Van Zandt: Vanished before our eyes

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

Natalee Holloway
As a former FBI Agent and father of three, I would never deny any fellow parent the hope that their missing child might someday return to them.  After all, that is what has given Natalee Holloway’s mother, Beth, the emotional strength to be able to live her own personal nightmare for the past four months.  She must hope upon hope that some of the naysayers are right; that Natalee was kidnapped and sold into slavery and lives in the opulent home of a Middle Eastern sultan, or even the dirty, dank back room of some Caribbean crack house.  The parents of 23-year old Amy Bradley, last seen on a cruise shop off the coast of Curacao in March 1998, live with “the hope” that their daughter could have met a similar fate.  However, the parents of 17-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) coed Taylor Behl now know the “truth” about their daughter’s disappearance and death, this as provided by the man who says he choked her to death and unceremoniously laid her body in a shallow ravine off a short dirt road in rural Virginia.  A similar fate was experienced by family members of five-month pregnant LaToyia Figueroa who disappeared in Philadelphia on July 18 and whose body was found on August 20, 2005.  Figueroa’s boyfriend has been charged in her death, noting that boyfriends kill more than twice as many women as are murdered by strangers in the United States.

Some suggest that Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, has been used by the media to raise television ratings.  But who is using whom?  Perhaps it is Beth Twitty who is using the media to keep her daughter’s face before us (and especially before the Aruban government).  Others believe that no matter what the reason, the telling and retelling of the Natalee Holloway story constitutes oversaturation, overshadowing all other missing person and “legitimate” need-to-know news stories.  We all know the story of Natalee, the pretty Alabama high school graduate who walked out of an Aruban bar, climbed into a car with three local residents, and seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth that same evening.  Night after night we have heard new aspects of this case.  How the local Aruban police may have botched the investigation, some suggest intentionally, while others recite the many versions of her last night in Aruba with the two Kalpoe brothers and everyone’s favorite suspect, Joran van der Sloot, as told and retold, and changed each time, by the suspects themselves. 

Subsequent to Natalee’s disappearance I was in Aruba and there met a former U.S. police polygraph examiner, Jamie Skeeters.  Skeeters was there interestingly enough at the request of Dr. Phil of “tell it like it is” TV fame.  I knew Skeeters was in Aruba to conduct a polygraph on a less than credible witness who said he witnessed our three suspects and the father of

"Will we ever know the ultimate truth” is yet another unanswered question in the death of one more person who was taken away far too soon from her friends, her family, and society. — Clint Van Zandt Former FBI Profiler

Joran bury a nude blond female in the local landfill.  So I asked Deepak Kalpoe if he would take a polygraph exam concerning his knowledge of Natalee’s disappearance.  After telling me lie detector tests were not admissible in court in Aruba, he said he’d consider talking one if his attorney agreed.  (We all know the answer to that one.)  Anyway, Skeeters subsequently spoke to (and videotaped) Deepak describing Natalee as follows:  “To tell you quite frankly, dressed like a slut, talked like one, too,” he said.  “Would go into a car with three strange guys, and her mother, claiming her to be the goody-two-shoes.  Enough with this BS already.”  When asked if she had sex with all three suspects, he responded, “She did. You’d be surprised how easy it was.”  This is the same Deepak who was indicated in a statement attributed to his friend, the junior van der Sloot, in which Joran suggested that it was Deepak who had kidnapped, raped, murdered, and buried Natalee.  As any investigator worth his or her salt will tell you, “If they can’t get their statements straight they probably have something to hide.”  Add to this that if someone puts a victim down in a very demeaning manner, he could be trying to justify what happened to the victim – perhaps making her somehow responsible for the fate that befell her. 

I spoke to Beth Twitty on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” last week.  She believes that this videotape should be enough for the Aruban police to rearrest at least Deepak and perhaps the other suspects.  Aruban Deputy Chief of Police Gerald Dompig confirms that this could be done, with new murder charges brought against the suspects.  Beth believes Aruban police intentionally left key information out of initial written statements.  This information, provided by the three suspects, included the details of the suspects’ alleged illegal intimate contact with Natalee.  If true this would suggest a cover-up, a conspiracy or at best professional incompetence.  I usually don’t believe in complicated conspiracy theories, but in this case it’s hard to totally rule out conspiracy or cover-up, and incompetence seems too simple an answer.  I do know that Beth believes that Joran’s specific and statements concerning Natalee could only have been the result of intimate physical contact.  The issue that the police need to overcome is simple though; if such intimate contact took place, was the contact consensual or non-consensual?  Unfortunately the best witness, Natalee herself, vanished four months ago.  The answer to her mysterious disappearance continues to elude authorities.  And notwithstanding all of the statements by the three, four, or seven or more suspects, as well as the intense involvement in the investigation of Natalee’s family members, the fate of Natalee Holloway is still unknown.  Natalee’s birthday is this week, but so far island fly overs by Dutch F-16s and scuba divers searching the waters around the island have found nothing but sunken ships and, with them, sunken hopes.

This was not the case with Virginian Taylor Behl.

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