Natalee Holloway Conspiracy Theories by Beth Hammett (Instructor Example)

Natalee Holloway Conspiracy Theories

Disaster in Aruba

     

      Mix an exotic island, a group of high school seniors, and access to alcohol, drugs, and gambling, and the outcome spells D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R. That’s what happened when Natalee Holloway, a senior from Mountain Brook, Alabama, went on her senior class trip to the island of Aruba then went missing on May 30, 2005. Although family members, many friends, and law officials have tried to solve the missing person’s case, Natalee has not been found. Since her disappearance, several conspiracy theories have surfaced: the eighteen-year-old left the island of her own free will, someone kidnapped her and took her off the island, or she was murdered by a local boy named Joran van der Sloot. Let’s examine the case and theories surrounding the disappearance of Natalee Holloway.

Character Analysis

      Who was Natalee Holloway? Picture a Southern belle debutante

mixed with California golden girl: pretty, petite, 5’4” and 110 pounds, bright blue eyes, long blonde hair, and sun-kissed tanned skin (“Kidnapped” See Schedule A). As a member of the National Honor Society, a scholarship to the University of Alabama to become a doctor or lawyer remains waiting for the eighteen-year-old to return home to Mountain Brook, Alabama (Tresniowski). Google “perfect”, and Natalee Holloway’s photograph should appear.

      How did Natalee’s friends describe their high school friend? She was compassionate, good, kindhearted, but straight forward, and spoke her mind, according to her best friends, Claire and Mallie, in a 2010 Glamour magazine article (Weller). Claire said, “Natalee was such a good jazz dancer. She was on the school dance team every year. And she was smart…She was careful, not a rule bender” (Weller). Mallie painted a more vivid description of her best friend: “Natalee was an original. She was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz.. She was in love with Lynyrd Skynyrd... Natalee and I worked on weekends at my mom’s organic food store” (Weller).

    Why would a normally responsible young woman suddenly become so irresponsible? Natalee acted and looked the part of a perfect daughter who was excited to be traveling to an exotic island. But, peer pressure and internal conflict to let loose while in an exciting vacation setting caused Natalee Holloway to test her newfound freedom. Out from under the watchful eyes of her parents, she broke societal boundaries. Unfortunately, Natalee’s unwise decision to leave drunk in the middle of the night with a strange man she met in a bar on the exotic island of Aruba ended in disaster.

    A report on high school students and drinking finds “four profiles of drinking motivations for both boys and girls, including Experimenters, Thrill-seekers, Multi-reasoners, and Relaxers” (Coffman et al 241). Three of these, Experiments, Thrill-seekers, and Relaxers, can be applied to the missing eighteen-year-old’s behavior. Natalee lagged behind her peers; “more than three-quarters of high school seniors have already experimented with alcohol in their lifetime” (Johnston et al). While in Aruba, Natalee encountered strong peer pressure, or external conflict, to experiment with alcohol, and possibly drugs, to fit in. Drinking

boosts teens’ confidence, and then they can easily interact with the opposite sex. In addition, stimulants taken by Natalee caused her to relax. The incident turned into a typical good-girl-gone-bad scenario once the Alabama teen trusted her conspirators.

    Beth Holloway relayed a conversation she had with her daughter as they discussed the upcoming senior class trip, which is a tradition at the high school (Holloway). “Natalee never had a real boyfriend” and she confided to me that “she was a virgin” (1). Beth reminded her daughter of the dangers of going off alone or with strangers, and of drinking and doing drugs. Also, the two discussed alcoholic drinks being spiked at bars (1). Natalee gave a “typical teen reply” of “Mom, I know. I’ll be careful” (1). Natalee appeared naïve to the stereotypical high school party scene, so she trusted others to take care of her and to do what was right regardless of setting.

      To family members and friends, the idea that the eighteen-year-old girl they knew left an Aruba hotel alone or with a strange male remains inconceivable. Natalee Holloway’s friend, Ruth McVay, said, "She's good at everything” and was a “National Honor Society member whose GPA was 4.15 on a scale of 4 (she scored better

than perfect by taking advanced placement classes)” ("One of Three Holloway Suspects…). Henry Ennis, a friend who took Natalee to her high school prom says, ‘She's a real responsible girl, and she's smart”, and that makes her disappearance even more of a mystery” (1). Natalee, typically not the kind of person to push rules aside, disregarded her own safety in search of a good time on the beautiful, romantic island of Aruba.

