Finding a missing Alabama teenager is Aruba’s “No. 1 goal,” the nation’s leader declared yesterday – as three more suspects were arrested in the honor student’s disappearance.
“We will not stop until we have answers,” Prime Minister Nelson Oduber said, vowing, “We will solve this case.”
Natalee Holloway, 18, vanished on Memorial Day while on a five-day high-school graduation trip with 124 classmates and seven chaperones. She was last seen leaving a bar and getting into a car with three residents of the Dutch island off the Venezuelan coast.
At a news conference attended by her mom, Beth Twitty, Oduber said cops were “doing everything in their power to find Natalee.”
He added, “We will not tolerate any activities that harm our American friends or any of our international visitors.”
The strong words came as cops took in the three men who had acknowledged giving Holloway a ride. They’d said they dropped her off at the Holiday Inn at about 2 a.m., but the hotel’s security cameras did not record her return.
Cops also impounded a gray Honda. Her friends have said she left the club in a silver car.
The three men were questioned and released last week. A government spokesman said they were taken into custody yesterday “as suspects.”
Two – Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, 18 and 21, respectively – are Surinamese brothers. The third is Joran Andreas Petrus van der Sloot, 17.
Van der Sloot is the son of a Dutch justice official and a student at the Aruba International School. Cops said he’d met Holloway at a hotel casino two days before she disappeared.
In Mountain Brook, Holloway’s hometown, teens recalled seeing van der Sloot at the bar where she was last seen.
“He was just a local guy in the bar and the casino where all the kids were just kind of hanging out,” Holloway’s aunt, Marcia Twitty, said.
Two former hotel security guards, Nick John, 30 and Abraham Jones, 28, were arrested Sunday in connection with the case.
With Post Wire Services