at 11:45 pm
Does ANYONEEEEEE know the latest news on this? I haven't seen or heard ANYTHING on the news or in papers, so please enlighten me, if you know of any new findings or information. Thanks
74 -
Althor
Aug 26, 2005 at 1:50 am
QUOTE:"It's like saying just because a woman is dressed a certain way or goes out to a bar with her friends, that she asks to be raped."
I am sorry to burst your bubble, but studies have shown that in fact, a large number of victims of rape were in fact dressing "provocatively" on the days the attacks took place.
Far be it from me to justify the rapes because of these facts, but there is a certain correlation between "cause" and "effect," specially when it has to deal with the more , "bestial," and "irrational" part of our natures, and what triggers those irrational responses.
So common sense dictates, "don't ask for it, and chances are you won't get it," or "don't stick you hand into the lion's maw, and expect him to lick it!"
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - teejay
First of all we should all have at least a little consideration for the family of Nat. Millions go missing in America and all have a chance of being found.
Why isnt there a physic in Aruba covering the case. There has been several cases that have been aired of tv and physic's have played a huge roll in finding missing individuals.
Has anyone considered it? Why is it taking them this long.
If Nat's gone. Give her a decent burial and let her rest for she will be in a safer place.
I cant believe how our people can be so cruel and shame on you TOBY!
27 - concerned parent
I saw a blurb on the bottom of the tv screen 2 nights ago on a news channel that said an arm washed ashore in Venezula and they were going to see if it was Natalees....didn't get the channels news id and haven't seen it on any site...did anyone else see this?
28 - mari
i think Joran, his ugly dad,and the kalpoes know what happenned to natalee. thier lying about the whole thing and blaming each other that they did it. i just hope they find natalee and give her a proper way to be buried. i feel for her family and friends. Hope is all their family needs.
29 - michael
I,m so sick of seeing the natalee holloway story on tv I feel like throwing up . whats so big deal about one white girl from alabama missing,maybe she ran away from her her step father who probably was doing her in for last few years.nobody ask how was relationship between step father and natalee .I got feeling about him. anyway I just want to know if this was a black or hispanic girl would the white american media give it the same coverage .I doubt it ,I hope they never find the bitch who told her to get in car with three stangers in a foregin island in the middle of the night ,she was looking for some action ,.and beth holloway is hogging up the news media every night n prime time.She think she is important and she is not.
30 - ANON
I JUST HAVE ONE THING TO SAY, HOW DARE YOU PEOPLE CALL THIS GIRL A B****!! ONE DAY YOU WILL HAVE CHILDREN, DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD DESERVE THIS? I DONT THINK SO. AS HAVING TWO KIDS, I WOULD DO THE SAME TO PROTECT MY CHILDREN AND I WOULD "HOG" AS YOU SAY, THE MEDIA. YOU PEOPLE ARE JUST SICK AND YOU NEED TO FIND JESUS.
31 - bryan
Is he missing in Aruba too ?
32 - KATHY TRUSTY
I pray that everyone in this world especially teens will learn from what happen to Natalee Holloway. I pray for God to watch over our children and keep them safe today and every day. Its a scary world out there, but one reason it is so is because we have all stop being our brothers keepers. Each of us have to wary of the sadistics in the world. Teach our children to be aware of whats going on around them each day and to pay attention to what they are doing, when they are doing it. I pray that justice will come to light for Natalee's Father and Stepmother, her Mother and Stepfather, her other relatives and friends, and everyone who has been supporting and praying for her. This is most definately a wake up call, just like 9-11 was for all of us. God is speaking to us through these tragedies, He is giving us a message on the wall, but we are too busy being in our own little world and ignoring every thing around us until He shakes us up and brings us back into reality. We as Americans need to learn to act civilized and unite for justice, all while praying for peace on Earth. Thank God I live in America a place I call home. I wish nobody else would ever come up missing, murdered or sold into slavery of any kind, but until we unite as one nation under God and stand up for the rights of everybody in the USA, this will probably keep happening. You could be the next victim, but I pray you are not. Let us all start being more neighborly and keep an eye on the less fortunate. I thank you for your time.
33 - Jazzy
After Joran left nat on the beach, some one else could have came along and took Nat. There is a lot to come out i think the mother and Jug wants to put the blame on Joran and the Brothers, just to close this, so they could go home. in the states when someone in the family comes up missing, the first thing the Det. question the family that is closes to the one missing to clear them first. Look at the Peterson case.Aruba needs to investigate the Twitty s.
34 - Aaman
It's the Vogons
35 - FLOYD DRYE
please people enuff aready. there are more importance thing in life like bushes lies, high gas peices, and just trying to live now a days. the hell with some little drunk, partying, stupid slut who got in a car with 3 guys to start with. shes shark bite and her stupid mother needs to just take her ass home. i know the people of aruba are damn sick and tired of her.
36 - Deb Redden
If Natalee had been KISSING a boy
earlier in the day or week could
THAT show up as MALE DNA on
her toothbrush the next time she brushed her teeth?
There might be more to this
toothbrush thing than I first thought.
Maybe a good way to catch someone else
(or the original 3 boys)in another lie.
37 - Stephanie
Oh Please!! To people like "Michael" who wine and say "black's and hispanics are treated this way and that"...... they've got their very own country and they are free to go back to them at any given time.
The people who got the real shitty deal was the native American Indian. Do you know what native means? This WAS their country and you don't hear them crying about their injustices, and they have every right to. They have been totally forgotten. They are the ones who are owed an apology, and so much more. What a great American history we have. We should be so proud, and people like you add so much to it!! Natalee's case is not about racism or minority---it's about an American teen who is missing in a foreign country.
38 - nichole
Does anyone have any news on the arm that washed up in Venezuela??
39 - KATHY TRUSTY
The United States government should inact some type of international policy that will help an American citizen who falls prey or victims in a foreign country, while they are on vacation or doing business. This way the FBI could step in and do its on investigation, without a foreign government saying that they have no jurisdiction or keeping us in the dark about how the investigation is developing. We should all be able to be represented by our government no matter what country we are from.
40 - Althor
Is “Media Gone Wild” over missing “Girl Gone Wild” finally calming down ? ( Watch out! The “Big Top” is falling!)
Well, unbelievably as it may sound the Natalee Holloway media circus may actually be grinding down to a halt, in spite of their best efforts by Beth Holloway Twitty and her camp, the pundits at Fox News, and Nancy Grace and other pundits at CNN, to feed, and keep the ratings generating media monster alive!
As surprising as it may sound to those of us who have watched in dumbfounded amazement how Beth Holloway Twitty, and other members of her entourage, would be regularly interviewed, and Natalee’s disappearance hashed, and rehashed, with nothing new to add to the scant facts known, nor being there any new significant developments to report, at least three times per show on Fox’s prime time lineup: “Hannity & Colmes”, “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” (who has actually devoted several whole programs to the subject and bragged about “owning” the coverage on the fiasco), and to a lesser extent on “Bill O’Reilly,” and then on Nancy Grace on CNN, who like Greta, would usually devote her entire show mostly to speculations on Aruba, the number of “Beth / Aruba” interviews on said programs is actually declining!!!
