Lively Case Discussion #664 7/24 - 7/25/2007

[San]

That Connecticut story is something else!

Easy ~ did you read where that older guy wore NIGHT VISION GOGGLES so he could what was inside the home.  That is so frightening.        A tragic story.

i have night vision goggles but i use them for protection

 

i had some moose, deer and bear around here...


i spyed em  

Shouldn't that be the other way around

[mrs. red]

Karma if you are wondering why no one if posting it is because the forum is down for most people.

Yea who shut the lights off man.  I had to go take a nap!! I might not have much to say, but I still must have my monkey fix.    

    Rock On!!

Snoopy!!!!!!  it's good to see you!  I miss your posts... they are such a slice of good old fashioned charm!

[robots]

That Connecticut story is something else!

Easy ~ did you read where that older guy wore NIGHT VISION GOGGLES so he could what was inside the home.  That is so frightening.        A tragic story.

i have night vision goggles but i use them for protection

 

i had some moose, deer and bear around here...


i spyed em  

Shouldn't that be the other way around

i dont hunt

[robots]

That Connecticut story is something else!

Easy ~ did you read where that older guy wore NIGHT VISION GOGGLES so he could what was inside the home.  That is so frightening.        A tragic story.

i have night vision goggles but i use them for protection

 

i had some moose, deer and bear around here...


i spyed em  

Shouldn't that be the other way around

you have to prepared,

i have everything

in case bad guys come around

HINT- to all bad GUYS


dont come around here...at my house

you dont have a chance  

[mrs. red]

I am reading around in the archieves...
http://www.scaredmonkeys.net/viewtopic.php?t=1793&start=0

OK... how many actual relatives of Natalee's were on the trip?  Her brother, her cousins?

Seems odd to me that there would be an entire family on the island at that time.
Was this more baloney from those trying to spin that she wasn't harmed by the 3 suspects... you know the last three people to see her alive?  those people??

[snoopy]

Karma if you are wondering why no one if posting it is because the forum is down for most people.

Yea who shut the lights off man.  I had to go take a nap!! I might not have much to say, but I still must have my monkey fix.    

    Rock On!!

Snoopy!!!!!!  it's good to see you!  I miss your posts... they are such a slice of good old fashioned charm!

Hi mrs red, and thank you.  My life bis so busy multi-tasking right now.  Every time I try to pull out my old notes to review things I get side tracked.  Had forgotten all about the cartoon until someone posted it this morning.

[mrs. red]

Karma if you are wondering why no one if posting it is because the forum is down for most people.

Yea who shut the lights off man.  I had to go take a nap!! I might not have much to say, but I still must have my monkey fix.    

    Rock On!!

Snoopy!!!!!!  it's good to see you!  I miss your posts... they are such a slice of good old fashioned charm!

Hi mrs red, and thank you.  My life bis so busy multi-tasking right now.  Every time I try to pull out my old notes to review things I get side tracked.  Had forgotten all about the cartoon until someone posted it this morning.

I did too to be honest, dang but there has been so much information lost and found and misinformation ... I guess it's the game of wear them down..

[klaasend]

I am reading around in the archieves...
http://www.scaredmonkeys.net/viewtopic.php?t=1793&start=0

OK... how many actual relatives of Natalee's were on the trip?  Her brother, her cousins?

Seems odd to me that there would be an entire family on the island at that time.
Was this more baloney from those trying to spin that she wasn't harmed by the 3 suspects... you know the last three people to see her alive?  those people??

The Twitty twins, cousins were on the trip..that's all.

[mrs. red]

thanks Klaas... now, do we know if it's true that one of them got into a fight with jvds?

[klaasend]

thanks Klaas... now, do we know if it's true that one of them got into a fight with jvds?

I don't know if we have any valid resource for that.  May be rumor.  I do believe one of the MB males got into a fight with some local, possibly Joran.  Not positive on any of that.

[robots]

any sightings of joran lately ???

[mrs. red]

thanks Klaas... now, do we know if it's true that one of them got into a fight with jvds?

I don't know if we have any valid resource for that.  May be rumor.  I do believe one of the MB males got into a fight with some local, possibly Joran.  Not positive on any of that.

I just wondered... none of that would change my mind.. just reading through all the spagetti they have thrown on the wall and the recycling of it

[klaasend]

any sightings of joran lately ???