     Although the body of Natalee Holloway has not been found, the most likely scenario is that Joran van der Sloot murdered his victim. He was the last person seen with Natalee, told various stories about his last encounter with her, and confessed his guilt to an undercover reporter, who taped the conversation (Grace). Also, the unnerving similarities between the Ramirez and Holloway cases point to Joran’s guilt in the Alabama girl’s disappearance. However, lack of physical evidence means van der Sloot cannot yet be charged with Natalee’s death. Today, Natalee Holloway remains listed as “missing”.

Description (Main Idea and Details) 

     In the missing person case of Natalee Holloway, several conspiracy theories are highlighted. The first conspiracy theory proposes that Natalee left Aruba of her own free will due to personal conflicts. A picture of the first poster made by Beth

Holloway stated: “Please call me Hootie…I really want to talk to you…” (“Free World Order”; Schedule B). Some investigators point to the wording on this poster as proof that Beth Holloway, the mother, believed her daughter left on her own and was hiding somewhere on the island. In addition, the same report stated that Natalee “didn't graduate with honors, she didn't get any scholarship, she was sexually active, she smoked, she drunk, she used drugs, and that it wasn't the first time that she escaped from her home” (1). However, none of these accusations can be verified through family members, friends, or school records. Also, during a Nancy Grace interview on CNN, an unidentified male said, “About the possibility of Natalee being a runaway…I want to say that is not an option…She had too much of a future ahead of her. Her bags were packed the evening before. Her passport was in her bag. This girl was ready to go home, and she is not a runaway” (Grace).

     The second conspiracy suggests that Joran van der Sloot kidnapped Natalee then sold her to an unknown man, who forced her into slavery. Joran made money from Fox TV off his version of the story that “an unknown man earlier that night offered him $10,000 for a blond girl…to take to Venezuela as a sex slave” (Van Zandt). Joran said he called the stranger on his cellphone, kidnapped Natalee, and exchanged her for cash (1). Famous television psychiatrist Dr. Phil agreed it possible that “Natalee was one of the suspected 1-to-4 million women and children a year traded, sold, tricked, or kidnapped into physical bondage and sexual slavery” (1). However, Joran has no currency or phone records to substantiate another one of his various tales of what happened to the eighteen-year-old girl he was last seen with on the night she disappeared.

     The last conspiracy theory points to Joran van der Sloot as Natalie Holloway’s killer. Through months of gathering eyewitness reports and evidence, police know the last person in the company of the missing person was Joran van der Sloot (Grace). Unfortunately, “Joran has lied from the beginning”, and he told so many different versions of his encounter with Natalee that the truth remains buried beneath lie after lie (1). 

Even today as he sits in a Peru prison for the murder of Stephany Flores Ramirez, a young girl he lured from a gambling table in a casino to his hotel room, he refuses to give any clues about the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. Police in Aruba report the missing person’s case of Natalee Holloway remains open (Boyett).

Compare and Contrast

   

  Joran van der Sloot continues to be a key player in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway (Grace). Although never formally charged with the Alabama girl’s murder, he has been convicted and is currently in prison in Peru for the death of another victim, Stephany Flores Ramirez (1).

     Natalee met Joran van der Sloot at a casino, where they drank and gambled (Grace). The two with a group of friends moved and continued their party at a bar called Carlos ‘N Charlie’s (1). Van der Sloot lured Natalee away from friends and outside the club, where he was the last person seen with her. He told various stories about what happened that night. Joran said: Natalee had a seizure and hit her head on a rock then died; she passed out and choked to death; he sold her to a kidnapper for money (1). When questioned by police, Joran seemed indifferent and was calm about the incident (1). Fast forward five years to Lima, Peru. Stephany Flores Ramirez met Joran at a casino, where they drank and gambled heavily (Van Zandt). The young man lured the twenty-one year old girl outside the casino then to his hotel room (1). It was Joran’s hotel room that the body of Stephany was discovered strangled to death (1). Police reported that the suspect was calm when questioned, and some even called him “arrogant” (1).

      Yet, there are differences between the two girls’ cases. For example, Natalee was eighteen when she went missing, but

Stephany was twenty-one. The missing person case of the American girl took place in Aruba while the death of the Peruvian occurred in Peru. No corpse surfaced in the Natalee Holloway case, so the question remains whether the girl is dead. However, Stephany Flores Ramirez’s body was found in van der Sloot’s hotel room. Joran has been convicted and sentenced to twenty-eight years of confinement in Ramirez’s death, and he now resides in a Peruvian prison .