On his August 16th program Bill O’Reilly on the pretext of “an update on the case” interviewed Beth’s husband “Jughead” Twitty, and “Diario” editor Jossy Mansur (who long ago sold his journalistic soul to the Twitty camp, and the sensationalist media) on the “breaking development,” that there seemed to be no new “breaking developments” in the case! Jug made some half hearted comments concerning how he wasn’t getting as much information about the investigation as he previously had received from Aruban authorities, and Jossy responded to a question about having any other “surprise witnesses” coming forth, with a vague reference to there not being other “gardeners” with testimony to give to the Aruban courts at the present time!
To top it off, Bill, on his “Thursdays with Geraldo” segment on the following day, discussed the Natalee Holloway case with Geraldo Rivera, and both commented, or kept making reference to how the investigation seems to have “hit a brick wall.” Geraldo went as far as to assert that at this point extracting information about the case was like “trying to squeeze more juice out of a grape that had turned into a raisin” (I wonder if it was the relentless, over-the-top media over-exposure under the hot Aruban sun that sucked dry the case into a shriveled raisin!!!)
At any rate, following the Factor, Hannity & Colmes only did one “Aruba” interview (miracle of miracles!), and Greta though touching on the subject a couple of times, did not devote her entire program to the case (as she has often done in the past), dispelling the pernicious rumors being bantered about, that it seemed Fox was under some kind of contract to interview Beth and her cronies “X” amount of times per day throughout their prime time programming, regardless of wether they had something new to add to the case or not (well, or at least apparently the contract is expiring!).
On Larry King, world renowned Forensic Pathologist Dr. Henry Lee, even went as far as to assert that “the case had grown cold,” and that Beth’s circus of volunteers, tourists on “Agatha Christy Mystery Solving Vacations” helping the search, teams of local volunteers, “Equusearch” members, private investigators, and other sundry search parties coming and going, had so dug-up, stumped, and trampled all over Aruba over any possible evidence in their mostly uncoordinated, unprofessional efforts, that in their zeal they had most likely destroyed any evidence the Aruban investigators may have found to actually break the case with! So much for Beth’s Aruban circus!!!
Then on Friday the 18th the Nancy Grace Show announced that tensions were running high in Aruba, and that there was “bickering,” and “in-fighting” amongst the “search and rescue” teams brought in by the Twittys to the island, which appear to be competing with each other, and getting in each other’s way rather than enjoining in a consorted, coordinated effort (as if finding the remains of Natalee would be some kind of “trophy”!) to the point where one of them is threatening to “sue” the other. How ridiculous does it have to get????
How ironic that after so much criticism, and so many vile, and malicious attacks from the Twitty camp upon Aruban officials and investigators (of whom they often have publicly referred to as “unreliable,” and “inept,” since the very beginning of the investigation), for them now to be turning on each other with the selfsame viciousness, like a pack of rabid dogs, when facing failure!!!! “Poetic Justice” I should say!!!!
If you couple this, to the many others who have joined the search in Aruba at the behest of Beth and her husband, who have brought into it such “advanced disciplines”, and are relying upon such “high-tech” equipment as “Dowsing Sticks”, “Talking Oracular Coffee Pots”, “Mysterious Boxes” capable of pinpointing human remains down in 180 feet of water from 200 feet away on the shore, and “Psychics” ??? I honestly, and truly marvel how anyone could possibly get offended, that someone would label the sum total of all this flurry of “activity,” “charlatanry,” and “chaos,” in conjunction to the “excessive,” and “inordinate” amount of media coverage it has been given for almost three months now, anything other than a “circus”???? What else comes even close to resembling this menagerie, that you could possibly call it?!?!?
So, unless the web “chain-prayers” of all those faithful followers of all things Natalee on “Nat’s Place,” the “MSN Boards,” and other such sites on the web are answered, it seems that there will not be sufficient evidence to prosecute Joran, the Kalpoe brothers, or anyone for that matter in the case, and that come October the Aruban authorities will be forced to set Joran free, and Natalee’s disappearance will remain unresolved. This, by the way, was also the opinion of no lesser a “Legal Luminary”, and all-around “Master of Sensationalism” than Geraldo Rivera himself, in the aforementioned O’Reilly interview! Things are beginning to unravel, and fall apart in Aruba!
So, at last it seems this “media circus”/“soap opera melodrama”/ “television news reality show” following Beth, her cronies, and their antics all over Aruba, which has hijacked our news channels for the last two moths, and captivated the banal attention of millions, will finally be coming to an end (about time!).
Let us hope that television news coverage may not have been permanently damaged by these previous “Natalee Holloway/Aruba” excesses, and all the “extravaganza,” and that it gravitates back to some semblance of objectivity, journalistic integrity, and professionalism in future coverages, that once again we may focus on “real” news, and “issues,” affecting all of us as a Nation, and be able to get on with our collective lives!
As for Natalee and Aruba, as in many folk tales concerning hauntings attributed to unresolved crimes, I will always look back with a certain amount of apprehension over my shoulder at my television set as I walk away while the news are on, lest the “phantasm” of Beth’s image may come to haunt us like a wailing Banshee in her shrill voice once again, on our screens!!!
Althor
41 - Althor
Aruba Paper Calls Natalee Holloway an Indecent Young Woman
Aruba daily publication A.M. Digital maligned Natalee Holloway and her Mother Beth Twitty in Friday's issue and suggested the island needs to move on from the case in an extended piece with Psychologist Tony Green.
“Frankly, we are tired of the Natalee Holloway story. It is as if it is the only important thing in life in this country.”
The psychologist went on to criticize Natalee herself, suggesting she was at fault in her own disappearance and possible murder and that Mother Beth Twitty cannot accept that Natalee was not a "decent" girl.
“She gives the impression that a corrupt Aruba caused this to happen.” The psychologist emphasized that this cannot be “...further from the truth.” He also emphasized that if the young lady was as “decent” and “correct” as her parents paint her to be, today we would not be searching for her.
“Decent and correct young ladies do not enter a car with people that they have just met in a strange country that they are visiting for the first time and certainly not in the wee hours of the morning and without knowing where they are going.”
Green remarks that he does not know any 18 year old, neither any 28 year old Aruban girl that would accept a ride from a stranger at midnight in Aruba, not to speak of, in a strange country.
Green goes on to denounce both the chaperones on the trip for not being responsible, and suggests that American journalist Nancy Grace is ignorant and Aruba should not allow in any additional search teams - pronouncing the entire effort a "joke," before suggesting the incident is actually good promotion for the island.
“Beth Twitty must pack her bags and go home and let Aruba continue its job without her interference, or that of the US, or that of the countless search teams that wish to go on digging , and running around with barking dogs.”