I hear they found a man in France with an unusually small brain, maybe Joran is in France  

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html

Report: Man with Almost No Brain Has Led Normal Life

[Frank]

I guess this is how the Arubans feel and some Dutch misogynists who defend the van der sloots.

No evidence, means innocence.

Missing rape kits foil justice
Rape kits routinely vanish, unfuriating victims and prosecutors alike. Even when evidence is intact, laws can keep suspects like William Harold Johnson walking free in our midst.
By Miles Moffeit and Susan Greene
Denver Post Staff Writers
Article Last Updated: 07/24/2007 12:18:14 PM MDT

"The only way I can describe it is that I felt drunk but I hadn't had enough to feel drunk." That's how Joanna remembers the night she suspects she was slipped a date-rape drug while drinking with other New Mexico Tech students. Further testing of material from her rape evidence kit might have shed light on what was in her system, but the hospital discarded it and the case was never prosecuted. (Post / Helen H. Richardson)

Socorro, N.M. - Bruised and shaking, Joanna watched the doctor prepare the instruments that could cull traces of a gang rape from her body.

At a party the night before, three fellow New Mexico Tech students had drugged her, overpowered her and raped her, she told the hospital staff.

Now, she was lying unclothed on a cold table splashed with bright light, allowing another set of prying hands - a female physician's - to probe her body.

"Just please get it over with," the 19-year- old recalls saying to herself last November.

In the age of DNA and other forensic advances, victims endure the invasive rape evidence exam, knowing that one plucked hair or fluid specimen alone can seal a case against
Trashing the Truth



      Joanna wouldn't be so lucky.

Only a week later, the Socorro County district attorney gave her a jolt: the hospital had thrown away biological evidence from her case, in violation of its own policy. Among the casualties: a urine specimen the doctor had characterized as containing a "date-rape drug," according to records.

Because of the lost evidence, the criminal charges against Depesh Patel, Ibrahim Hassan and Sandro Santos were dropped. None has responded to repeated interview requests from The Denver Post.

Today, eight months later, neither local authorities in the tiny town of 5,000 nor hospital officials have provided Joanna and her family a full explanation of how the evidence was destroyed - and by whom.

New Mexico statutes, like those in most states, do not require formal inquiries into the destruction of biological evidence in criminal cases. Nor do they require preservation of biological evidence at the outset of criminal investigations.

Joanna, whose full name is being withheld to protect her identity, said the evidence loss only compounds her personal anguish.

She has dropped out of school, and flashbacks still haunt
"For the hospital not to hang onto the rape kit, the blood and the urine samples from the victim was really, really hard to deal with," said Deputy District Attorney Stacey Ward. The hospital investigated the disposal and said it found no wrongdoing. (Post / Helen H. Richardson)
her, including several words spoken by the physician.

"'I know them,"' Joanna recalls the doctor saying before the exam, referring to her alleged attackers.

Rape evidence destruction, the most common evidence loss discovered by The Post, represents a hidden crucible for countless sex-assault victims in the U.S.

Behind 5,515 rape evidence kits destroyed or lost by authorities nationwide in the past decade are thousands of women like Joanna who endured the scraping of fingernails and the swabbing of their most private parts, only to be cheated of justice and, often, true healing.

And behind those evidence purges are thousands of offenders who escaped prosecution.

The full scope of
I THINK I VE BEEN TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF | Those were Joanna's words to her mother the morning after she says she was gang-raped by fellow students at a New Mexico college. She endured a rape exam, but the hospital threw the evidence kit away just days later, leaving the deputy district attorney no choice but to drop the case. (Helen Richardson | The Denver Post)
the lost specimens and their impacts may never be known because most state governments don't require that police, hospitals and other public agencies report the evidence they toss.

The problem flows from widespread ignorance, rape-crisis experts say. Ignorance about the kits' forensic value. Ignorance about rape trauma. Ignorance about the small spaces the kits consume. And ignorance about how DNA may render rape statutes of limitations obsolete.

"The destructions defy belief because (biological evidence) is the cleanest, least emotional, most unbiased and least politically fraught evidence there is," said Kim Tolhurst, a Washington, D.C., attorney.

Working as legal counsel for a coalition of victim advocacy groups, Tolhurst successfully pushed for a kit-preservation law in Iowa, ensuring they are kept for a decade. She had tape-measured her own shower to show lawmakers how hundreds of kits would easily fit in it.

