A judge in Aruba ruled today that police can continue to hold Deepak, 24 and Satish Kalpoe, 21 for at least the next eight days in connection with the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway during a graduation trip in 2005.
The young men were arrested Wednesday in Aruba at around the same time that the third suspect in her disappearance, Joran van der Sloot, 20, was arrested while attending school in the Netherlands. Van der Sloot is the son of a judge serving in Aruba.
He is currently flying with a police escort from the Netherlands to Aruba and is also expected to undergo the same time of preliminary hearing that the Kalpoe brothers attended earlier today.
The three young men were, according to their own testimony, the last people to ever see Natalee Holloway.
Last year the Aruban government requested that Dutch authorities help them in the stalled investigation. Using advanced techniques, they re-analyzed some of the information that had been improperly investigated as well as going through cell phone records and text messages exchanged the night that Natalee disappeared. Apparently, some discrepancies were found and although they have not said this is the reason for the arrests it’s obvious that the Aruban police screwed up and now the investigation is on track two long years later. While nothing can ever bring the girls back it would certainly help to bring some closure to her family’s lives if they could find out what happened, and bring to justice the scumbags that did her in or at least know what happened to her.
The two Surinamese brothers are also going to be held in separate jails for the next week while the prosecution gets their evidence ready to present. Joran van der Sloot will be appearing before a judge on Monday. The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf cites anonymous detectives in Aruba and is reporting that the new evidence is derived from phone taps of conversations between the three men earlier this year which contradicts their earlier statements to police.
Rosemary Arnold, Joran van der Sloots attorney, claims that there is no evidence and cites the fact that there have been 13 arrests in connection with Natalee Holloway’s disappearance and that the authorities have yet to produce any incriminating evidence. Arnold is also speculating that any type of evidence produced will be circumstantial at best.
As I had said in a previous post, Dave Holloway is resuming the search for Natalee in some deep-sea areas. Apparently, a large lobster pot went missing the same night that Natalee did, and he suspects that Natalee was placed in the lobster pot and sunk to the bottom so that she would not be found.