“The immense fortune that this joke is costing Aruba is not justifiable in view of all the ridiculous propaganda that is being spread of Aruba by the US press. In spite of the negative propaganda that we are receiving, it still is good promotion for Aruba and will not affect us in the long run.”
This post is also available at Blogger News Network.
Althor
42 - KVanbrimmer
You all should be ashamed of yourselves. Here you are shouting about how great America is at solving crimes, and how van der Sloot should rot in prison - don't you know that one of the founding principles of the American justice system is that one is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law? Do you want to set the precedent that if we don't like the way a country is handling a case we'll say "screw your system - we're barging in to implement ours!!" No wonder the world hates Americans!! What about the thousands of unsolved missing persons cases right here on American soil? Quit complaining about the Holloway case for a minute and give the Aruban authorities a chance to run things through their justce system!
43 - Althor
I couldn't agree more KVanbrimmer!!!
We do not even know what the conclusions of the on-going Aruban investigation will be, but throughout almost three months all we have done is "malign" the Aruban authorities, "balk" about their
"ineptitude", flood the air-waves with "negative coverage" of Aruba, "boycott" their tourist industry, ask for the US and other Foreign Nations to "intrude" upon Aruban Sovereignty by "intervining" in their internal affairs, and "lust" for the "blood" of joran Van Der Sloot, when the evidence against him is only one of association, being one of the last three persons known to have been with Natalee that night. Of course, we have to admit, that Beth, and her cronies had abit of a "hand" in all of this!!!
Shouldn't we allow Aruban authorities to complete the investigation first, before we get all paranoid, and rush to write the Ambassador, the Senator, the State Department, declare war on Aruba, and invade???
Or is all of this "hooplah" about Aruba, perhaps, because they are not feeding the "scandal mongering" media's appetite fast enough, that keeps entertaining so many of us with such "tid-bits" of information as to keep us salivating at the mouth in anticipation like Pavlov's dogs at the sound of a bell?
The Jon Bennet Ramsey murder here in the States has never been resolved, and there were truckloads of evidence on that one, versus the scant circumstancial evidence in Aruba.
Shouldn't we boycott ourselves, and shut down the Ski Resorts in Aspen then, and perhaps declare war on Boulder, and invade Colorado, telling them IT'S NOT GOING AWAY WITHOUT SOME ANSWERS???? WE WANT TO KNOW WHO KILLED JON BENNET RAMSEY!!!
It's preposterous!
Althor
44 - KATHY TRUSTY
When in Rome do as the Romans do...and what is that, you may ask? Pay attention to your surroundings, know where you are and what you are doing, and be in the know. Most importantly don't let your guard down. Wake-up it is Monday and thus starts a new week. Lets all start being aware of what is going on around us at all times. Let's all take time to smell the roses and let's all be thankful we are alive. Now has come the time to lay to rest the media noise and focus on what lays infront of us. A unnecessary war, which needs to end, a uncertain future on gas prices, and a rocky economy. Welcome back to normalcy...and life continues with uncertainty of what may become of all of us. Just remember beauty is only skin deep but ignorance lasts for ever.
45 - Jazzy
I Just wanted to share this with all the people on Natalee Holloway Case. I think Natalee`s Mother and Jug came down here and tried to pin this case on Joran. Does Beth realize that Joran is a teenager too. He has a Mother and Father also. please tell her and Jug that you are not guilty until provin guilty. after joran left Natalee that night. any Tom, Dick, and Harry could have came along and picked Natalee up. and it`s untelling where they took her too. I hope and pray she is alive and they will find her. Aruba should let Joran out of jail and don`t let the Americans down here pin this on him just to get the case over.
46 - Bryan
Innocent till proven guilty is the concept not the practice in the US.
About 37% of defendants charged with any crime in Alabama and represented by pro bono are incarcerated for more than a year through a plea bargain. Jury trials a a rare exception in the US.
Judges, DA,s and chief of police members are elected by conviction rate.
Birmingham Alabamas murder rate has junped 40% in 2005 vs 2004.
Beth is staying in Aruba to avoid the crime at home possibly.
I think the Twitty Holloway cartel has about run out of the thing that makes the courts and media work - money.
When they let Joran go, Beth will be arrested eventually for assault of some kind.
47 - Althor
I have often been ostracized in the past, for saying that the ambiance into which Beth allowed her daughter to go, basically unsupervised, was a “Girls Gone Wild” environment, that this was elemental in bringing about this tragedy, and that with a bit of parental discretion on Beth’s part, and of common sense on the part of both, she, and her daughter, it could have been prevented.
According to these latest revelations, I hate to say it, but it appears that I was right!
Beth has blamed everyone and everything for her daughters’ disappearance: the Aruban authorities who supposedly “fumbled” the investigation from the get-go, the boys last seen with her daughter - Joran and the Kalpoes, the “slow pace” of the search ( bad Arubans!), the Dutch for not sending the “Marines” earlier, the Aruban Judiciary for their practice of withholding information on an investigation to protect the integrity of a possible prosecution (sorry, that’s how it’s done down there!), and the US for not invading Aruba, and taking over the investigation (perhaps we should invade Boulder, Colorado, that way we can resolve the murder of Jon Bennet Ramsey while we are at it!), but the one area of the investigation, that from the very beginning of this fiasco, was in her power to “elucidate”on, that’s the one that remains the foggiest to this day!
Before Natalee left with Joran and the Kalpoe brothers, what had been going on that night at Carlos & Charlies?
That Natalee had been drinking is a given - to what extent of inebriation we don’t know - why? because that is a “taboo” subject Beth will not allow anyone to touch upon! For Beth anything concerning her daughters’ behavior, or the circumstances surrounding her before she left with the “boys” is “taboo”!
At the outset of this melodrama we were told, that Natalee’s roommates, and fellow classmates from Mountain Brook, would not accede to being interviewed, on account that they had been asked not to do so by the FBI (absurd, since at that stage it was solely an Aruban investigation), until the on-going investigation would be completed.
Now information has surfaced that indicates, that it was Beth who had asked the girls not to comment on the particulars of the events taking place that evening in Aruba, in particular, on her daughter’s condition, or behavior prior to her disappearance that night. Why? Why did Beth want them to shut up?
Everyone ever related in the most “incidental” way to Natalee has been assiduously interviewed by the “leads-ravenous,” sensationalist media running out of “updates” to “report” about the case (seems they’ve even interviewed the gardener that mowed the Twitty’s lawn, the Convenience Store clerk who saw Natalee come in a couple of times into the store back in Alabama, the lady clerk at the store that sold her the bathing suits for the trip, her second grade teacher...), so how come the “chaperones” who were supposed to be (am I being redundant here?) “chaperoning” her, and the other kids that were with her from Mountain Brook have not been interviewed; how come no one familiar with what was going on that night, and during the whole trip in Aruba in general, has been interviewed other than the few chosen (they always seem to be the same girls), possibly well “coached” classmates ?
