Kayla Moore (32:58)
On June 13, two weeks now, after Natalee vanished, both of them were released. They were not ever charged with a crime. Beth also felt like they were innocent. But then five days after this, the police were onto another person of interest. On June 18, the police spent five hours questioning Joran's father, Paulus Van Der sloot. And then five days after that, on June 23rd, they took him into custody. Now, the authorities didn't release any information on exactly why Paulus was arrested, but they confirmed that he was going to be held separately from his son, who at this point is also in jail with the Kalpo brothers. Three days later, on June 26, a judge ordered Paulus to be released, and there's not any details given as to why. Afterwards, Beth confronted Palace, as well as Joran's mother, Anita, at the family's home, accusing them of covering for their son. Though they admitted Joran was a troubled teen and they had been unable to stop him from drinking and gambling. The Vandersloots denied any knowledge of what happened to Natalie. Palace sweated so heavily during this conversation with Beth, though, that Anita had to wipe him down with a kitchen towel. And Beth obviously sees all of this happen, and she interprets this as very clear evidence that someone is lying, whether he was actually hiding something then or not. Paulus stood by his son's story. And there was still more bad news coming for the Holloways. On July 4, a judge ordered the Calpos to be released. They decided there just wasn't sufficient evidence to keep them locked up any longer. The judge did allow prosecutors to continue holding Yorin, though, but only for 60 more days, unless they could charge him with something. The pressure was on at this point, but as the weeks ticked by and Joran's interrogations continued, nothing new really emerged. So Natalie's parents tried an old fashioned way of loosening lips. Money, basically. On July 25, the Holloways announced that they were raising the reward for Natalie's case to a million dollars. That is life changing money here in the States. It's even more so in Aruba. Anywhere, anywhere. Life changing money. And the very next day, it seemed like someone might actually get that Reward. So on July 26, the next day A gardener named Carlos came forward claiming he saw Yorin blocking the road near the Marriott Hotel a little bit before three in the morning, the night Natalie disappeared. Carlos led the police to a vacant lot near the Marriott where he said that he had seen Joran, the Kalpos, and two large mounds of dirt. By the time the police arrived, these mounds of dirt were gone. But there was a pond there, so the authorities decided they were going to drain it. Unfortunately, that lead went nowhere. It was just full of trash at the bottom of the pond. Chances were that the tip was made up in hopes of claiming the reward. And unfortunately that is something that happens, especially as you raise the stakes on reward money too. And you know, there was a few more dead end leads over the summer as well. A park ranger turned in some human hair that he found on a piece of duct tape on a beach. DNA testing did not connect it to Natalie. There was also a witness statement from an unhoused man who had passed a polygraph test. The man said he saw a woman's body in a landfill. But again, after they did some actual digging, nothing was found. Another popular theory was that Natalie's body had been thrown into the ocean. But there were these offshore searches that all came back unsuccessful. The island's search and rescue team determined that there was only two ways that Natalie's body could have been dumped in the water without washing back up. If it was dropped more than two miles from the coast, or if it had been weighed down significantly. Now, either of those were a possibility, but there was not any hard evidence of them taking place. The closest that they came was a report of a stolen machete and possibly a metal lobster trap taken from a fisherman's hut near the Marriott around the time of Natalie's disappearance. A metal lobster trap was heavy enough that it could have been used to tie a body down and sink it. The timing was also a little suspicious, but that was all evidence that seemed impossible to recover. Now, by mid August, the police were getting pretty desperate. Time was running out to hold Joran without charging him with a crime. However, Joran did offer up some information that got the Calpo brothers re arrested on August 26, 2005. During his time behind bars, Joran had made a pretty damaging admission. He said that Natalie had passed out multiple times while he was fondling her, which, you know, could be charged as sexual assault. So the police confronted the Kalpos, threatening that they could be charged as accessories to sexual assault for being in the car while it happened. Mostly, the police were hoping that this would be the thing that got the brothers to confess, to finally tell the police what happened the night Natalie disappeared. But it didn't work. Not only did neither of the Kalpoe brothers turn on Joran, but a judge ordered Joran and the Cowper brothers to be released on September 3rd. They had to remain available to police, meaning that they could be arrested if they tried to leave Dutch territory. However, you can probably see where this is going. The Netherlands counts as Dutch territory, so on September 6, Joran left Aruba to go start college in the Netherlands. Then on September 14, an appeals court removed the restrictions altogether, which meant that the suspects could travel around the world as they pleased. Beth obviously was furious. She was devastated. Dave was incredibly angry as well. And now the prime suspect was out of custody and in a whole other country. Natalie's parents were starting to lose hope.
