the Cage Three small buildings collectively known as Fisherman's Huts sit next to each other on the beach separated by approximately 100 feet. They were built some time in the 1940s. (A fourth hut—the most distant one on the beach going north toward the lighthouse—was destroyed several years ago in a hurricane.) Each small building consists of four individual units very small in size approximately 9 feet by 15 feet. As I approached the first of the three tiny Fisherman's Huts buildings, I soon learned that this was the one in which the 2005 break-in occurred. There a lone fisherman was cleaning out his fishing boat on the beach next to the first of the three Fisherman's Huts. Uncertain as to his sympathies regarding the Holloway case, I engaged him in general conversation. He was pleasant, friendly and unfailingly polite.
Rather quickly it emerged that he was The Fisherman who had discovered the break-in to the units on the morning of May 30, 2005. He related the following story.
He had been at this hut at 6 am that Monday morning May 30, 2005. Before long, he noticed that someone had broken into the first three of the four units in this particular group, from north to south, prying off the padlocks with something like a tire iron or a crowbar. He showed me the still-visible marks of the break-in on each unit. He described in detail the contents of each unit and the nature of the break-in.
Facing the first of the Fisherman's Huts from left to right (north to south): unit 1 contained a valuable stove, cooler and other equipment but nothing went missing; unit 2 had the lock pried off but was seemingly unopened because the door was stuck (and nothing was later reported missing); unit 3 also had its lock pried off with the only missing item being a brand new, large fishing knife (no rope was taken as had originally been reported, he said); finally unit 4 remained untouched. Clearly it seemed the perpetrator(s) had broken into the units in an orderly fashion until they found the specific item they were seeking—the knife. Indeed it struck the fisherman as odd that nothing else of value was taken.
Of the three Fisherman's Hut buildings, only one was accessible to break-in. The units in the closest nearby building were going mostly unused with sand covering the entrance doors up to a couple of feet. The outermost building was seemingly abandoned and virtually in the water.
The Cage
The fisherman also noticed that a large fishing cage stored behind the first of the three Fisherman's Huts at the southern-most corner was missing. The cage had been there approximately a month since about Good Friday, March 25, 2005. The cage belonged to another fisherman who kept his boat next to these four huts. The boat was still there. But the cage was missing.
The fisherman described the cage as made of 3/8-inch iron (such as that used in concrete reinforcing—"rebar") with a frame size approximately 5 ½ feet by 4 feet by 17 inches. He described it as a large fishing cage with its frame wrapped in chicken wire with its familiar hexagonal openings but with an opening in one panel which allowed them to trap fish. He believed that, given its size and weight, it would take two men to manage the cage. Once aboard, it would lay low on the floor of the nearby fishing boat.
The day the cage went missing, the fisherman observed an iron stain in the grass on the south side of the huts. Only sometime the next day, Tuesday, May 31, did the fisherman learn of Natalee's disappearance. Slowly he began to consider possible connections between the case of the missing American girl and the missing knife and cage. His suspicions rose when a rumor made its way around the island that Natalee had been disposed of in a container. (In retrospect, the missing knife could be explained by the suspects' need to cut a larger flap in the cage in order to fit the body into it.)
All the suspects would have needed was a gas tank, the fishermen there had suggested as they discussed the case among themselves. The suspects could easily have "borrowed" one of several fishing boats anchored nearby. (Although I don't believe the suspects used one of these boats.) The fisherman and his friends always left their boats anchored a short distance off shore.
Activity around Fisherman's Huts
The fisherman pointed out the bushes immediately south of the huts. They were often associated with clandestine activity—possibly including illegal aliens, drug dealers and even peeping Toms. He noted how people could enter the beach surreptitiously from the road by using paths running through the bushes. The local beach boys would all be intimately familiar with the area which is also a likely location for furtive drug transactions.
Clearly the bushes next to Fisherman's Huts were the first secluded area on the beach north of the hotels. Because of all this potential activity on the beach and in the bushes, the three boys would have been even more anxious to get rid of the body in the ocean that night. The reported police theory that the boys hid the body by placing it in the bushes for disposal the following night was highly unlikely. Certainly rigor mortis would have set in at 24 hours and they would not have been able to manipulate the body into the cage at that point. And the knife and the fishing cage were stolen on the night of May 29-30, 2005, not on May 31.
At this point I called Tim Miller now at sea on The Persistence to pass along the new information about the cage. He put me on the phone with John Silvetti who was pleased with my findings. From the boat they emailed a new copy of the model cage to the person constructing an actual model of the cage, and picked it up the following morning upon returning to shore. By December 21, the search team had an accurate model cage and was able to drop it into the water and obtain a sonar signature of the cage.
The on-site visit to Aruba had been helpful in clarifying several matters. In his crucial June 4, 2005 email Deepak had repeatedly referenced the "lighthouse" when describing their last night with Natalee. Was he unconsciously pointing to the body being dumped from the boat in that area? The sea waters there coming around the tip of the island were way too rough, however, and it was far more logical that the boys would have gone straight out from Fisherman's Huts in the boat—as the profile had strongly suggested. Now Deepak's emphasis on "lighthouse" took on a new meaning. He was trying to tell us Natalee's body was in a "light house" or a cage which matched his other insistence that she was in a "crack house," that is, a cage—a house with cracks in it.
As the deliberate, time-consuming sonar search progressed, I came home to Alabama but returned to Aruba on December 29 when the ROV team began their work. Throughout this visit I maintained regular telephone contact with Tim Miller on the boat and Dave Holloway back in Mississippi as we monitored the search.
I revisited Fisherman's Huts for further discussion with the local fishermen. I specifically wanted to know how far out into the sea could a speedboat have taken Natalee's body in May 2005, and how deep would the water be there. While the seas were rougher now, the fishermen noted that the waters were often calm and on those occasions a boat could easily go out 10 miles or more. Dave Holloway recalled the ocean being noticeably quiet on his visit to Aruba immediately after Natalee disappeared, and, typically, the sea remains even calmer at night.
One afternoon as I stood at the Fisherman's Huts where the break-in occurred, a family in a small speedboat (approximately 14 feet) launched their craft into the water from right next to the huts. The family of two adults and four children easily made their way into the water, out 100 feet or more where you could see other bathers standing waist-deep in the water. One of the adults on the boat told me he had a larger, 20-foot craft which he often launched there. That simple observation confirmed for me that this key area was easily accessible for boats and the most convenient place to quickly and secretly load a dead girl's body into such a vessel. It seemed to be the first place along this section of the beach (north from the Holiday Inn) suitable for launching watercraft.
Early one morning Tim Miller went with me to Fisherman's Huts to go over the specifics of the break-in and location of the cage. We met with the fishermen there again. Tim agreed with me that these witnesses were very believable and that the three suspects would have disposed of Natalee's body that first night without taking the risk of hiding it nearby.
Later we saw several people windsurfing in the area directly in front of Fisherman's Huts and on down toward the lighthouse. It's likely that Joran himself windsurfed here and would surely have been familiar with this stretch of the beach. Rental shacks for windsurfing and other equipment were located shortly down the beach toward the lighthouse. Just past that, about 200 feet out in the water off Malmok Beach, was the famous Antillla Shipwreck, the remains of a scuttled 400-foot German cargo ship that was anchored off of Aruba during WW2. Many tourists simply walk down to the shipwreck site, as did several kids on the 2005 trip with Natalee.
bron :forensicthoughtprints
![]()
deze boot gebruikten ze voor de kooi
Wanneer domme mensen domme dingen beweren, dan moet je ze niet corrigeren, maar glimlachend gelijk geven.