A forensic view - “Just concentrate on the facts Watson”
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A forensic view - “Just concentrate on the facts Watson”
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Last site update: 3rd May 2007
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Without Fear or Favor Photos have Rollovers,
If you have just arrived from Mars or logged in from Outer Mongolia and never heard of this case, I am not going to do yet another Natalee primer when Wikipedia has already done a good job - come up to speed there first; or you can just plunge right in... 
The author is an electronics technician, twice divorced with a 24 year-old son, who has spent a lifetime solving the mysteries of industrial accidents and even the occasional sabotage. 
Note: it's not hard to figure out how to e-mail me - Don't. This is not a blog or a forum, it's an
If you are one of the apparently 70% of Americans who are certain Joran killed Natalee you will find ample space to abuse me at Scared Monkeys. If you have a correction or addition of fact try posting to Refugees Unleashed, Freedom of Blog, or address the issues in a page of your own. [4/2/07] Scrux is back from the dead and under new management. [22/2/07] My sincere thanks to the many posters who have made kind remarks about this work. Internet “Rapture” warning: this site may vanish at any time without notice. If you want to save something, do it now. 
It wasn't intended that way, but these pages are under continual revision, correction and expansion. Errors in early pages may only be corrected in later pages. |
The disappearance of Natalee Holloway on the island of Aruba in the early hours of 30th May 2005 has become a real-life mystery that looks like going down in history alongside crimes like the Lindburg Kidnapping and outright mysteries like the Marie Celest.
Since the early morning Natalee vanished without trace vast amounts of media time and blog text has been expended on the case and the many paths that have flowed from it. Mostly futile. And mostly factually in error.
Her disappearance triggered a bandwaggon that quickly morphed into a hysterical lynch-mob juggernaut as axe-grinders with a hundred different agendas jumped aboard.
In general it has become polarised into two camps, pro-Natalee who are white, rich, influential, conspicuously religious, implictly racist, anti-abortion, pro-capital punishment, and politically and socially highly conservative. In a PR coup they have managed, for a while at least, to deflect any examination of the role of students, caparones, and parents by dubbing questioners as “haters” of Natalee or her mother Beth.
The other camp is just about everybody else outside the circle, the so-called “haters”, and includes those with concerns for natural justice, the rule of law, presumption of innocence, questions of responsibility and duty-of-care; about her fellow students, their parents, and the trip chaparones; the media and it's obvious bias for a pretty rich white girl Princess in Distress; and outright commercial exploitation - “HMI”. (see Links page)
“Natalee Holloway” now produces more than a million [*] hits on Google, and dozens of blogs are either dedicated to her or have threads containing thousands of posts. There is a kind of “Natalee Mania” out there, as much driven by venom as prayer, and there are lashings of both. With three Trusts set up and taking donations, and now Dave's book out, it has even grown a “Natalee Inc.” sector.
* [the number of hits has actually dropped 20% from 1.2M to 1M since the 12-month mark passed; this week (20/8/06) had dipped to around 900k but rose back to 1M with the confession in the JBRamsay case] (more Page 13)
Allied with this has been saturation media coverage for many months, in particular by Greta Van Susteren on the Fox Cable news network, but also CNN and the others. The various blog comments show how much this MSM coverage defines, forms and limits the information space for those commenting.
How can you say that?
by minny on 8/18/2005 8:02 PM
If you had been paying attention to the news reports you would realize that Natalee (God rest her soul) was killed by one of the boys she left Carlos N Charlies with!This unintentionally accurate comment reflects the “received truth” or line being pushed by Beth and the media. Minni is effectively saying “stay on-message” and repeat it, it's disloyal to question it.
Commenting on the media commenting on Natalee has even become a blogging micro-industry of its own.
To many of these people Beth's theory of drugged date-pack-rape and murder is a foregone conclusion. This is an assumption that presses many red hot emotional buttons, particularly in America, particularly in the South, and particularly in an affluent isolated enclave like Mountain Brook, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham.
