Will there ever be closure for Natalee Holloway's family?
Hope in the form of a partial jawbone with a tooth attached, found by a boy at a resort beach in Aruba, has been lost following forensic results released this morning. Officials believed it might belong to the American teenager Natalee Holloway, who was last seen vacationing there in 2005. Aruban prosecutors announced this morning that although the bone is indeed human, dental records indicate it did not belong to Holloway.
Holloway was 18 and on a class trip when she was witnessed leaving a nightclub with Joran van der Sloot and two other men. Although van der Sloot was taken into custody by police twice under suspicion of participating in Holloway's disappearance, the only charges against him have been for fraud and extortion after allegedly demanding $250,000 from the girl's family to reveal where her body was hidden. Van der Sloot will be tried, however, for the May murder of Stephany Flores, a 21-year-old student found dead in his hotel room in Peru eerily five years to the day of Holloway's disappearance.
Natalee Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, has been intensely involved in her daughter's investigation, working with Aruban officials and even going rogue to confront van der Sloot on her own. A friend of Twitty's told The Early Show this morning that she believed that a positive identification of the jawbone would be healing since "there will be some semblance of closure."
Just two months ago, that need for closure drove Twitty to sneak into a Peruvian prison by accompanying a Dutch journalist investigating Holloway's death. There, she reportedly spoke to van der Sloot for five minutes (van der Sloot reported the time to be less than a minute) before being extracted because she did not have permission to see him.
Her attorney John Kelly confirmed she'd seen him, saying it was their first in-person encounter since immediately after Holloway's disappearance, justifying that "[s]he's still looking for answers about her daughter. She wants to bring her daughter home."
He says he would have advised her to use more caution had he known the plan beforehand, but that his advice would have been purely legal.
"She's a mother without a daughter," Kelly said.
Twitty was not arrested. Van der Sloot's attorney maintains it was all a stunt designed by the Dutch crew for a television special and that Twitty told his client that she has "no hate in her soul" for him.
Dave Holloway, the missing teen's father, has also been actively involved in bringing his daughter's case to a close. The author of a book on the tragic event, Dave Holloway provided the family dental records necessary for the jawbone examination. Several news sources report that he was convinced the bone belonged to Natalee.
These parents have traveled the world and taken many paths in an effort to find what are presumed to be Natalee Holloway's remains. Working with police, investigators, prosecutors, and the media, they've ardently kept the case in the spotlight, searching for answers to what happened to their daughter and where her body may be.
It's unimaginable to think of not being that kind of advocate for your child, even if they did not survive a terrible trauma such as this. But it's also hard to consider what kind of energy, focus, and drive it takes to charge ahead as hard as Beth Twitty and Dave Holloway do, more than five years later.
The hope of the jawbone found in Aruba may be gone. But maybe there is still some left. Perhaps whatever is fair and just for Joran van der Sloot will be carried out. And maybe a clue, however small, will be eventually unearthed or some grace and peace will be revealed so that Natalee Holloway's loved one will be able to put this part of their lives -- and their daughter -- to rest.
What do you think it will take for Natalee Holloway's parents to have closure?
Could you carry out a similar mission if a loved one went missing?
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[photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images News]
