The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway (2017) s01e06 Episode Script
The Bones
1 This pathway is exactly where he told me he went.
Can a cadaver dog pick up a human scent at that location? Has to be.
Just has to be.
He's picking up minute scent.
I think now is the time to get the Arubans involved.
You know, I'm not gonna stop until we finally get justice for Natalee.
He's getting away.
He's getting away.
He's in a taxi.
He's getting away.
He's running like a bat out of hell.
Oh fuck.
Could you believe he sat down and interviewed with me? Where'd you take the remains? The idea was to crush everything to the point where it's not recognizable as arm bones or skull or anything like that, and then by that night it was disposed of.
If the Aruban authorities want to know what happened, are you gonna be honest with them and tell them what happened as you told me today? Yes.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC.]
I came to Tampa, Florida, to meet with Gabriel to discuss the next steps and get a plan going on what we're gonna do next.
This has been going on for 18 months.
John has indicated to Gabriel that he's willing to pinpoint the exact location and cooperate with the Aruban authorities in showing the exact location and hopefully solving this case.
You're coming in to Aruba on Saturday, and we want to make arrangements to go out there to where he's talking about so he can show us - Correct.
- Where it is.
Then I want us to go to his aunt's house.
- Correct.
- And I want him to show us - the spot behind his aunt's house.
- Correct.
And then where they dismantled Natalee's body.
After we've gone this far, I need to follow it through to the end.
You know, I know John's lied a number of times, but there's some things that he has said that no one else would know.
If he is a fraud, I'm going to expose him as a fraud.
Would he go walk into the police department if I t we took him there? I promise you I'll have him there.
I said, "What would you do" if Dave Holloway seen you face to face?" He goes, "Well, he might want to shoot me" "and kill me for what I did, but I didn't kill her.
" Yeah, just make sure that he and I, our paths don't cross when we're down there.
I cannot let that happen.
Chief, I wanted to let you know we just met with our my informant and, as I told you in my message, that they're traveling early Saturday morning, and he wants to take us out to the gravesite.
He's got Ludwig convinced to turn himself in to Aruban authorities and give them a statement.
We have talked to Chief Richardson today with the Aruban police and got joint cooperation with that to go forth and to get the evidence and do what we need to do.
All right, sounds good.
All right, thank you.
Bye.
Okay.
When we got back from Aruba last time, you got in touch with John, or he got in touch with you.
What happened? When we got back, Gabriel just Gabriel put all of his stuff out of the house and didn't want anything to do with him, so they weren't speaking, but he called me the next day and then convinced John to go to the FBI in Sarasota.
Oh, really? So what did the FBI do with all that? Well, the chain that the process goes through, they'll refer it to the office that handles Aruba, and they'll contact the agents in our legal attaché will contact the Arubans and present it to them as part of their investigation, and it's up to the Arubans to request assistance, but there is a process that has to be followed.
I don't know what what prompt him I don't know if there's emotional stuff going through his mind now, but he's wanting to get all this out.
You know, he's coming down here to set the record straight.
You know, is this another lie? Who knows? Yeah, he kind of reminds me of Joran van der Sloot.
"Oh, I'm gonna tell the truth this time.
" Lie.
"Oh, I'll tell the truth this time," and he's following that same pattern.
You know, I've been through this so many times.
I have my reservations, but between John knowing the exact drop-off point and the forensic expert stating that his description of the state of the body is accurate, and this is something I need to follow through to the end for my own peace of mind.
What time they gonna be here? 11:37.
- 11:37.
- Yup.
What's gonna happen next? Well, I asked him to take me to the scene.
From there we're going to his aunt's house where they took the remains.
He knows there's a cadaver dog here? He knows there's gonna be one today, I told him.
That if he lies, then we're gonna know? So the three of y'all will be going out there? All us three, and I've already sent an email to the Chief this morning.
I'm a little unclear on I mean, you've described it somewhat, but can you give me more detail? I'm hoping to figure out just what happened there at the aunt's house.
What did they do? That's where they destroyed the body.
So they dug her up after five years and then brought her back to the back room? And I don't mean being disrespectful, Dave.
Took her back and opened the tarp up, and van der Sloot beat the back of the neck and the head.
Why don't I leave the room, and you explain to her in detail so I won't have to listen to it again, okay? - Sorry, Dave.
- Yeah.
- That's all right.
- Okay.
Yeah, it's tough.
He knows his daughter's dead, but to hear about what happened to her remains and what they did to her afterwards, no parent should have to hear that.
I don't need to hear all this again and again and again, you know? If it's real, it's real.
If it's not, it's not.
You know, you hear something bad happened with Natalee, it's something you don't want to think about the details, but you just don't throw your hands up.
You know, you've got to check it out, and we're still looking, and we'll know before we leave this island whether or not we should ever come back again, especially on this lead.
I just texted the Chief of Police and told him we'd meet him at the church in Oran.
I hope John tells the truth and takes us to the right spot and by some chance there's still DNA present.
John's scared as can be he's gonna be arrested.
Gabriel said he had to chase him down, and he they almost missed the flight.
I'll have to see what the Chief feels about going in behind his aunt's residence.
It's not on the not on the aunt's property, then we may be all right.
