From Amigoe English - Dompig's interview:
The other side of the Holloway-case
‘Police Aruba hindered by FBI’ By Michael Willemse
WILLEMSTAD/ORANJESTAD – The American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has systematically hindered the work of the police and the judiciary on Aruba in the investigation of the missing student Natalee Holloway. Especially when it came to investigating her direct relatives, mother Beth, stepfather George ‘Jug’ Twitty – who apparently has direct or indirect contacts and influence reaching as far as the White House- but also when it came to investigating the more than 120 fellow students and the chaperones who accompanied them in their trip to Aruba .
“You do your own dirty work”, is what was said to former police commissioner Gerold Dompig in charge of the Holloway investigation by a high ranking FBI staff member.
“Myself and also the field officer of the justice department on Aruba (at that time the European-Dutch Karin Janssen ) not only had to deal with the enormous pressure from the FBI, who arrived on the island in no time, but we were also obstructed and even threatened.”
VIDEO TAPE
So says Dompig on video, who after a lot of insisting was convinced to do so without his person appearing on screen. His voice is recognizable and he mentions his own name on several occasions.
The Amigoe was the first to see the material, which the makers expect will portray a different angle of the case to the world – especially with the American people- a case which in the last two years has been covered by tv-giants like CNN and Fox News, and broadcasted daily in the living rooms and offices in the United States and the rest of the world.
Dompig, who up until May 2006 – when he resigned – led the investigation on Aruba, and three others, who from the start each had their own function after the then 18-year-old girl from the prestigious Mountain Brook at Birmingham , Alabama , did not return to her hotel room on the 30th of May 2005 , are now speaking up. They each feel the importance of sharing this side of the story. Perhaps even the story; the truth. A story where three boys – Joran van der Sloot (at that time aged 17), Deepak Kalpoe (21) and his 18 year old brother Satish (formally still suspects), hardly play a role in anymore.
That story is told to tv-producer Renée Gielen (known for his three documentaries about the Bon Futuro prison on Curaçao) and camera man Dolph van Stapele, who from the start had his suspicions about the case and consequently flew to neighbouring eiland Aruba on several occasions, in search of the truth. Until they managed to make certain persons talk, who’ve been able to shed a different light on what could possibly be the most talked about disappearance ever.
MEDPLANE
They revealed that already one day after Holloway was declared missing, a medplane (medical plane or ambulance-plane) from the US arrived on Reina Beatrix airport and was stationed for a few days in the area of the airport where private jets park. Nothing strange about that on the surface, except that the crew (two pilots, a doctor and a nurse) knew nothing about why they were there. Gielen and Van Stapele also discovered that the plane landed without authorization and was also not registered by the Aruban authorities, while the mysterious landing – even though it was reported to the police in an official unsigned written testimony –was subjugated by the corps to the investigation only months later. This is also the case for other testimonies.
SECRET EXIT
The ambulance plane needed to be used as a secret exit for Natalee to the US . Secret, for the local authorities weren’t allowed to get wind of this – if they succeeded in ‘liberating’ the girl from a drug warehouse in Oranjestad and secretly leave the island.
Angela Dilorenzo, an American living on Aruba and close the Natalee’s family in those first days, talks about the special task she was given by Beth Twitty, Natalee’s mother: “Please do me a favor, after you find Natalee, please cover her up and bring her to the medjet. We’ll take good care of you and they are already awaiting her at the airport.” Angela, who’s married to a restaurant owner on the island, has her voice recorded on the video, but does not appear on screen.
Does Beth then know that her daughter is still (alive) on the island, after she declared to the whole world that the three local boys have done all sorts of things to Natalee and possibly even killed her? Or was the latter merely a ploy to cover up what really happened? Why on the second day of the disappearance is Beth already hanging posters all over Aruba which state that her daughter has been ‘kidnapped’? After which on the same day of the disappearance – also peculiar – when the co-students had only arrived back in Alabama just a few hours, she steps out of a private jet in Aruba with pre-printed flyers under her arm containing a local mobile number, and immediately starts handing them out to the airport personnel? Does Beth know something the rest at that time didn’t know and still don’t know? Angela: “I’m almost convinced that Beth knew where Natalee was from the start.”