On the one occasion some of Natalee’s companions appeared on the Bill O’Reilly Factor, a few weeks after her disappearance, their deportment was not one of someone distraught, and grieving for a missing friend, but rather one of fidgeting , evasiveness, and apparent complicity; lacking in emotion, as if concealing shame, or the knowledge that whatever happened, she had brought upon herself (and the usually caustic, and blunt-to-the-point Bill seemed only to have asked non-intrusive, “polite” questions. Why, was he warned not to ask “certain things?”) . How much do they know about what went on that day, that they are not telling?
Later when after over two months with no “new leads”, the ominous silence from Mountain Brook was becoming “louder” in everyone’s mind, finally Greta was “allowed” to interview those girls that were with Natalee in Aruba (same girls we all had briefly seen before) that we have so often seen in the pictures on TV.
The interview was carried out in a very “sanitized” manner. Greta, the “incisive reporter” did not ask any “incisive” questions, and even when she asked one of the coy students wether Natalee had been drinking that night, in the face of their hesitancy to answer straight forward, she had to “prod” them saying “...come on, we’ve all been young, we’ve all done it”, to which a “coy” reply attesting that “yes...but she wasn’t drunk or anything” followed at last, from one of the “coy” participants in the roasting (she was so cute - the very image of innocence dimples and all!).
So now with no new leads in the case, and the search, and investigation, specially those being carried on by the Twittys and their camp, are falling apart, isn’t it appropriate to ask: “What dark secrets lie lurking inside the walls of Mountain Brook, why this deafening silence within its somber Halls?”
What was going on that night that Beth won’t let us know - doesn’t want us to know - as if we could not guess it ourselves even in the face of the little evidence that there is?
Was it really the “cold blooded- calculating-premeditating- monster of a psychopath seventeen year old Joran” (bad Joran you were drinking, and gambling!) who murdered Natalee (and then dissolved her body in a tub of acid in his evil-laboratory with the help of Igor!)?
Or is it possible perhaps, that say... the guy at the bar erotically caressing with a cube of ice the warm, sensuous body of the “caucasian” girl laying on it, trying to reenact the Aruban version of scenes from two Hollywood movies: “9 1/2 Weeks” and “Jungle Fever”...could have been the one who raped, and killed her? No! It has to be Joran! Momma Beth says so!
I think it is time that those that were with Natalee come forth and speak the truth. We don’t care if she was drunk, or stoned, or was intent on carrying out a “menage a quatre” with Joran and the Kalpoe brothers, but to get to the truth, investigators as well as people have to know what really happened, who she was associating with, what she was doing, who else she might have been involved with, and not for Beth to keep “sanitizing” the events of that night, while at the same time blasting everyone else for not solving her daughter’s disappearance, when she, herself, in the information she’s been suppressing may be holding the key!
Althor
48 - KATHY TRUSTY
Has anybody else thought about that maybe the reason they cannot find a body in Aruba, is because the body might have been packed in suitcase and shipped to Alabama? Maybe there is a jealous friend of Natalee that did away with her. Maybe this girl did something at the spur of the moment, which cause Natalee's death. Maybe its the cute girl(innocence dimples and all!) that told Natalee's mom that Natalee got into the car with Joran and the Kalpoes, to throw them off track, while her body was in her suit case(s). Who knows there has been stranger things that have happened in other murder/mysteries. Beth is so naive herself, although she is a teacher? She is simply gullible, but trying to play it smart. Does Beth even except her own stupidity for allowing her daughter to go to Aruba without her? Does Beth just live in her own little world (that nothing ever bad can happen to me, because I have money and privilage)and actually has no clue what goes on in the real world? I think so. Money can buy you a lot of things, but it cannot buy you common sense. It is evident that Natalee, although an honor student, did not have any common sense either. What do you think?
49 - RK
I agree with many of the points....and have found that many parents, who think they know their children's behavior -- in essence, do not! Didn't Natalee have any boyfriend(s) back in AL? Sure would like to hear from them without Beth's intervention or presence. They might be able to explain why she left with 3 dudes she hardly new...
Its an unfortunate situation that every parent should never face -- but I believe Beth is running out of options and tactics.
What ever became of the arm found in Venezula??
50 - snow
I get sick to my stomach when i read and read and read the opinions of a certain person ALTHOR who chooses to hear what you want to hear about the Natalie Holloway on going investigation. I could go into a lot of things that you did not happen to ramble on about cause you seem have a strong belief already. I myself am not going to say if VAN DER SLOOT or the KALPOES are guilty or innocent. I am not going to sit here and type paragraph after paragraph about my opnion. Let's be honest do any of you really care what i think? most likely not.
I will ask you this thou. Do you have children? After reading maybe the first entry of yours i stoped and thought to myself that you are a heartless individual. If you do have children i feel sorry for them. Lets just say this happened to you? You let you 18 year old daughter go with her school for a graduation trip and she unfortuantely went missing? Would you or would you not want all the media attention and help that you could get? Of course you would. By the looks of all your entries you seem to be an attention getter who voices your opinion and thinks that everyone is listening to your every word
What i say to you is if you don't like to hear about Natalie Holloway then turn your television off. Who are you to say that to much is being done for this 18 year old girl.
51 - snow
TOBY YOU ARE A SICK PERSON.
52 - KATHY TRUSTY
Haven't heard anything about the arm. I am almost certain it is not Natalee's arm.
The truth of the matter is a great deal of parents live in denile. Even if the police came to their house and told them they have their child in the back seat of the patrol car, the parents first response is my child did not do anything wrong, my child would never do anything bad, you've got the wrong child.
Its amazing how parents will turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to their own children's behavior. I have heard parents say things like "boys will be boys" meaning what it is exceptable in society for boys to act out or be distructive, but it is not for girls?
I have also heard parents say "it's a phase they are going through and they will grow out of it." Like if their child(ren) go out do drugs, drink, and hang out on the streets all night, that they as parents feel they are benefitting society by condoning their child's behavior.
But, when the child gets caught or arrested the same parent is their defending their child to the bitter end (while not knowing anything about their child). It irks me to no end about the lack of common sense most parents lack to raise a child.
Look around folks, these so called innocent children of today will certainly be the terror of our future. Is this what we have become. They talked bad about generation-x, yet they except this bread of hellions with open arms.
It is not only the parents problem it's society in a nut shell! It seems to me that Natalee came from a well-to-do back ground but that doesn't mean she was innocent in her behavior in Aruba.
Her mother wants closure, this is understandable, but she saw in her daughter what she wanted to see, and her daughter showed her mother only what she wanted her mother to see. Now Beth is doing the same to us, she only wants us to see Natalee the way she wants to portray her in the media. Beth can't even except the fact that Natalee was at a bar drinking, she is definately in denial. Don't you think?
Alabama is about twenty years behind in times any way, so the parents in Alabama need to catch up to times and stop living in the eighties. Wake-up and see what your child is up to.
Stop dropping them off at the mall and using the mall as a baby sitter. Be in their lives and take on responsibility for rearing a child in this world. Who's the child and who's the parent?
