The trip back
The road distance between C&C's and the Holiday Inn/Marriott is about 5m/8km - about 10 to 15 minutes drive at that hour of the morning, depending.
Three routes present themselves. The scenic route following the shoreline and motel strip. The back road that cuts fairly directly across to Palm Beach, or the direct road to Noord that runs near Joran's home.
After tossing around the options and general situation Deepak finally decides to take the back road that goes directly to the California lighthouse.
During the drive Joran and Natalee start snogging in the back seat. For Deepak and Satish what is normally a dead date night has lived up to expectations.
Nothing is happening for them; it's now too late in the evening; younger bro' Satish beside him has school in the morning and momma will be on his back about keeping him out late; and Deepak has had enough of being Joran's taxi for tonight. He's a cool dude 'n al, but he's the one who looks like gettin' laid, and fuel is getting too expensive these days.
The pashing in the back seat gets more steamy during the ride. They do a quick loop to the lighhouse, returning almost at once. As they get back near the hotel Deepak suggests a small scenic detour for a 'look at the sea' from the huts, a known pash-spot, but from where she can see her hotel just a short walk a few hundred metres down the beach. This suits everybody; Deepak and Satish can go home, Joran and Natalee can have a private tryst, and Natalee has been effectively taxied home.
They arrive at the hotel strip and go to the fisherman's huts, close but slightly off the main drag, and accessed by a short open dead-end beach-side road.
This is a near-ideal compromise, the white girl is almost home, yet it's a private snog-spot, and Joran is within walking distance of his home.
Deepak drops Joran and Natalee at the huts, say their goodbyes to Natalee and see'ya's to Joran, and the brothers drive off to get some shut-eye. When they get home a few minutes later Deepak goes on-line and Satish goes to bed.
Only half an hour has elapsed since the group left the bus station.
Jump ahead to Scenario Two
Scenario One.
Joran and Natalee sit down on the beach and continue to snog near the huts for a while. It gets passionate and intimate, but she's a virgin, and anyway he has no condom because his decision to go out earlier was spur-of-the-moment.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow”
He also has school in the morning, so he contents himself with a snog. She says she wants to sit and look at the sea for a while before walking back, so he makes his parting with her. He rings Deepak for a lift but he's not interested in coming out again so late, has landed for the night, and so Joran starts walking home.
It's now only a bit over an hour since they left the bus station, and they've been on the beach here for about three-quarters of an hour.
She sits alone on the beach, still a bit drunk, a bit sun-struck after her day in the sun, her holiday in paradise coming to a close. She's had a great time and even a bit of ship-board romance thrown in at the end. She still has her long blond hair tied back and as she sits there, the warm steady breeze against her back blowing strands in her face.
It's a warm tropical night so swimming in a light skirt and top is reasonable and modest, particularly after a night of sweaty dancing in a smoky club. And after Joran's stimulations getting her all muzzed up and hot and bothered she has a small “feminine hygene” problem she doesn't really want to share with her roommates who she knows will still be up and partying on back at the hotel.
She stands up and steps out of her footware, then walks down the beach to the water and wades in to its inviting warmth. She lolls about in the water for a while, just floating.
She rolls over to look at the lights along the shore and it takes a few moments for her tired and intoxicated brain to take in the fact that they seem to be more distant now. She tries to stand up and realises that she can't touch the bottom any more, and in sudden growing panic starts swimming back toward the beach, towards the lights and safety, against the rip.
continue to Outro...Scenario Two
For those stuck on there being a sex crime
Joran and Natalee are indeed dropped at the Huts by the brothers who then who go home. Depending on your prejudice, there are several scenarios (mix and match to personal taste):
Basically the choices are;- Sex does/does not take place
- She is conscious/unconscious at the time
- It is/is not consentual
Petting leads to actual sex. Either consentual, or non-consentual due to drunkeness or force. Or there was an attempt at rape, but she broke away. There may have been consentual oral “isn't” sex.
Then, either to cleanse herself, to vomit, or to escape Joran, she enters the sea and swims out some distance. Possibly before this Joran departs, while Natalee finds herself unable to return due to tide, current and wind. (burial really is a non-starter)
The dummy tests suggest she would have to be a fair way out, and it would be difficult for somebody to get a dead body that far out without endangering themselves. But propelled by poor judgement, or fear, she could have taken herself out too far. For that reason I think she entered the water alive.
If the “sex” were consentual then Joran would have nothing to worry about and would also not have known Natalee was in danger at that time.
His later actions suggest nothing out of the ordinary such as attempted rape, forceable rape, murder, or witnessing someone drown, all of which would have large potental blow back and be concerning him, yet there are no signs.