      Natalee’s father, Dave Holloway, defined similarities between the missing person’s case of his daughter and that of the death of Stephany Flores Ramirez as “déjà vu” (Savidge). Yet, these similarities are not enough to charge Joran van der Sloot with the murder of Natalee Holloway. For additional murder charges to be filed against van der Sloot, physical proof is needed.

     Conclusion

      Natalee Holloway remains as one of “90,000 adults” reported yearly as missing in the United States (Kepple et al). The eighteen-year-old’s disappearance developed into three conspiracy theories:


1. Did Natalee leave of her own free will due to personal issues?

2. Was Natalee kidnapped and taken off the island?

3. Was Natalee murdered by Joran van der Sloot?

     Although substantial evidence points to Joran van der Sloot as Natalee’s killer, the mystery that took place ten years ago on the exotic island of Aruba remains unsolved.

 

Works Cited

Boyett, Chris. "New Clues, Questions in Natalee Holloway Case - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 30 May 2015. Web. 08 May 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/world/natalee-holloway-new-tip/>.

Coffman, Donna L., Megan E. Patrick, Lori Ann Palen, Brittany L. Rhoades, and Alison K. Ventura. "Why Do High School Seniors Drink? Implications for a Targeted Approach to Intervention." Editorial. Prevention Science 8 Oct. 2007: 241. Cal-Poly State University. Cal-Poly. Web. 7 Apr. 2015. <http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1124&context=kine_fac>.

"Free World Order." : THE HOLLOWAY CONSPIRACY Part 1. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2015. <http://welcometothefreeworldorder.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-holloway-conspiracy-part-1.html>.

Grace, Nancy. "Nancy Grace Mysteries: Natalee Holloway Disappearance." CNN. Cable News Network, 2 Jan. 2014. Web. 07 May 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1401/02/ng.01.html>.

Holloway, Beth. "Natalee Holloway's Mom Opens Up on the Anniversary of Her Daughter's Disappearance." Good Housekeeping. Hearst Communications, 01 June 2015. Web. 06 Apr. 2015. <http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/a17566/natalee-holloway-daughter-beth-holloway/>.

Kepple, Kevin, Marianne Epstein, and Lori Grisham. "By the Numbers: Missing Persons in the USA." USA Today. Gannett Company, 25 Sept. 2014. Web. 6 Aug. 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fnation-now%2F2014%2F09%2F23%2Fmissing-persons-children-numbers%2F161107092F>.

Kessler, Rick. "Lifetime Movie Scores with 'Holloway'" Variety. Variety Media, 20 Apr. 2009. Web. 06 May 2015. <http://variety.com/2009/scene/markets-festivals/lifetime-movie-scores-with-holloway-1118002635/>.

"One of Three Holloway Suspects Referred to Her Death on Internet." Chicago Tribune. Chicago Tribune, 21 Dec. 2007. Web. 5 May 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Farticles.chicagotribune.com%2Fkeyword%2Fdisappearance-of-natalee-holloway>.

Savidge, Martin. "Natalee Holloway's Father Opens Up about New Lead." CNN. CNN, 25 May 2015. Web. 8 Aug. 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2015%2F05%2F27%2Fworld%2Fnatalee-holloway-father-interview%2F>.

Tresniowski, Alex. "'I Want My Daughter Back'" : People.com. Time, Inc., 04 July 2005. Web. 06 May 2015. <http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20148066,00.html>.

Van Zandt, Dr. Clint. "Joran Van Der Sloot: “I Sold Natalee Holloway for $10,000″." LiveSecureorg Joran Van Der Sloot I Sold Natalee Holloway for 10000 Comments. LiveSecure.org, 17 Sept. 2010. Web. 08 Apr. 2015. <https://www.livesecure.org/joran-van-der-sloot-i-sold-natalee-holloway-for-10000/>.

Weller, Sheila. ""What We've Never Told Anyone About Natalee Holloway"" Glamour. Conde Nest, 30 Sept. 2010. Web. 06 May 2015. <http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/2010/09/what-weve-never-told-anyone-about-natalee-holloway>.

 Schedule A

Schedule B