Natalee Holloway, Update Sat. June 4 Part Two

Now Fox News is reporting that 3 Men Are Top Lead in Missing Ala. Woman Case. Like we said yesterday when the did not refer to them as suspects, yeah right.

Police said Saturday that three men have become “the most important lead” in the case of the Alabama teenager who disappeared in Aruba — and vowed that “there will be developments” in the next few days.

Deputy police chief Gerold Dompig said authorities were investigating the background and story of two Surinamese men and a native of the Netherlands who said they dropped off Natalee Holloway, 18, at the Holiday Inn before dawn Monday.

Dompig declined to call the men suspects, saying they were “persons of interest,” but said the men were “the most important lead.”

From The Las Vegas Sun

Aruban Prime Minister Nelson Oduber said Holloway’s disappearance has dismayed an island that prides itself on its safety and friendliness – a haven for the 500,000 American visitors last year.

“Learning the news of Natalee’s disappearance on our island left us all in a state of shock and disbelief,” Oduber said. “We will not tolerate any activities that harm our American friends or tarnishes Aruba’s reputation.”

Authorities say there is no evidence the honors student was abducted, but police commissioner Jan van der Straaten said “after four or five days you are afraid a crime has been committed.”

CBS5

Ten more FBI agents joined an increasingly desperate search Saturday for an Alabama honors high school student, while police investigated the story of three men who said they dropped her off at her hotel the night she vanished on this tranquil Dutch Caribbean island.

Police, Dutch troops and hundreds of volunteers scouring coastline and beaches for six consecutive days have found no trace of Natalee Holloway, 18.

Holloway, a straight-A student who won awards for volunteering, had earned a full scholarship at the University of Alabama and planned to study premed, said her maternal uncle, Paul Reynolds. He described his niece as a levelheaded girl who would not have done anything rash.

“Natalee is the perfect teenager, on the perfect vacation on a perfect island,” he said. “If something terrible can happen to somebody like Natalee where does that leave the rest of us?”

Holloway’s disappearance has shaken a sense of safety many Arubans long took for granted in an island of 72,000 people that saw one murder and six rapes last year. This year, there have been two murders and three rapes, police said.

“We are upset. We have felt so very safe all the time. Now we are afraid,” said Betty Verbal, a 42-year-old waitress and mother of two. “In all churches, Catholic and Protestant, people are praying for her.”

*** UPDATE I ***

CNN: “Police offer theories on teen’s disappearance”

Aruba police have three theories concerning a missing high school student from Alabama, Aruba’s deputy police chief said Saturday, six days after the student disappeared on a senior trip to the island.

The first theory is that “people of interest” — the three men 18-year-old Holloway was last seen with early Monday morning — may have harmed her.

In a joint news conference with the missing student’s mother, deputy police chief Gerald Dompig said the second theory is that Holloway may have chosen to disappear “on her own accord” and that still a third theory is Holloway may have been kidnapped.

Witnesses said she left in a car with three local young men between the ages of 18 and 25 at about 1:30 a.m. Friends have said they have pictures of her dancing with young men at the club.

Authorities have said they talked to the three men who left with her, and the men claim they took Holloway to nearby Arashi Beach before dropping her off at her hotel at about 2 a.m.

Boy these things are really not adding up.

Map of Aruba (map above, click for more details)
Map of Oranjestad (map on right, click for more details)

Carlos’n Charlie’s Aruba
Address: Weststraat 3A

Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort
Address: J.E. Irausquin Boulevard
Situated on Palm Beach, this attractive, newly renovated high-rise resort is located about 20 minutes from Oranjestad.

How does one go from Oranjestad to Arashi Beach and then to the Holiday Inn in about a half hour? Is there more than one Holiday Inn on the island with 600 rooms?

*** UPDATE II ***
Video from MSNBC, suspects in custody, persons of interest.