But these are not inconsistant with him having clandestine sex with her if she had passed out, say due to alcohol, and later just left her there.
He could trade on the fact that she would be hungover in the morning, without residual semen initially unsure of what actually happened, and being pressed to pack and leave, what she could complain of, if she was willing to do so knowing she had been drunk and done something “stupid”.
Joran's missing shoes are more interesting for what happened on the beach than the walk home or their size. How Joran came to lose a shoe appears to be a real element of the material evidence that requires some explanation to fit into the narrative.
Shoes are something you take off when you are entering the water. Particularly if you were attempting a rescue - but here is a terrible delemma, that both rescuer and rescuee may then be unable to return. However there seems no reason why he would not have called local emergency services at that point if he was aware she was in danger.
Self-evidently he lost them on the beach in the dark. How did he come to lose them? Did he lose his shoes running, presumably after Natalee? Were they even able to run in their intoxicated condition? Or did he have another reason to remove them, then not be able to find them again on the beach.
Many people remove their footware when they step onto a beach because getting sand in shoes is generally uncomfortable. They would also do so if they go for a paddle in the shallows. Normally you would carry them and only put then down if you stopped and sat down.
She could have been conscious and consenting, but then he would have little reason not to extend his account of sexual activity to include that.
A dark secret
So Joran and Natalee are sitting on the sand together. She has had a lot to drink which is catching up with her, and she shortly lapses into a deep sleep or alcohol-induced coma.
At this point Joran, also drunk, is tempted. Contrary to what he states he does in fact have a condom. Forcing a girl to have sex while conscious and resisting would be a very serious risk, but sleep assault or drugged rape is different and offers a degree of uncertainty as to facts and consent. Reasoning that by the time she sobers up and works out she has been raped while asleep she'll be back in Alabama, and if she doesn't get a disease or pregnant, he will have little to worry about.
So while she is out cold he has sex with her using the condom.
When he is finished he does not want to be seen by her so that his identity can be cast in doubt (e.g. Satish coming back later, or other third-parties).
Getting up to leave he looks for his shoes for the walk home, but can't find them. He has considerable incentive to find his missing shoes but is forced to cut his search short for fear of her coming around and seeing him, so he leaves, it being potentially easier to explain his shoes than his actual presence after her rape.
Faced with walking home, the loss of his shoes would be sufficient reason to ring Deepak and ask for a lift at that hour, but he would have disposed of the condom before that, possibly by burial nearby.
At some time after Joran leaves her on the beach she regains consciousness and decides on a swim for hygene, to wake up, or romantic 'last-chance' reasons, and gets carried out by the currents. She does not seem the type to swim out to sea simply because she had been ravished and 'lost her honor'.
Far from making his possible actions just go away, what he has done to Natalee becomes the focus of intense examination, now with the presumption that he murdered her attached. If he raped her he must have murdered her the thinking will go. Indeed many people have come to think so without any admission or evidence.
At some unknowable point her struggle is lost, and eventually driven by combined forces of the outgoing rip and the wind she enters the main north-flowing current off the beach and drifts north. By dawn she is off the California lighthouse and joins the faster-flowing current that flows around the north side of Aruba. By the time she is first missed by her school friends at the Holiday Inn her body is decending to the sea floor several miles west of the California lighthouse.
Somewhat intoxicated, in the dark and alone after Joran left, she decided to go for one last swim in the warm waters before departing early the following morning. It was a flawed decision that would cost her her life.
Swimming drunk, or in the dark, or on an unfamilar beach, are all invitations to disaster. Doing all three at once is seriously inviting trouble.
Where she enters the water is where several forces are coming to play; the normal outgoing rip channel from the end of the beach; a generally outgoing tide that is fairly abrupt; and a steady off-shore breeze assisting the rip current.
The simplest answer that fits the known facts is that she went for a last swim in the moonlight, got into difficulties with no-one around to help her, got carried out, and like so many others (including Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt) no remains will be found thanks to ocean scavangers.
The only place her remains will be found is where people are looking.
The currents may have taken her near the four wrecks on the north-west shore which are favorite dive sites. If by chance her remains fell here then there is a chance that someone may one day find something, such as a swipe card, her hair clasp, or perhaps her earrings.
At least nobody has suggested that Natalee swam out to be picked up by a Russian submarine, as they did with Holt, but it took more than a decade for most people to accept that he simply underestimated the dangers of Cheviot beach and drowned without trace.
It happens many times every year.
Of course we cannot rule out that she may have gone into the water to escape Joran, or persons unknown, intent on rape, or post-rape, but there no evidence of anything like this.