You have to have a license to drive a car, to go fishing, to get married, but you don't have to have one to be a parent!!! Go figure.
53 - snow
Of course parents will turn a blind eye to the behaviour of a child. As parents we concentrate on the best side of our child not the worst so i can see why Beth would choose not to look at the worst in Natalee. My god it is possible that her daughter is dead so that would be the last thing she would want to think.
So because her daughter went to a bar, maybe got drunk or even had sex with a strange boy does her actions that night mean that she deserved to die?
54 - Jazz
On the Natalee Holloway case. She could be on some other Island. or after seeing and hearing all of these things that Beth the mother of Natalee and Jug say on Tv. watching their body reaction, when talking I`m truly concern rather they knew the Vander Sloots before they ever went to Aruba. Could the missing of Natalee be a Dope Deal between Beth and Jug and someone in Aruba gone wrong. simple because Beth and Jug was to anxious to blame Natalee missing on Joran and the brothers. they claimed these Boys were the last ones to see Natalee. Wait that may not be true, someone came along and if Natalee was drunk she could have got in a car and took off. by blaming these boys I think is wrong Beth or Jug are not Lawyers. they are barking up the wrong tree.
55 - Althor
Typical News Broadcast of the last three months:
“Good morning, welcome to the morning news, later we will go to our correspondent in London, where it is reported that a few minutes ago three, perhaps four apparently simultaneous explosions took place in the London Underground, in what appears to be coordinated terrorist attacks. No words on the number of casualties yet, though there are confirmed fatalities. But first to our breaking news of the morning: New rumors concerning the case of missing teen Natalee Holloway...”
“Thank you for being with us for fair, and balanced news analysis. And now, our panel of experts is here to discuss the most pressing issues of the day. We will later talk about the apparent impasse in the “Six way North Korean nuclear disarmament talks” and where do we go from here. But first: In Aruba, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway ...”
“Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us at Channel 8 News. Later on in our program: In India, devastating floods, and mud slides due to torrential rains have raised, or buried entire villages, and the Red Cross estimates that over one thousand people are presumed dead, but first to our Headlines: Searchers looking for evidence in the Natalee Holloway...
__________________0______0______________
It’s not about “changing the channel”, as so many followers of all things “Natalee” are prompt to “suggest” when anyone dares
to challenge the “media circus” surrounding this case, but about our priorities as a Nation, and the “questionable integrity” of our means of communication, or “media”, whose role it is, in a Democracy, to keep us well informed of the news, and developments taking place here, and around the world, that may very well impact our future, and all of our lives.
Natalee’s disappearance, however tragic, is not such an event, and does not deserve the exorbitant, and persistent amount of media “exposure” it has received, journalistically speaking. Nevertheless, it has hi-jacked our news coverage for the last three months!
When Natalee Holloway was first reported missing, it was news, and as such it merited to be reported. But the media’s blatant “obsession” with this “non- news” item three months after the fact, and its continuing over the top, excessive, coverage, due not to the “journalistic merits” of the story, but because of no higher altruistic motives than the “ratings war” coverage of the case has sparked amongst competing networks, is not only bad journalism, and unprofessional, but irresponsible, and immoral!
That Beth Holloway Twitty, Natalee’s mom, would avail herself of the “ media’s attention”, and exploit it in the interest of keeping the search for her daughter in the limelight is to be expected, but the media’s failure to show better judgement, restraint, and objectivity in the handling of the coverage of this case, is highly reprehensible!
The story has sparked the public’s imagination because, in the words of a fellow blogger, it has “...taken the dimensions of a mystery novel, with possible romance, a possible crime, and a cast of characters I don’t think even Faulkner could have invented!”
This coupled to the incessant melodrama surrounding the search teams, and volunteers in Aruba all vying for attention; the constant spin of allegations, rumors, and innuendos of the Cable pundits; Beth’s soap opera performances; and the ubiquitous cameras following her like a TV reality show all over Aruba, have turned the tragedy of one family into a Nation’s morbid entertainment! To the “ratings driven” networks, its “good television!”
Now, are we to infer from this, that the disappearance of this one girl is more important to us as a Nation, than all those who died in the London terrorist bombings, or the over one thousand that died in India in those floods , the millions threatened with nuclear annihilation by the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, or for that matter, than the life of all the other children, and persons, who like her are missing, but that unlike her, the media has chosen to ignore ????
It is understandable that it may be so to “Beth”, her mother; but it ought not to be to us as a Nation. Natalee’s disappearance has to be placed in its proper perspective!
As much as we may all empathize with Beth Holloway Twitty and her loss on a personal level, this is a “family” tragedy, and not a “national” or “international” event, and should no longer be at this point, the “all-consuming” focus of the entire Nation, specially facing, as we do, all the challenges here and abroad, that we face today! Let us switch our attention to far more pressing matters, and go on with our lives!
Enough is enough!
Althor
56 - snow
I Will ask you again. Do you have children ALTHOR? This case is not just about a white girl who went on a wild summer trip. This is about a girl who went on a graduation school trip with classmates to celebrate her graduation who went missing in a different country. This is an intresting story because appraently this has never happened to the Arubian people before. So for the Americians and Natalees parents to just sit back and let the Arubian police and investigators "do their job" is a real joke! It is very evident that they do not know the first think when it comes to conducting an investigation. So no i do not blame Beth Holloway for trying anything and being on t.v everynight. I myself, if my son or daughter when missing in a foreign country would be on t.v as much as i could. Everyday and everynight! Dame right! It is evident that you do not have children and it is sad to know that we have people like you walking the earth. So i say to you "enough is enough" and have a heart.
57 - Althor
Aruba, Summer 2005. A nation held hostage. By CNN and Fox.
I couldn’t find Natalee anywhere I looked. In fairness, I only looked in the bar, but she wasn’t there. She isn't at the pool, either. She is, however, on every American news channel the satellites could beam down to Earth. The stations trumpet every increase in reward money, as though terrorists are holding Natalee until the reward reaches just the right amount. (“When it gets to two million, Ahmed, sell!”)
You can't avoid talk about her, of course. It’s just that - it's only the Americans talking. The Arubans aren't avoiding the issue. I asked a few women working at the resort what they thought. Nearly all shook their heads as if to say “my three daughters are stuck in a Colombian whorehouse back home and I’m earning a dollar an hour to buy their freedom. You think I give a shit?”
The Arubans are sensitive to the story. They are sorry for the family. They are embarassed by the negative attention the Aruba police has been getting. And they can’t for the life of them understand why their island is being portrayed as if Dr. Moreau were in charge.
A FORWARD-THINKING BACKWARDS PAPER
There is a cute local newspaper in Aruba called “Aruba Today.” It is full of wire copy, which occasionally leaves the web links in the text. (Suspicions were aroused when entire hyperlinks appeared in the newspaper copy. As much as I tried, I could not click through.) The over-enlarged, artifact-ridden pictures scream “I was a crappy little 80x80 pixel graphic! I am not meant to be a quarter-page!” The apostrophe takes a beating, especially next to the letter “s.” It’s like a little tow-headed kid with a lisp.