While most of the rape evidence purges found by The Post were carried out by police agencies, untold numbers of kits also have been discarded by hospitals. Like law-enforcement agencies, medical facilities typically wield wide discretion to destroy samples. In many states, victims go through rape-kit exams but wait before approaching police - to work through their trauma - leaving the kits' fate up to the medical facilities.

Some hospitals in New York and Pennsylvania have disposed of kits as early as weeks to a month after the rape-kit exam is performed, foiling possible prosecutions, advocacy groups say.

In Joanna's case, the New Mexico hospital's procedures were to retain samples for seven days.

"If you destroy it, you not only destroy an option to prosecute but a sense of hope and justice," said Susan Lewis, spokeswoman for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center in Pennsylvania. "Generally, there's just no uniformity in the country for how hospitals deal with things like rape kits."

Such scenarios have played out along the West Coast, too.

"It's appalling to think of all the offenders we can't identify and who've gone free," said Terrence Newsome, a former analyst for the California governor's office who learned of thousands of rape-kit destructions in unsolved cases in the Golden State five years ago. These kits were never analyzed, thus never matched against offenders in the national FBI database.

Victims were outraged, and California later passed one of the few laws in the country requiring kits to be preserved.

But most destructions are carried out in the shadows, without accountability.

Drinks with acquaintances

Joanna's story, like so many rape cases, starts over drinks with someone she knew.

As recounted in police reports, the New Mexico Tech student took up Patel's offer of music and beers at Santos' apartment. Hassan was there. Santos arrived later in the evening.

"It seemed innocent at the time, but I remember they kept moving the bottles closer to me," she recalls.

Though she's uncertain when it kicked in, she felt an unusual buzz, she told police. She remembers them playing with her jacket zipper, telling her "it wasn't Alaska" and that she should remove her coat. She remembers consuming several drinks, at one point leaving the apartment to get margarita mix.

Most of all, she remembers making decisions that evening she didn't want to make.

"The only way I can describe it is that I felt drunk but I hadn't had enough to feel drunk."

The evening blurred into numbness, dizziness, then blackouts. She awoke the next morning in her own apartment with bruises and a swollen lip, all documented on hospital reports. She also had memories of sex acts with the three men.

She rushed to the shower, letting the hot water flow over her for an hour.

"I think I've been taken advantage of," Joanna told her mother.

"We have to go to the police," her mom said.

Joanna, who began to believe she had been slipped a drug, was nervous about pursuing charges. "I knew there was so much blame put on the victim when this happens."

But she decided she needed medical attention.

At Socorro General Hospital, she agreed to a rape-evidence exam. The doctor, Susan Lewark, stepped into the exam room. Joanna told her the story, told her the names of her alleged attackers.

The doctor paused. She told Joanna she knew the men from the campus clinic, where she worked part time, Joanna recalls.

She then asked a couple of questions: "Do you still want me to do the exam? Do you want someone else to do it?"

Joanna didn't grasp the possible conflict. Didn't practically every one in Socorro know each other?

"If you're OK with it, I am," Joanna recalls saying.

Later that morning, after learning of Joanna's report, New Mexico Tech campus police officer Billy Romero stopped the three men as they were driving from the apartment complex's parking lot. He told the students he was investigating a rape case.

Patel, police reports show, had an immediate answer: He claimed he had been in Albuquerque the previous night. Romero arrested all of them.

Back at the hospital, Lewark found a barbiturate in Joanna's urine sample, according to hospital records.

In a conversation with Joanna and her mother, Lewark referred to it as a date- rape drug, Joanna said.

"That explained a lot," her mom said.

Lewark told police the same thing, according to Romero's report.

Meanwhile, the three suspects conceded that they had been with Joanna, contradicting Patel's initial account of his whereabouts that night. But they stressed that the sex was consensual. They said they even used their cellphones during the sex encounters to record her, asking whether she was having sex of her own free will.

They denied slipping her drugs.

After "three to five days," according to Deputy District Attorney Stacey Ward, Romero phoned the hospital from her office to make sure the staff had saved the rape specimens for further testing.

The hospital response: The small samples no longer existed. Ultimately, Ward said, they blamed the problem on lack of storage space.

Ward was astonished, she said. Without the specimens, more advanced testing to identify the drug and other substances in Joanna's system wouldn't be possible. "Their main problem was that they failed to recognize this was evidence," Ward said.