Yep, this is the same Birmingham Alabama of the grainy black and white footage of 'nig-rows' being fire hosed, trunchoned, and mauled by dogs during the Freedom Rides of the 1960's. Y'all know 'bout that, Martin Luther King “ah - have - a - DREAM!”, and all that. (is that a cheap shot, or history?) (see addenda)
Beth's scenario however does not actually rest on any established fact, only assumptions piled on top of supposition.
There is no brused and semen-stained corpse to examine in this case. No torn clothing. Nothing in fact to suggest any attack at all, much less a sexual one. Simple assertion, no matter how sincere, strident, or vicious, is not a satisfactory substitute for evidence.
Beth's credibility has taken some bad hits but most notably when she claimed to have statements that all three youths had sex with Natalee, but has since failed to produce them. Then there was the forged “confession” tape aired on Dr Phil, and endorsed by Beth.
Natalee's family has taken a civil law suit out against those they think are responsible for Natalee's disappearance. It asserts a toxic portrate of Joran van de Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers, and recounts in lurid detail what they think happened to Natalee. This claim is fabricated on such a stretch of the currently available evidence that it is certain to fail. (source: links from Hyscience)
As we will see here, a major part of Beth's ugly fantasy is pretty-well impossible, and the remainder possible but implausable. I feel for her, but in this she is an unreliable non-witness who has persisted in a number of very serious and public accusations which she has not been able to back up.
It is for others to explore why Beth should conjour in public such a lurid image of her virginal daughter being violated like this, the image is pornographic, and what it says that her imaginings are like this; and not of a mother refusing to accept the image of a child raped and murdered, instead insisting she drowned accidentally, against all the evidence. Similarly TV pundits like Dr Phil and some bloggers who maintain hopes that she has been kidnapped, abducted, or run away, and will somehow turn up alive.
Mountain Brook
So they retreated into self-imposed and socially isolated little prisons of privilge where Church and Country Club membership are the twin axies of society, conformity essential, patriotism compulsory. The Mountain Brook school is reportedly 95% white.
posted by Jessica Smith
3) Where did you go to school?
Mountain Brook High School, one of the “best” & most conservative high schools in the country. Southern Baptists. Daily prayer. Censored books. Enforced patriotism.
Source: http://looktouch.blogspot.com/2006/04/where-were-you-in-1996.htmlMB is called “The Tiny Kingdom”. It's deemed by the naive Brookie to be (and is to some extent) separate from the real world (ref: “Carry Me Home” by Diane McWhorter who received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2002 for this account of living in MB during the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations of 1963). Bad things happen to “other people”. Well, Natalee would be the 4th MBHS student to die this year (2 suicides, 1 auto accident, now Aruba).
Comment by Mountainman - 6/10/2005
http://www.opinionbug.com/?p=514As we shall see the reality of Mountain Brook students differs somewhat from the idealised image presented to the world by Beth Twitty and others.
Addenda:
HarryTho on Hyscience wrote:
The Aussie theory resembles one of ours. We added a possible medication reaction with Natalee's other intakes of the evening. Yes, watershock would affect any swimmer under those conditions, very quickly. It is a persuasive scenario.Full credit must go to Harry for his “1/11” (11th Jan 2006) post. We can both take heart from the fact that this work was almost complete when Harry's prior work was discovered. This is not a race, and the fact that this work comes to similar conclusions independently provides some mutual verification.
kaycee77025 wrote: And is he mocking MLK while calling others racists?
No. That classic film clip is the totem for a major socal shift that led to enclaves of fear such as Mountain Brook. For any reader under 45 that may be the only totem they recognise. It's not name-calling but a recognition of the almost-explicit racism in statements like “Natalee would never have got into a car with Deepak and Satish if Joran hadn't been there” which decodes into “a good Southern white girl wouldn't get into a car with two Blacks unless a white boy were there to protect her”.
http://member.telpacific.com.au/rolyroper/NataleeHolloway/index.htm | 15/04/06 | Last update:
01:05 26/03/07
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