Seriously, it’s adorable.
“Aruba Today” has ads for escort services right next to its editorial page. It’s given out for free at the hotel - on the days it arrives, anyway. It is every inch a teeny tourist rag; it is full of articles like “Harry and Jessica Wed on Eagle Beach” and “Marriott introduces new sous chef.” You could publish a better-looking paper with a 1990-vintage Mac Classic and Aldus PageMaker. The newspaper is barely a newspaper.
One other thing that separates it from our media? “Aruba Today” is showing perspective and restraint on the Natalee Holloway story.
BLOWING A STORY INTO PROPORTION
My first reaction after reading a couple of days worth of Aruba news was that the island was trying to cover up the obviously important Natalee story. I mean - don’t they see the posters? Don’t they see the tons of American journalists outside the Aruban Parliament Building? (It’s next to the mall and the Renaissance Hotel with the roof pool and private island. No self-respecting journalist could possibly miss it.)
But no. This was more insidious. The Aruban journalists (and I am not sure if using the plural of that word is, in fact, accurate) are daring to cover the Natalee story exactly as it should be covered: a tragic but minor event in an otherwise remarkably safe, polite, affordable nation of happy people and Dutch cigarettes.
You kind of feel sorry for the Aruban media. (I still don’t know what the singular of “media” is - and don’t give me any of that “medium” crap.) They obviously have a LOT to learn about overblowing and over-reporting. Aruban media knows squat about hyping a story to the point where it could do major damage to a small state’s entire tourist-reliant economy.
One day, “Aruba Today” dared to lead with the London bombings investigation over the Natalee story.
Savages.
CUTE WHITE GIRLS: A SWEEPS DREAM STORY
God, Nancy Grace really can’t shut up about Natalee. Nancy Grace can’t shut up normally, but on this story she REALLY can’t shut up. She is the answer to the question “What does terminal verbal diarrhea sound like?” And of course, everyone’s favorite career Dad-In-Mourning, John Walsh, is trying to add something “new” to the two-month-and-holy-shit-they’re-still-counting days of coverage.
And we get lots of “new details” here. “CNN Larry King Live” just informed me that there are “still many more questions than answers.” One reporter told me she saw a helicopter go “up and down several times.” Really? A helicopter went up and down?
I was told the “massive search” of the island “goes on around the clock” with “helicopters lighting the way.” I’m glad they told me, too. I haven’t seen any of that. I did see a cop car, but it turned out to be the one behind me as I was making an illegal left while trying to hide my Balashi beer.
One night on the tube, Dr. Henry Lee, he of OJ trial fame, said “they are running out of leads.” I don’t know if he was talking about the investigation -- or the news.
I can’t blame the Holloway and Twitty families, some of whom remain here. If it were my daughter, I would turn the island upside down. Aruba’s not that big - it could be done. I would scream and shout every night the television news people would train a camera on me. I would try to keep the story in the limelight as long as possible, if it meant an entire island’s police force would spend an extra minute looking for my kid. I would increase the reward by a hundred grand every day it would buy me another second of TV time. I would. I would. I would.
But if I were a news director, I wouldn’t listen.
If Natalee is dead it is a terrible loss for her family. Terrible. I can’t imagine life going on after the death of a child. But Natalee’s death is not a tragic loss for our country. It is not worth damaging the Aruban economy over. It is not worth some bumpkin Alabama politician’s grandstanding bullshit that everyone in his state should boycott Aruba until “they do something about Natalee.”
A more stupid person may think, “Natalee is just one person. What’s the biggie?” Well, she’s not one person. She is a symbol. Natalee is getting international - international! - coverage for one reason: she’s a Cute White Girl. American news loves a cute, virginal blonde in distress. We’re such slaves to Cute White Girl stories that we should just abbreviate the phrase: CWG.
Nancy Kerrigan was a CWG who only had to be hit on the knee to merit round-the-clock coverage. Denise Brown Simpson? Well, a formerly cute WG, anyway. Take a twofer like Laci Peterson and you’ve got a jackpot; first she was a Missing CWG, then she was a Dead CWG. The tragedy of Missing-And-Presumed-Dead Only-To-Be-Found-With-Religious-Wackos CWG Elizabeth Smart is that the hype of her disappearance and miraculous recovery is giving false hope to a lot of people.
CONTEXT? WHAT CONTEXT?
On November 1, 1994, I was at a crash scene in Cozumel, Mexico. A helicopter carrying American tourists from a nearby ruins site suddenly went into the drink. 12 people, all Americans, died. Accompanying a State Department vice-consul, I stayed in a hotel room with the dead's belongings. Let me tell you nothing will send you to the hotel bar faster than trying to sleep next to a dead couple’s matching luggage and water-logged pictures of their children.
It wasn’t the only time a tourist chopper took a sudden dive. A few months later, ABC News ran a story on helicopter crashes in Hawaii, Mexico and other tourist locations. People were going on honeymoons and dying because of bad maintenance records, ill-trained pilots and dirty motor oil. And these trips were still being booked.
In Cozumel that day we had an actual tragedy, and it exposed an actual danger facing actual people. Helicopter crashes were killing Americans just out for a good view. This had to be told. CNN had the item on the news late that night. It was a copy story. The dead made a critical error: they weren’t six CWGs.
Journalists, good ones anyway, are supposed to do more than report facts. (And thank me for not putting “facts” in quotes. The Natalee story seems full of “facts.”) We are supposed to put stories into proper context. We are supposed to use stories of individuals to tell a larger tale. We are supposed to examine a story, hold a critical light to it, and see how much coverage it merits, if any at all.
So far, only “Aruba Today” seems to understand that.
by Steve Safran
- Oranjestad, Aruba. July 30, 2005
58 - snow
I give up. It does not matter who you are ALTHOR you do not get it. You come across as a very smart person when it comes to writing but you still don't get certain points people try to make to you. And you simply ignore them
59 - KATHY TRUSTY
I heard that Deepak was at Carlos and Charlies and spotted by a camera crew at 1:00 am. I too wonder why this establishment would allow him back in their place of business, knowing that he is still a suspect. It is almost as if they are proud to have him there as some sort of celeberity.
Still have not heard anything about the arm, though.
What about the girl who hired an attorney and went to talk to Beth twitty, about her ordeal or incounter with Joran Van der Sloot. It would appear that a pattern of his misbehavior or "boys being boys" is surfacing to rear its ugly head.
I hear now that there are other "victims of Joran" coming foward as well.
The girl hired an attorney first because she does not even trust the Aruban police. That says a lot to me.
I pray that more than a pattern of Joran's lifestyle is brought to light. I hope they will find a way to break his silience and that he will talk about what happened, whether he did anything to Natalee or not. If it is not him, then maybe if he starts to tell the truth (if he knows what the truth is), then maybe we would get the answers we are all looking for.
