RSSFrom SM 2005: This Can’t Be Good For Tourism, Where’s Natalee Holloway?
FROM 2005 COMES THE FOLLOWING POST IN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF NATALEE HOLLOWAY THAT STARTED IT ALL …
It started out as a simple post of a missing teen on vacation with her high school classmates and would become the top story of 2005 and one of the most covered missing person cases in history. Today marks 10 years since Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba, her body has never been recovered and no one has answered for her death. JUSTICE FOR NATALEE!!!
For an Island paradise that prides itself on sandy beaches and a constant trade wind, the last thing they would want is bad publicity of an unsafe island. However, An Alabama high school student, Natalee Holloway, disappeared during her graduation trip to Aruba.
Natalee Holloway, 18, was among 125 graduating seniors from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, on a five-day trip to the Caribbean island.
She was last seen getting into a vehicle and leaving a nightclub in the capital, Oranjestad, before dawn on Monday, deputy police chief Gerold Dompig said. She did not show up for her group’s return flight later in the day.
“We went to check in for our airplane, and she wasn’t there, and she’s been missing since then,” classmate Jay Weinacker said.
Having lived and worked there, people really need to understand that island’s like Aruba have their fair share of crime as well. Once you are away from the hotels and in Oranjestad it is no different than any other city in the US. Sometimes even worse.
Aruba police said Wednesday that they had questioned and released three local men who said they dropped the teenager off at her hotel late Sunday night. Officials said the girl’s parents were unable to spot her on a hotel surveillance tape.
There will be much, much more to come, check back during the day.
Posted May 30, 2015 by Scared Monkeys Aruba, Caribbean, Missing Persons, Natalee Holloway | 4 comments |
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FLASHBACK
Beth Holloway – Loving Natalee
“I’m the parent who got the dreaded call. The parent no one wants to be. The one whose phone rang out of the blue in the middle of the day, and the voice on the other end said, “Your daughter is missing.” I never imagined that would be “that parent,” living an endless nightmare in front of the whole world. But was, and I still am, because I will always search for her. I will forever be Natalee’s mom.”
THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Loving Natalee – Beth Holloway
Excerpts
Pages 100-103: I rise and make my way up the hillside to the next cross and the next one and the next, repeating my prayers.
I am looking to the sky, which is growing bluer as dawn breaks, and talking to God. And as I reach the fifth cross, the answer to these prayers comes. Complete peace blankets me, and I am still. It’s a familiar feeling, yet unknown to me like this before now. It comes in total stillness. Silence. And in this instant I know that Natalee is with God.
I understand that from the moment she got into Deepak Kalpoe’s car her heavenly Father wrapped His loving arms around her and cared for her through whatever ordeal she encountered that night. I don’t know if she is alive or not, but I know that He is with her.
He entrusted me with her care for eighteen years. Now I must trust Him to care for her. So I never ask Him why. Why Natalee? Why me? I don’t ask. To do that undermines faith. Instead, I form an “acceptance trust” with Him there on the windy hillside. God never questioned me when she was in my care. I must not question Him. I realize that He is as proud of her as I am.
Thoughts of Natalee’s personal relationship with God comes to me. He knows her very well. And she knows Him.
Natalee was very active in the Community Ministry for Girls in Mountain Brook all four years throughout high school. The founder and director, Donna Greene, shared a special moment with me just before graduation. Following the very last Bible group meeting about two weeks or so ago Natalee told her friends to go on without her. She was excited and glowing as she told Donna that she knew for certain that she had communicated with God. She knew He had heard her.
Donna’s first words of support when Natalee went missing were, “She knows how to call on God”. In these thoughts I received the blessed assurance from the Creator that rescues me. And I am at peace.
The weight is gone. I move to the next cross, making my way on up the hill stopping and praying at all fourteen crosses. The Stations of the Cross. The depiction of the walk Jesus made to His crucifixion.
The sun is up as I reach the top of the hill to see the Alto Vista chapel. When I step onto the chapel grounds I am free, Liberated from the pain for a precious few moments. The wind is blowing hard, and I feel Natalee. I talk to her. Promise to find her. Get justice for her. And pledge never to give up. Never.
I think about what just happened, pondering the human spirit. Apparently it can withstand a lot more than I every dreamed possible. Mom is right; God is good. All my life I’ve heard people of many faiths talk about “taking it to the cross and turning it over to the Lord” or just simply “turning it over. Not the work that has to be done. Just the burden. I cast it upon Him so that I may be sustained. And I am renewed, resilient. Thankful for however long this resurgence in energy will carry me. I will pick up one foot and put it down. Then the other one will follow. I will breathe. There is much to be done.
FLASHBACK – TEN YEARS
A LIFE CHANGED FOREVER
Loving Natalee – Beth Holloway
Page 23: Rested and refreshed, we leave Memphis late Monday morning with Linda driving and Marilyn up front with her. I take the backseat. We sail along, chatting like we alway do, talking about our plans for another road trip one day soon. Marilyn and I are happily speculating about what our daughters’ reactions will be when they open their presents to find a set of extraordinary Wizard of Oz figures. Natalee will gasp with excitement when she sees these. Before we know it, we’ve crossed over into Mississippi. Somewhere amid our conversation, between the chuckles and the small talk, my cell phone rings. I don’t recognize the number, but answer it anyway, which I usually don’t do.
It’s a young girl. “Mrs. Twitty? My mom … umm … my mom, she umm … wants to talk to you.” It’s the daughter of Judi, the travel agent. She developed appendicitis right before the trip, so she and Jodi didn’t get to go to Aruba. They are in Birmingham. It seems like an eternity before Jodi takes the phone.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I say in a voice much firmer than the one I usually hear coming from my mouth.
She simply says, “Natalee didn’t show up this morning to get on the plane.”
And instantly I know. It’s more than a mother’s intuition. It’s certainty. Something terrible has happened. I have just answered the proverbial dreaded phone call that no mother or father every wants to receive. The one we fear from the moment our children are born. The one that changes a parent’s life forever.
THE THREAT
Loving Natalee – Beth Holloway
Page 197: There is apparently no amount of money in the world that can get us the answer to what happened to Natalee. When I asked an Aruban attorney about this, his response was chilling: “The threat is bigger than the money,” he says. The Threat. That dark influence. The evil that nothing and no one can pierce.
.
.
Corruption in Paradise – Dave Holloway
Page 117: I also find it hard to believe that with all of the press that Natalee’s disapppearance has attracted, there is not one person anywhere who knows what happened to her. I can only surmise that those who do know something are too afraid to come forward. Maybe there would be a price to pay if they tell, a price so high and so threatening that not even the $1,000,000 reward money is enough of an enticement for someone to bring us the truth.