Two men not charged, but will remain in custody in Aruba
Associated PressPublished June 9, 2005
ORANJESTAD, Aruba - A judge ruled Wednesday there was sufficient cause to keep holding two former hotel security guards in connection with the disappearance of an Alabama high school honors student.
The decision means authorities may hold Nick John, 30, and Abraham Jones, 28, for nearly four months while prosecutors investigate possible murder and kidnapping charges in the disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway, defense attorneys said. Neither man has been formally charged.
Attorney General Caren Janssen confirmed the decision handed down at a closed hearing at a police station where the men are jailed outside the capital of Oranjestad.
Holloway, of Mountain Brook, Ala., vanished May 30 while on a five-day trip with 124 classmates celebrating high school graduation.
Police and volunteer land searches continued Wednesday with no results, while water searches, also unsuccessful, had been suspended, police spokesman Edwin Comenencia said. "We're getting tips," he said, but nothing has panned out.
The two men were arrested Sunday on suspicion of first- and second-degree murder and capital kidnapping, the latter of which is invoked when a kidnapping victim is killed, according to court-appointed defense attorneys Noraina Pietersz and Chris Lejuez.
Judge J.S. Kuiperdal will review the case Wednesday and every eight days after that if needed, officials said. Authorities may hold the suspects for 116 days without filing formal charges.
The former security guards worked for a hotel two blocks from where Holloway stayed. Their contracts expired May 29.
Lejuez has said the suspects deny any connection to Holloway. Both men are Aruban citizens, although one is originally from Grenada, Lejuez said.Pietersz said prosecutors asked that the defendants be kept in jail at least until Wednesday, when they hope to conclude their investigation.
Vivian Van Der Biezan, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said investigators must come up with evidence to hold the suspects beyond that date.
Der Biezan plans to check whether Dutch law allows a charge of murder if no body is found. Investigators "cannot exclude the possibility of a criminal act because of the days that have passed."
Under Aruban law, only serious suspicion from investigators - not solid evidence - is needed for a judge to rule that suspects can be held, Pietersz said.
At least one of the suspects had a reputation of trying to pick up women at tourist hotels on the Dutch Caribbean island, police said. But both men say they never met Holloway, Lejuez said.
Jones' common-law wife, Cynthia De Graaf, said she and her husband were together continuously May 29 and May 30.
"He was home. He was even sick," De Graaf said, crying. "They ruined everything. My daughter has been asking for her father."
Jones' mother, Cynthia Rosalie Jones, 54, added that the only way her son knew about Holloway was from seeing the television news.
"They have my son there for something he knows nothing about," Jones said emphatically.
Police last week questioned and then released three men they referred to as "persons of interest." The three told police they took Holloway to a beach then dropped her off at her hotel the night she vanished. The attorney general's office said the three were considered witnesses and not suspects.