Twitty & Holloway vs. van der Sloot – Who is really to Blame for Natalee’s Disappearance?

By: Steve Yuhas

We all know about Natalee Holloway: adult female from middle class Alabama flies to Aruba to drink and party as an adult because it was not legal to do it in America on a senior trip.  She leaves a bar with some men she does not know and is never seen again.  Beth Twitty vows never to leave Aruba (she left) until she finds her daughter and since the boycott did not work and they can’t get much face time on television Beth Twitty and Dave Holloway have decided to file suit and seek money instead of finding their daughter.

Joran van der Sloot as well as his father, Paulus, were served with court papers naming both as defendants in a case that accuses Joran of "malicious, wanton and willful disregard of the rights, safety and well-being of the plaintiffs and their daughter, Natalee Holloway."  Paulus is accused of "knowingly facilitated his own son's predatory ... behavior toward Natalee Holloway."

The Plaintiff’s lawyer said, "This is a case about a high-school graduation trip to a tropical paradise that turned to tragedy. The trip was an opportunity for a group of young people to celebrate the end of one phase of their lives and the beginning of another. But for one young woman on that ill-fated trip, paradise it was not. For that young woman, Natalee Holloway, the trip was a brutal contrast to a life full of promise and hope."  How poetic, but wrong.

This is a case about an adult woman who made bad decisions while she was partying in a foreign country.  This is a case about a family that sent their admittedly naïve daughter to a foreign country and did not teach her that getting into cars or going to the beach with strangers could be dangerous.  This has become a case about money because the family of Natalee Holloway cannot do anything else.

Don’t you miss the media set ups that Beth orchestrated by chasing her own suspects down at their jobs with cameras following?  What happened to the boycott that the misguided (and obviously ignored) governors of Alabama and Arkansas endorsed?

It all flopped so now the Twitty – Holloway clan is looking for Euros instead of Natalee.  What a change from last year.

The question really is who put Natalee Holloway into a position for something bad to happen to her? 

If we are to believe her family she was just a naïve innocent virtuous girl who went to a foreign country to drink like an adult on a senior trip.  How can they now deflect their own guilt onto an entire family that had nothing to do with Natalee being in Aruba to begin with?

But for the Twitty and Holloway families Natalee would be in college today.  The van der Sloot’s did not pay for Natalee to go to Aruba and they did not invite her.  Natalee’s family sent her there and if they believed her to be so innocent and so naïve then they are to blame for what became of her because they sent a woefully unprepared young adult to a foreign country without preparing her for adulthood.

There are many problems with this case – not the least of which is that nobody knows what happened to Natalee Holloway.  There is no body, no crime scene, no confession and nobody confined – the only thing the world has is Beth Twitty’s word that Natalee was perfect, but the evidence tells a different story.

Luckily the van der Sloot’s are not American citizens and it is unlikely that they would still have any assets in America (knowing that in America people sue when their daughter does something stupid) they should drop their suit because it looks dirty and a search for Euros. 

The idea that the Dutch citizens would even show up for a civil trial in America to face the parasites from Alabama is unlikely and comical and since Natalee’s life was not worth very much (according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics about $1 million for 40 years of work) – it hardly seems worth the trouble for 838,000 Euro (I hope they understand what a Euro is in Alabama).

The Holloway and Twitty families are the people most responsible for anything that happened to their daughter (until they find a crime).  They allowed their naïve and innocent little girl to go to a foreign country to engage in a senior party that would have been illegal in America.  Taking the van der Sloots to court in New York is little more than an attempt to get some cash for their missing daughter because they’ve given up – something Beth Twitty said time and again that she would never do.

Suing and collecting a judgment from someone in America is difficult enough because it doesn’t take very much to shelter one’s income and assets from collection.  The most that will come from this lawsuit is some airtime on Nancy and Greta; the Twitty-Holloway media center does love the cameras.

Adults accept certain responsibilities when they travel to a foreign country and party like an adult in a manner that would be illegal in their own state (moonshine aside).  Either Natalee was an adult in the eyes of her family and is responsible for her action or she was naïve and dumb and should not have been enabled by her own parents to travel on a trip to a foreign country for the purpose of partying like an adult.

They cannot have it both ways by blaming the van der Sloots for the stupidity of their daughter if they enabled her to travel to Aruba to begin with knowing that she was too dumb to handle her alcohol or actions when under the influence.

If anyone is responsible for what happened to Natalee Holloway it is the person who did something to her (if anyone or anything because we just don’t know) or it was the people who sent her and chaperoned her there. 

Not the van der Sloots who cannot even be charged in a criminal case, but it is good that Beth Twitty is finding closure in Euros and dollars – it is too bad that she will find that the life of a non-college graduate without any skills is not worth very much.

It is the Twitty’s and Holloway’s who are mostly responsible for their daughter’s demise – not the van der Sloots, but since nothing worked: the boycotts, the media ambushes and the constant appearances on the weekend shows to fill the air time – I suppose all that was left was an Alabaman suing a Dutchman in New York over something that supposedly happened in Aruba.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 and may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com