She and another American on the island, Julia Renfro, who has also been living on Aruba for years and works as the editor in chief for the English daily paper Aruba Today, have been involved in the case from day one. Natalee’s mother asks Renfro on the 31st of May to help her find her daughter. During the course of several weeks Renfro becomes one of Beth’s confidants and together with Angela one of Natalee’s ‘angels’. Two years after the disappearance of Natalee, Renfro now also tells her story about the side the world doesn’t know.
TELEPHONE CALL
The material shows that Renfro and Angela talk about a phone call which they received from an unknown woman on the 2nd of June 2005 . She knows where Natalee is at the moment, that she’s still alive, but doesn’t want to go back to her mother Beth. For the measly sum of 4000 dollars the caller will say where. But to the complete surprise of Renfro and Angela, Beth did not want to really go in on that and afterwards, after insisting, she was willing to pay no more than 1000 dollars for the release of her own daughter. While the day after they were planning to announce a reward of 10.000 dollars – a sum which will eventually increase to more than one hundred fold.
When Angela declares that she will pay the demanded tip sum out of the cashier of her own restaurant and look for Holloway herself, Beth drops to her knees and says the following. Namely that the girl should be in disguise so that no one will recognize her and brought to the awaiting ambulance plane. “So that she could leave immediately and not have to be questioned by the authorities, the police and certainly not admitted to the Aruban hospital system”, Renfro adds.
But before Angela and Renfro arrive at the drug warehouse, Beth’s careless and especially loud – ‘I’ll burn this place and island down’ – former husband Jug Twitty (in the meantime Beth has now also divorced Jug) had already been there; except for a lot of uproar and panic in the direct vicinity, he achieved nothing. But more importantly, according to both women Jug is responsible for the failure of the ‘rescue operation’ and that Natalee- of which really nothing more has been learned, not even indirectly – still remains and will remain untraceable.
ALBERTO G.
Once again the unauthorized medplane departs to the US, after the crew members have been too clamorous and light about their unknown mission at the bar of the hotel where Natalee had stayed and where now also her relatives and traveling companions sleep for free – the Holiday Inn – they were subsequently fired upon their return. So manager/employee Alberto G. – another person which the tv-producers portrayed (incognito) – of the private airport heard shortly afterwards from one of the crew members of another medplane. Alberto is coincidentally, as he is one of the first who they come into contact with, also the one who guided Beth and Jug around the island. Alberto asks one of the travel companions how they actually plan to get the kidnapped daughter on board the private plane- “If she was supposedly kidnapped, she does not have a passport”, and thus will not be able to pass through immigration – to which the person which sent the plane to Aruba answers: “Do not worry about that. That will be all handled.” The plane which was sent to fetch Natalee, was instructed by the owner of the company leasing private jets, G.Ruffner Page Jr. Page also arranged the private jet which brought Natalee’s mother and her companions to Aruba shortly after the disappearance.
JORAN
If the person who made the phone call with the tip, really knows where Natalee is at the moment, then it would naturally give a different turn to the up until now known facts and this would vindicate Joran van der Sloot, at least of the ‘burden’ which he carries of being the last one who saw her. But this and other peculiarities in any case shed new light into the matter. Not in the least the lies about the three boys, Aruba and the police and justice system on the island , which Beth according to journalist Renfro kept on spreading to all the large American tv-networks who massively tore them apart. So she claims during interviews that at least one of the three raped her daughter and that this information is based on police statements; however she never shows these statements and later on both her Aruban lawyer and head of police Dompig deny the existence of such statements. Another good example is the manipulation of a tape on which Deepak Kalpoe was asked if Holloway had sex with all three to which he replied ‘ No, she didn’t’, while the America popular tv-show Dr.Phil shamelessly turned this into ‘She did’, as was scientifically revealed by the Dutch Forensic Institute.
