Skeletal Remains Found In Aruba Do Not Belong To Natalee Holloway
Once again, the mysterious case of missing American teenager Natalee Holloway has hit a dead end. Despite the hopes of her father Dave and hired private investigator T.J. Ward, human skeletal fragments discovered in Aruba in August don’t belong to Natalee. The determination was made by way of genetic testing of the bone fragments led by forensic scientist Dr. Jason Kolowski. Natalee Holloway disappeared in May 2005 during her high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba and is widely presumed deceased.
The primary suspect in Holloway’s disappearance has long been Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch national who was on Aruba when the teen went missing. Van der Sloot has never been formally charged in connection with the Natalee Holloway case, but is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for killing student Stephany Flores in 2010, reports Fox News.
The Natalee Holloway case made international headlines when the teen vanished and has recently been brought again to the public’s attention by way of the Oxygen series, The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, which just wrapped up. The true-crime series featured Dave Holloway and private investigator Ward returning to Aruba for an 18-month investigation into the disappearance of the American teen. They were aided by an informant “who was friends with an individual who had personal knowledge from Joran van der Sloot,” according to Natalee’s father.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcTCrpA–EM
The informant led Dave Holloway and T.J. Ward to the skeletal remains, little more than fragments, in Aruba in August. Since their discovery, the bone fragments were turned over for forensic testing in an attempt to determine if they came from Natalee Holloway. Initially, the remains were determined to have come from a female of Eastern European descent, which fit Natalee Holloway’s ancestral profile.
Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother, provided investigators with a DNA sample in an attempt to confirm the remains belonged to her daughter. Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case, and Natalee Holloway was excluded as a genetic match for the bone fragments discovered in August.
WHY WONT THE ARUBA POLICE HELP??? I'm disgusted. What do you guys think? #NataleeHolloway @oxygen
— Ashlee White (@AshleeWhite23) September 24, 2017
It is unclear who the remains actually belong to.
“Out of four individual bone samples only one was found to be human. The mitochondrial DNA bone sample was not a match to [mother] Beth Holloway, and so it was ruled out as being Natalee Holloway. We don’t know how old that person is. We don’t know how long that person has been dead,”
Holloway’s father has vowed to continue his search for his missing daughter. Prior to her disappearance, Natalee Holloway was a straight-A student from Alabama. She had been planning to attend the University of Alabama on a full scholarship before vanishing without a trace in Aruba.
ICYMI: Bones found in Aruba are not those of Natalee Holloway https://t.co/iUWzXyJhiC pic.twitter.com/6yXv7x4rwn
— AL.com (@aldotcom) October 3, 2017
[Featured Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images]