In interviews with police, Lewark also backed off her assertion that the drug could be a date-rape drug, Ward and Romero said.

Barbiturates, indeed, are not common date-rape drugs, but rape-crisis experts say a variety of intoxicants are used to take advantage of women.

As a result of the evidence destruction, Ward felt the case was just too murky to pursue.

It was dead-ended.

"For the hospital not to hang onto the rape kit, the blood and the urine samples from the victim was really, really hard to deal with," Ward said. "I was excited about having a provable case. The problem is that we had a victim voluntarily drinking large amounts of alcohol with these guys, and at one point, leaving and coming back. We needed more evidence.

"As it is, a cloud hangs over everything."

Joanna, meanwhile, has never been told the full story, including who threw out her evidence. She wonders, was it simply an accident? Or was there more to it?

The last person she knew to have custody of the evidence was the doctor, Lewark.

Officer Romero said Lewark also told him that she knew the three suspects. The doctor, he said, works with international students at the college. At least two of the accused are international students. At one point, Romero said, Lewark told him the three "were real nice guys."

Lewark declined interview requests and would not answer written questions from The Post.

In interviews in January, Ward said she found Lewark's reversal in characterizing the substance found in Joanna's urine as a date-rape drug unusual. Last week, however, she said had become convinced that the evidence destruction was simply a bureaucratic bungle.

Ward said the hospital told her that the person who disposed of the evidence was a technician.

Last week, Socorro hospital administrator Bo Beames released a statement to The Post. He declined to detail what happened or say who tossed the evidence.

He stressed that the hospital had reviewed the case carefully and found no wrongdoing. He also said that in a small town he would not be surprised if a caregiver at the hospital knew a suspect in a criminal case.

"We are confident that our employees involved acted ethically and honored their medical duty."

Evidence-handling practices are being revamped, he said. "We also know from recent events that we can improve - and are committed to improving - the cross-training and communication between law enforcement and our caregivers in matters of sample collections to be used as evidence."

That's little solace to Joanna's father. He said he has tried repeatedly through meetings with hospital officials and law-enforcement authorities to find more answers.

"As a one-man task force, I've only hit walls," he said. "We deserve to know more."

Joanna said she's beginning to heal. But she is no longer attending classes, no longer pursuing her dream of being a veterinarian.

She is taking a year off from school to think about her future. During the break, she's joined AmeriCorps, helping teach art to the disabled.

And she's also working as a rape-crisis advocate in Albuquerque.

She recently answered a hotline call from a rape victim who had a familiar story: Her case evidence had been destroyed.

"Before she got off the phone, she told me, 'You've helped me so much,"' Joanna said. "At least something good has come out of this."

[SunFreak2]

thanks Klaas... now, do we know if it's true that one of them got into a fight with jvds?

Now, I hadn't heard of a fight between the Twitty cousin & Joran, just that they played in that poker tourny together.  Isn't that how Beth was able to ID Joran so quickly?

[Anna]

O/T

Police: Blood Of 5 Women Found In Mendenhall's Truck

http://tinyurl.com/2gycwr

Some days this is just overwhelming.

.

[KarmaRoundUp]

Thought this was interesting,hope I do this right.


 
canadaeh



Joined: 29 Jun 2005

 Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 1:03 pm    Post subject: The other side...  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
From http://www.ad.nl/artikelen/Nieuws/1119938676169.html

Excuse any typos and the translation won't be word for word.

Quote:

Parents convinced of innocense of the suspects in the Natalee case
"Joran won't be released any time soon"

By Maaike Ruepert

For the first time the parents of Joran ver der Sloot are talking to the press. Their son is suspected of the murder of the 18 year old American Natalee Holloway on Aruba.

They're uneasy. Understandable knowing the attention on the family by the American media. In their eyes Joran, who's already been behind bars for 3 weeks, already found guilty. Last week the police also arrested the dad Paul van der Sloot, judge in training. He also supposedly was involved with the disappearance of Natalee. "This is an absurd situation", the parents say.

Antiva van der Sloot (4 sits with red [?] eyes at the wooden dinner table in their house. She's only been able to visit her son twice since he's been in jail. During the talk she's making notes in her diary. "I keep track of everything. For the best seller I'll write when all of this is over", she says jokingly. "Sometimes I'm cynical to keep myself standing in all this craziness".

