closure, if not peace
thank goodness for extradiction
Reading Joyce White Vance’s superb daily substack column, Civil Discourse, I came across her involvement in the Natalee Holloway tragedy. If that name sounds vaguely familiar, Holloway was an eighteen year old who disappeared on a 2005 high school graduation trip to Aruba. Until today, her likely death seemed likely linked to a Dutchman who escorted her out of a bar one evening. Joyce Vance noted her role on the prosecutoral team investigating this mystery.
Holloway simply disappeared. Speculation of murder began almost immediately but she left no trace. My friend who owned a condominium in Aruba commented later that summer that the waters surrounding the island were shark-infested so disposing of a body would have been fairly easy. Well, something surely happened to her.
What investigators did know was Holloway departed one of the island’s bars with Joran van der Sloot and two brothers; van der Sloot was always the focus of attention. Multiple attempts, including jailings, by Aruba’s police failed to discover a link between van der Sloot and Holloway’s disappearance. U.S. investigators and Justice officials in Birmingham, where both Holloway and Joyce Vance lived, never had adequate evidence to bring him to trial. Following much worldwide attention, van der Sloot moved from Aruba to Peru.
The Dutchman in 2010 attempted to extort a quarter of a million dollars from Holloway’s mother, promising he would provide evidence of Natalee’s body. When told she would not pay the amount, according to press reports today, van der Sloot demanded $25,000 dollars. The U.S. Justice Department indicted van der Sloot on extortion and wire fraud charges that year. Prosecutors in the United States never indicted him on murder charges.
Peruvian authorities had their hands on van der Sloot following murdering a young Peruvian woman in 2010. His resulting twenty-eight year sentence gave authorities the ability to extradict him per Washington’s request regarding the wire fraud and extortion counts. Twelve years into his sentence, the extradiction treaty between Peru and the United States brought him to face U.S. Justice.
Today, reports are that he acknowledged to a judge in Birmingham that he killed Holloway with a cinderblock blow to the head when she spurned his sexual advances. He has, apparently, not provided details of how he disposed of the body but the long-held speculation of his actions may have been correct all along. He seemingly acted as a cold-blooded sociopath. Tragically, the Peruvian murder of Stephany Flores five years later sounded chillingly similar according to press reports.
Holloway’s family has a modicum of closure, if not peace. They will never get their daughter back but they have the murderer’s own admission she fought him which perhaps can provide them some small comfort for a life lost so young.
The three lessons vital from this sadistic tale are worthy of consideration. First, for all the condemnations hurled at the Department of Justice in contemporary America, Natalee Holloway’s killer did not escape the same kind of pursuit by law enforcement officials as any other criminal nor was he treated more harshly than any other criminal. He faced equal justice under the law.
To assure his conviction, the indictment against him was not the murder itself, for which officials had insufficient evidence for either the extradiction or to throw into prison for life or worse; his crime which undoubtedly could be proven was fraud and extortion. Proscutors are professionals, regardless of the criminal defendents, who seek to work with the facts and the law. Sure, there are definitely mistakes made at times but the overwhelming majority of cases are clearly pursued with integrity and disciplined professionalism based on mountains of evidence. This was one of those cases.
Second, the United States talks a lot about the importance of the Liberal International Order. One of the cornerstones of that system rests on concepts and mechanisms like extradiction treaties negotiated between sovereign states. We should not take that for granted as it could disappear, in the face of mutual distrust, in a heartbeat.
Finally, life is short. Natalee Holloway’s reason for departing the bar with van der Sloot will always be unknown. Today, we know for certain she won’t graduate from dental school, or have children of her own, or support her parents in their elderly years. But, closure is one of the most important aspects of human nature. We are by nature hopeful as people but we also need to know when that hope needs to revise into memories. It’s now time for those memories to be the center of our discussions of Natalee Holloway.
Today was another beautiful day in Eastport. I am so lucky to share it with you.
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