For months Aruba is world news, but the hospitable population suffers from the constant stream of insults about incompetencies and corruption of the law. It even goes further when the family Twitty calls upon all American tourists to boycott the island, an action which got the open support of governor Bob Riley of Alabama .
Renfro concludes: “The family did not want the truth to be told.”
In the meantime donations are streaming in for the family, out of sympathy for the victims. According to Renfro the donations amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The biological father of Natalee – Dave Holloway- doesn’t receive one cent, according to Renfro, but he’s the one who’s searching high and low for his daughter without having dozens of paid cameras on his back.
ENORMOUS PRESSURE
Speaking of the accusations of incompetency. Never before has the Aruban police corps worked under so much international interest. Never before has the pressure been so big. Never before has the interest been so wide. But also, never before has the job of the police and the judiciary been made so difficult (not to mention, impossible). Ex-commissioner Dompig explains that in every country in the world, also and especially in the US , in cases of disappearance the investigators first look at the direct environment of the missing person: the relatives. “Out of respect we did not do that in the first instance.” Dompig continues: “For this wasn’t a normal missing- persons case on Aruba . No, it concerned a high profile missing case which America talked to the Netherlands about on a top level.” So we got a phone call from the Dutch Minister of Justice (Piet Hein Donner, CDA) with the order to: “Take everything out of the shelf”. The Netherlands even sent F16’s with very expensive equipment to make photos of every square meter of Aruba . “We understood more and more that it wasn’t about Natalee Holloway, but about the relationship Kingdom of the Netherlands and the US . This reached as far as the inner circle of the White House in Washington . Reaching Vice-President Dick Cheney. He’s the clue.”
STEPFATHER
Renfro also mentions in front of the camera that the highest American institutions and members of government were involved in the case: “The day after she disappeared the chief protocol got a telephone call from Mrs. Condoleeza Rice, asking him to ask our Prime Minister to put this case at the highest priority.”
But except for the hot breath of the FBI in their neck, the local authorities got frustrated in their work, especially when wanting to know more about stepfather Jug, the extremely wealthy president of Phoenix Metals which also does business with Latin-America. In an investigative case in which money possibly plays an important role, it’s important to also look at the financial picture, explains Dompig with his voice on tape. However it soon becomes apparent that he can forget that thought. “You do your own dirty work”, is what Dompig is told upon telling the FBI-attaché his intention of investigating the stepfather. Dompig: “If that’s dirty work, then it raises a few questions.” But that’s not all. According to the police officer, there is talk of a direct ‘threat’ by the consul-general of the US in the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba . Bob Sorenson is stationed in Willemstad , Curaçao and has naturally taken an interest in the case.
It comes down to that up until now this side of the story, at least as long as Dompig has been at the corps, has never been investigated. As is the case with the co-students and their chaperones, who on the planned day simply returned back home. Only after a lot of insistence did the Aruban authorities get the opportunity to ‘interrogate’ a couple of people. This had to be done in writing on half an A4, whereby the Aruban police was thus not permitted to directly interrogate them and whereby they thus had ample time to think of meaningless answers.
The makers of the images believe their recordings can show that what actually happened, is very different than what up until now has been shown, especially by the American media. In any case they want to open a window about the work ethics of the American federal police, who in no single way have shown their full hearted cooperation to investigate all possible scenarios and to really try and solve the mystery. In contrary, they believe that a lot points to a conspiracy. That it isn’t about Natalee Holloway, but about a lot, a lot of money. That she has become the victim of a case which through circumstances took a different turn than was planned.
NOT ON FBI LIST
The issue in any case raises an incredible amount of questions even after two years to date. That Natalee is not on the FBI’s missing people list, says a lot. And that for one of the perhaps most famous missing student of the world. In the US alone, there are 750.000 reports of missing people each year.
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