Paul (53) sits next to his wife. He answers the questions carefully. A week ago the police came - accompanied by a couple of camera crews - to arrest him. Three days he was kept in a police cell - 'an intense and profound experience' - until the judge decided there was no reason to keep him any longer. According to the justice he had given testimonies that did not match with the fact checks. "But after my arrest they only interviewed me once", says Van der Sloot. "At that time I reconfirmed what I said previously at the police station."

The media assumed that Van Der Sloot was arrested because he encouraged his son not to tell the truth about the night that NH disappeared. "I however told him to tell everything", says Van der Sloot.

Initially Jorans dad didn't know that his son was out on the night of 29th to 30th of May, when Natalee disappeared. "I picked him up at McDonalds at 11 and didn't know better than that he went to sleep." Not until Beth Holloway and several police officers arrived at the gate of his house, did he learn that his son also went to Carlos 'n Charles together with Natalee, he says.

To the police Joran initially told that he and his vriends Satisch and Deepak K, who're also in custody, that they had dropped off the girl at her hotel. Paul van der Sloot: "I believed that, until he changed his statement." All of a sudden Joran stated that he had left the girl alone on the beach at the Marriot hotel - by her request.

After he walked home, several kilometers away. Anite: "I was very angry when I heared that. But I think it was a panic reaction. Maybe he spun the truth - I don't want to call it a lie - because he wanted to get out of this. He has said from the start that he would never do anything to a girl. He respects girls."


Why he then left the girl alone on the beach, the parents don't know. "I really would love to talk to him about the case, but we're not allowed", says Anita. " But I know one thing for sure: that there adults have been involved." [?]

It doesn't look like Joran will be released soon. The police has so little evidence that the only hope is a confession. Joran is being iterrogated daily for several hours. Anita: "Sometimes he's in a dark, col room for hours, where he can only hear sounds. Another time he was surrounded by photos of Natalee. Your dad is also a crimininal, they told him. "Mam, theycall me a murderer, psychopat, rapist, he told me."


But according to Anita and Paul ver der Sloot their son is innocent. Paul hopes to visits his son soon, "I will tell him I love hime. That's what I'll tell him."

[sleddogs]

Metro/State l
By DANIEL JACKSON
BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD

One of the three young men arrested Thursday in the disappearance of Mountain Brook teen Natalee Holloway got into a pushing match with some of her friends in an Aruban bar, one of Holloway’s friends said Thursday.
Bryan Reynolds, 18, one of 124 recent high school graduates who went to Aruba in late May, said some of his friends almost got into a fight with Joran Andreas Petrus Van Der Sloot and his friends.

The scuffle started after Van Der Sloot, a Dutch suspect arrested at his upper-class home in Oranjestad, Aruba, Thursday morning, had been talking to 18-year-old Holloway at a bar where she and classmates hung out during the five-day trip, Reynolds said.

“There was almost a fight between my friend and him,” said Reynolds, who was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Mountain Brook Community Church on Thursday after attending a noon prayer service with his classmates and others. “I had to break them up. That’s when I got a good look at them.”

Van Der Sloot, the son of a Dutch justice official studying at the Aruba International School, and two Surinamese brothers identified by police as Satish and Deepak Kaploe, were arrested Thursday morning, more than a week after Holloway disappeared. The last known people to have seen Holloway, the suspects told police they gave her a ride to her hotel in the early morning hours of May 30, the night she vanished, and never saw her again.

Reynolds said he saw the suspects hanging out at the Holiday Inn where the Mountain Brook High School graduates stayed in Oranjestad. When Holloway went missing, Reynolds said they were the first people he considered as potential suspects.

“That was the first people who came to mind,” said Reynolds, who said Holloway is one of his best friends.

http://www.scaredmonkeys.com/2007/06/21/court-tvs-haunting-evidence-the-natalee-holloway-investigation/

[sleddogs]

Hello all,

Has been awhile since I posted. Since the crash in 05.

Thanks to Klaas & Red for getting me back on board.

Even though I haven't been posting I review SM every evening. As it is the only place to find the truth without all the HYPE.

[klaasend]

O/T

Police: Blood Of 5 Women Found In Mendenhall's Truck

http://tinyurl.com/2gycwr

Some days this is just overwhelming.

.

geez, I had read they suspected him in several cases