DuetGazette.com

[drumstick]

You can follow along with the search for Natalee's remains here at this link ....

http://www.nholloway.blogspot.com

~

[wishbone]

Thank You! for the Equusearch link ... fascinating reading! I hope and pray that they will find what they're looking for. It really is hard to swallow that people could be so heartless and cruel to put Natalee's family through the agonies of such a prolonged search.

I love it that their ship is named Persistence.

Thanks!

~ wishbone

[wishbone]

Fabric found in a crab trap off the Aruban coast doesn't match a blouse worn by Natalee Holloway when she disappeared, officials said today.

The fabric was recovered by a dive crew last month and tested by the FBI, which was holding fabric samples matching Holloway's top, according to a release from the Aruban prosecutor's office.

Holloway, then 18, disappeared in May of 2005 on a trip to Aruba with fellow graduates of Mountain Brook High School. Soon afterward, her family circulated a picture of her taken at the beach with friends on her last night wearing a blue, green and white halter top.

The news is just the latest blow to what had been a renewed effort to solve the case. Earlier this month, a Dutch appeals court refused to let Aruban prosecutors re-arrest their chief suspect on the basis of an undercover television video. Joran van der Sloot had told a friend in the video that he watched Holloway die on the beach and asked a friend to dispose of her body in the water.

Quoted from: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2008/02/fabric_found_in_aruban_crab_tr.html

*** I'm assuming the fabric was recovered by the Persistence. Since it's a little unusual to find pieces of fabric in a sunken crab trap, I wonder where it did come from?

~ wishbone

[drumstick]

Good question....

I would be surprised if they did find any fabric relating to Natalee.

[wishbone]

Reported by NBC News:

The crew of the "Persistence" left Louisiana in November...headed to Aruba. They've been using sonar and underwater robots to search Aruba's ocean floor for Natalee Holloway since mid -December.

It's been an expensive process - a search like this costs about $50,000 a day, according to search supervisor Tim Trahan. After three months of searching - the search party is simply out of money, but they're not out of places to look for Natalee. Trahan says the crew has used sonar to photograph almost 1000 miles of Aruba's ocean floor. Underwater robots have dove down and inspected hundreds of suspicious objects. The crew still has 150 objects left to inspect.

The "Persistence" is due home around Wednesday, but the crew says their search isn't over - just delayed. They'll now concentrate on looking for money and trying to work their way back to Aruba and what they hope will be answers.

Source: http://www.nbc13.com/gulfcoastwest/vtm/news.apx.-content-articles-VTM-2008-03-09-0007.html

~ wishbone

[drumstick]

I know the cost of fuel is high but fifty thousand dollars a day sounds over the top!
Unless he pays his crew, I can't see the numbers. Wow!

[wishbone]

That truly is an astounding amount of money! $50,000 per day would be about $4.5 million for three months searching. Maybe they shouldn't say "Leave the motor running." But I suppose that whoever is putting up the money considers it the cost of hope and a worthwhile expense.

Sadly, I'm afraid that even if they complete the search, they're going to come up empty. She's not there.

~ wishbone

[drumstick]

I agree with you.
I've said all along that it was highly suspcious of the old man pouring concrete at his home and remodeling Joran's bedroom in the middle of a high profile search.

And then there's the monkey next door ....