From the get go (whether you feel Joran is guilty or innocent) Paulas Van der Sloot told his son and the Kalpoe brothers basically "no body, no conviction", so that tells me there that even Paulas Van der Sloot knows something. He should still be interrigated along with his son.
Beth knows that Joran is a teen, but as a teen Joran has thrown suspecion on himself. From my experience a "hit dog barks", which simply means only a guilty conscience speaks out in defense even if nobody accuses that person of any wrong doing.
This could explain why he cannot keep his story straight and his father runs away from the media.
Now it seems all of his wrong doings to girls in the past are coming out of the woodwork, to be a splinter in his side. Its time to fess up.
60 - bryan
This army of Joran rape victims might be after some money. A tad late are they.
Just like Kobe maybe.
Whose money has elucidated all these victims. Twitty money or Fox money.
Do not think I do not know what rape of child is like. My step daughter was raped and court let the bastard go.
Facing facts was hard.
Twitty not close o facing facts yet.
Bryan
61 - Susan Smith
Maybe I just got on to the wrong comment page about Natilee Holoway. First, it does not matter whether it was stupid to get into a car with someone she had met at the bar or not. She did not ask to disappear as a result. Then if you do not like all of the coverage that is given to this case, watch something else. I cannot believe how heartless and negative all of your comments are.
62 - Althor
QUOTE: "I give up. It does not matter who you are ALTHOR you do not get it. You come across as a very smart person when it comes to writing but you still don't get certain points people try to make to you. And you simply ignore them."
My Dear Friend,
I have repeatedly stated my positions as clearly, and precisely, as my humble abilities as a writer have allowed me, yet I think it is you, and not me who in the face of all the reasons I have given, and elucidated on, to explain why this “media circus” about Natalee Holloway is wrong, are “ignorant,” and chooses to believe what you wish to believe rather than look at the merits of the situation dispassionately. You are the one who just simply doesn’t get it!
The disappearance of Natalee Holloway, no matter how much you may sympathize with Beth, and her family, is primordially a “family” tragedy, and it ought not to “mesmerize” an entire Nation in these troubled times.
From a “journalistic” perspective, when Natalee’s disappearance happened it merited some coverage, and it was given. But after three months of nothing but “soap opera,” staged “melodramas”, and cameras following Beth’s every move like a “News TV Reality Show,” even the most ardent supporter of Natalee and Beth must admit the coverage has been “excessive,” and “over the top” because “it” is an uncontroversial “fact” which has been staring us in our collective faces from our television screens each night for three months now!
In the words of Professor Jeffrey M. McCall, Professor of Communication at De Pauw University, Indiana: “Journalism textbooks highlight the concept of "high impact" news. This is the notion that news should focus on events that affect a large number of people. Beyond the emotions we feel over stories like Natalee.... few people beyond immediate family and friends are affected. Nobody's political priorities, economic decisions or social behaviors are affected by gawking at the latest Natalee update or following.... for days on end. Raising the profile and coverage of these highly emotional stories erodes the line between news and entertainment.” He concludes his observations by reminding us: “ First Amendment framer James Madison once said, “A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.” Knowing all there is to know about Natalee.... will hardly contribute to maintaining our freedom..”
Now, if you wish to watch Natalee Holloway TV programming all day that it’s fine, if it were shown on “Court TV,” or “Aruba’s most wanted,” or the many other sensationalist “tabloid” shows on TV. That is your choice, and prerrogative. But that networks news still be “hi-jacked” by Beth and her cronies at this point, is unobjective, unprofessional, and simply wrong on the part of the media!
Wisen-up!
Althor
P.S. By the way, we don't mind you expressing your opinions here, as a matter of fact we welcome it! But please, by the same token, do not try to censor the rest of us either!
63 - Heloise
What kind of circus is America coming to that reams of video are spent and everyone has to surf past that bleached-bald Nancy Glass talking and crying over Natalee on CNN ad nauseum!
And all for some Alabama trash who wanted to have sex on an island with a couple of natives...She is probably in a white-slavery sex ring as we speak...or in a new body.
While literally MILLIONS of others have gone missing without a peep from media coverage!! Don't make me mad.
Heloise
64 - It's Me
I just want to say I am fascinated with the Natalie Holloway story. I think if we have one American that is lost on foreign or home soil for that matter, we should not stop until every stone is over turned. You who are such non-sensitive creeps would be first to feel that the family is doing everything right if it were one of your loved ones. This story goes much deeper than one missing beautiful american girl, and if you can't see that you need new glasses. Insensitive pricks
65 - snow
"IT'S ME" i totally agree with you. I am assuming by the way people are talking being a journalist or not are heartless and very uncaring people. I agree with you that the story does go much deeper. Beng a parent myself feel that Beth is doing what all caring and loving parents would do for their children. She seems to be a very strong individual who will not quit until Natalee is found or justice is served.
You go girl!!!!!
66 - snow
to Althor or anyone i might have pissed off i am very sorry if i have said something wrong. I have two girls of my own and i could not imagine what my life would be like if something happened to either one of them. That is why i feel sooooo bad for Beth Holloway. Imagine not knowing where you child is. And as days go by and nothing. I just can relate to her in a way.
67 - Althor
QUOTE: "Beng a parent myself feel that Beth is doing what all caring and loving parents would do for their children. She seems to be a very strong individual who will not quit until Natalee is found or justice is served.
You go girl!!!!!"
What is really sad, is that this tragedy could have easily been avoided, by a bit of common sense, and parental discretion, on Beth’s part!
Beth Holloway Twitty’s decision to unleash her daughter (no matter how level-headed, trustworthy, and deserving she thought she was, which apparently she wasn’t; and, or how much she may have wanted to join her classmates) into this Aruban “Girls Gone Wild” environment fraught with alcohol, readily available drugs, and plentiful gonads, with little or no supervision, is what set the events in motion which culminated in her disappearance, and possible death!
Would you as a "loving" parent let your daughter go under similar conditions to Aruba?
As to Beth's "strength," though she did not enjoy the reasons that put her in the limelight in the first place, she now sure "basks" pleasantly in it!
And as for for such a determined
"steel magnolia" as she is, as far as I know neither she, nor her husband
"Jughead" have ever dirtied themselves looking through the refuse in the landfill for Natalee, but prefer to "delegate" that task to "experts" such as the "menagerie" of volunteers they have brought from the States, though personally I believe Beth won't get involved in the diggng through the trash, because she's afraid she might "break a nail."
And what about all the shopping and "fine dining" she's been doing? Yes it certainly seems to me like the desperate behavior of a grieving mother!
Beth seems to recall her grief, only when she's in front of the cameras!
Althor
68 - hyperqube
Natalee Holloway and 1965 Blackout of New York
wow, the correlations are never ending it seems.
1st new york blackout of 11/9/1965 which was 7400 days after the hiroshima bombing where new york lies on the 74th longitude and 5/30/2005 are 14447 days.
woo hoooo!!!!
the blackout started at 5:16pm or 17:16
1716 = 3 x 4 x 11 x 13
we can group
(3 x 4) =7 and (11 x 13) =(114)
or 7 & 114
7114
see it here
69 - snow
Why do you feel the need to center me out and pick on my every word or sentence? I apologized and if it seemed that i was out to pick on you i apologize. I am not sitting her and say that i agree with everything that Beth Holloway has been doing or saying. You seem to hate the fact that she is on t.v everyday and night and all i said was that if i was in her situation as a parent i would turn every rock unturned. No matter what her actions happen to be or come across as, she indeed is a mother who has lost a daughter. Who cares if she is not getting involved physically. Maybe you should hold of judging her so harshly and look more at the news stations who choose to run her story all day all the time. Myabe if you watched Nancy Grace a bit longer you would see that she focus on other topics like Olivia Newton-johns missing boyfriend, Mr. Smith who vanished off a cruise ship, the pregnant women who went missing and a few more!
70 - KATHY TRUSTY
Whether anybody realizes it or not news is entertainment. The news is there to report topics of public interests, not personal interests. It has been and will always be want the people want. You may disagree with me and that is fine, but it is true.
What about Lindbergh and the Lindbergh Kidnapping? Remember Patricia Campbell Hearst? She was the granddaughter of the legendary newspaper publisher, William Randolph Hearst. She was missing for two months, when on April 15, 1974 she was video-taped robbing Hibernia Bank in the Sunset district of San Francisco. Yet the coverage never stopped. (and this was before CNN or Fax News)
From 'The Claiming of Patty Hearst' and I quote, "The event"the political kidnapping of an heiress from a prominent family---was kept under wraps for twelve hours, and then it began to generate sensational media coverage around the world. Despite national unrest among college students, this young woman had never been a political activist or taken up a violent cause."
Each time an item makes it into the news it is considered a "news story". I ask you this, isn't a "story" for amusement or entertainment for the person whom reads it or hears of it?
So, there you go. Natalee Holloway's tragic disappearance is nothing more but a "story", yet like all stories it has a meaning or purpose.
Things happen for a reason and there is always a lesson to be learned. Like any story ever read or told, you can either be drawn into its context or chose to close the book. It is up to you as an individual.
What captivates one person's interest may not be another's cup of tea.
71 - KATHY TRUSTY
All stories have a hero and a villian, right? Well, plenty of books have been written about Jessie James and Billy the Kid and these two were suppose to be the villians, yet some portray them as heroes.
I guess you either like something about aomebody or you don't. Either you like Beth Holloway-Twitty or you don't.
She may be sitting on the side lines while others do the work, but in my opinion, if you don't know what you are doing let the experts do their jobs.
I feel Beth won't really breakdown and lose it until she receives some answers. She is in denial about the whole event that has lead up to her daughter's disappearance. Until it actually hits home for Beth, she has to be strong.
Sometimes our strength comes from trying to hold on and maintain in life during the most difficult struggles life has to offer.
Each person reacts differently to tragedies they encounter in life, for there are no set rules of conduct for how a person should respond or act during extreme emotional pressures and tragedies.
My dad loved my mother with all of his heart, but when she died of cancer, he never cried at her funeral. It's been almost twenty years after her death, and my father never dated another woman or remarried, and now I see the tears in his eyes as he reaches eighty years of age. He has always missed mom, but did not know how to show his emotions, but now he shows us all how empty he feels inside.
Natalee's mother is going about her life as usual, just like my dad did, until she decides it is time to show her true emotions inside.
Sometimes it is difficult for a person to except a traumatic experience because shock takes over and it is like the traumatic experience is happening to someone else, while you watch it unfold.
This is what I feel Natalee's mom is feeling deep inside, yet she is trying to show a stiff upper lip, by finding inner strength to over come the pain. I feel if she didn't nobody would have ever known Natalee was missing!
This is a true story, for it is happening now! God bless Beth for finding the courage to stand up for her daughter's rights.
To ALTHOR who wrote: "Beth Holloway Twitty’s decision to unleash her daughter (no matter how level-headed, trustworthy, and deserving she thought she was, which apparently she wasn’t; and, or how much she may have wanted to join her classmates) into this Aruban “Girls Gone Wild” environment fraught with alcohol, readily available drugs, and plentiful gonads, with little or no supervision, is what set the events in motion which culminated in her disappearance, and possible death!"
I feel that even though Beth was naive about what could have happened to Natalee in Aruba, does not mean she caused what happened to her daughter. My God nobody can predict the future!!!
People go on vacation every day, but if they thought about all of the bad things that could happen to them they would just stay home (where something just as bad could happen in their own backyard.)
It's like saying just because a woman is dressed a certain way or goes out to a bar with her friends, that she asks to be raped.
To HELOISE who wrote: "And all for some Alabama trash who wanted to have sex on an island with a couple of natives...She is probably in a white-slavery sex ring as we speak...or in a new body."
I do not know what State you are from, but I am sure it has its own "trash" as well. And how do you know if she "wanted to have sex on an island with a couple of natives..." Were you there? Maybe you have important information to give to the Aruban police. If not, then why bash a person who is missing and unable to defend themselves.
My God I am sure things started out innocent, but evil lie waiting in the shadows. There are a lot of things that could have happened to Natalee at some other point or time in her life, but the thing that happened on May 30, 2005, is what was in the cards for her.
This event happened for a reason. And like I said already a lesson will be learned.
72 - snow
To KATHY TRUSTY I AGREE WITH YOU 100% ON EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID. SOME PEOPLE ARE LOSING SIGHT OF THE FACT THAT A TEENAGE GIRL WENT ON A GRADUATIONS TRIP WITH HER CLASSMATES TO CELEBRATE HER GRADUATION. ALOT OF PEOPLE FEEL SHE WENT TO ARUBA FOR TWO THINGS ONLY. TO HAVE SEX AND TO DRINK. SO WHAT IF THAT IS THE CASE. THE QUESTION I RAISE IS IF THAT IS TRUE DOES THAT MEAN SHE DESERVED TO DIE? (IF THAT IS THE CASE)
73 - Flounder
Does ANYONEEEEEE know the latest news on this? I haven't seen or heard ANYTHING on the news or in papers, so please enlighten me, if you know of any new findings or information. Thanks
74 - Althor
QUOTE:"It's like saying just because a woman is dressed a certain way or goes out to a bar with her friends, that she asks to be raped."
I am sorry to burst your bubble, but studies have shown that in fact, a large number of victims of rape were in fact dressing "provocatively" on the days the attacks took place.
Far be it from me to justify the rapes because of these facts, but there is a certain correlation between "cause" and "effect," specially when it has to deal with the more , "bestial," and "irrational" part of our natures, and what triggers those irrational responses.
So common sense dictates, "don't ask for it, and chances are you won't get it," or "don't stick you hand into the lion's maw, and expect him to lick it!"
Althor
75 - snow
ALTHOR YOU MUST BE A MAN OR A VERY SICK WOMEN!