Oh, that's Tracy.
Let Eric and I get out of the car, and you all just stay in the car.
We'll leave it running, okay? Oh, boy.
- Hey, man.
- Hey, how you doing? - Good, how are you? - Fine, good, you? - I'm T.
J.
- I'm Fred.
- Good, nice to see you.
- Hi, how you doing? Good to meet you.
This is Tracy Sargent.
- Hi there.
- Hey, Fred.
That's the Chief.
How are you? You know, I want I want to get it out as much as you do.
Yes.
He's, yeah, filming me.
We're doing a documentary.
Is that okay? So the police chief asked to be no recordings or anything like that.
No recording.
I'm not sure he was looking in the car the whole time, so I'm not sure if he knew we were there or he just had a hunch that we were both in the vehicle.
So essentially what happened was, is we rode with T.
J.
and Eric, went straight to the church - Oh, church, okay.
- To meet with the Chief.
So the Chief was there.
Tracy was there.
Then all of a sudden the Chief of Police was like, "Listen, is there anyone rolling right now?" and was like, "Listen, this is serious.
" "Like, if you guys are shooting anything right now, we'll have you arrested," and that's basically when everything kind of was like, whoa, so we Yeah, so we just turned off everything.
Tracy came around the car, told us that we had to leave.
Well, I think they don't want any filming going on because of this current investigation, you know? It's they don't want it out on the news, and, you know, and I know what happened in the past in 2005.
They're conditioned to think that, you know, a lot of s a lot of the news cameras and the news media outlets, some of them used some of those videos against them.
Right after Natalee's disappearance the news media attacked the police investigation on how they were trying to investigate this.
With all the filming we've been doing and the times we've been on the island, I think they want to quickly resolve this lead as soon as possible to keep media attention away from the island.
We'll just see.
Hopefully we can just go back there.
Yeah.
You know, and get what we need to get.
Yeah, no, I got it.
This location that John is showing us is in the same cul-de-sac that we looked at two weeks ago.
You go with them.
The Police Chief asked me to actually go up there and with the perpetrator and look at it myself and see if it would be a location that would be viable for the dog to check.
Can you show me that location? Yeah, this is the area.
She was in that crevice, which it was a mound of boulders right here.
And were you here in 2005, here? 2010 is when I was here.
Okay, so when you came back in 2010, you came back here with van der Sloot.
What time of day was that? Right before daybreak.
That's when, yeah, a blue tarp was unearthed.
Anytime we have a perpetrator come out to the scene and we're able to actually meet with them face to face, talk with them, it really does help out a lot because maybe he might say something or do something that will help us in this case.
How how confident are you that this is the right rock? Oh, I'm 100%.
I know it was under that branch, and there was that big rock concealing most of the area.
Okay.
A bullshit artist telling a fucking lie.
Who carried her body up here in 2005? Him and his dad.
He was told that Natalee's body was carried into this wooded area at night.
The location that he showed us was much further than a night trek would have been.
Even someone as small as Natalee, that's dead weight.
It's very heavy to carry.
Who came up here in 2010 to remove her remains? Joran and I.
Did it take both of you to carry her out or one person or Well, John, I just want to assure you I'm not trying to trick you at all.
I'm just trying to find the answers like everybody.
Even though perpetrators do horrible things to people, you want to still project an aura of respect because oftentimes they will be more receptive to that and maybe touch a nerve that, "Hey, maybe I should tell the truth instead of playing all these games.
" So John, what we're gonna do next is go to that cave site - Okay, that sounds good.
- That you described.
- Okay.
- So we'll go check there next.
Yes, sir? No.
No.
There's been no activity there whatsoever.
- Hmm.
- Nope.
If he was involved, is this just little bits and pieces of truths, or is it just a complete lie? That is the big question mark here.
[PHONE RINGS.]
Hello? Hey, we're leaving the scene up here - at the cul-de-sac.
- Okay.
After going out there with the Chief.
- Well, what happened? - We went out there.
Even Tracy went out there with him with the place he showed, and it's impossible for him to place a body there.
Now we're going to the aunt's house where they claim that they did other things, and so we'll see what pans out here, and then I'll let you know.
All right, bye.
Not good.
We've gone to the area behind his aunt's house where he said that they burned Natalee's head to get rid of the hair.
He said, "This is where we destroyed the body.
" Because it had grown up so much, the perpetrator was a little confused and just wasn't sure about the area.
[INDISTINCT.]
Yeah, it's just He described it cave-like.
It was flat, and it came up a little bit, and it had a large tree that had a huge canopy over it, and then on the other side was a bowl-shaped type area.
This has to be it.
It has to be.
How long was the fire burning, John? About ten minu I'm the hair burnt within seconds, but he let it smolder for about ten minutes.
John, what did you guys bring to this location exactly? Just a backpack, and he had the skull in it and Just only the skull? No, he had a bottle of lighter fluid and a bottle of water.
Okay.
The areas that we've gone to, all of those areas were negative.
We did not find any physical evidence.
I think the fire pit was under the tree ca tree-looking cave type structure and not an actual rock overhang 'cause that's the only thing in a decent distance to the house.
I don't think it was way over there, and I would have remembered boulders that size.
I wouldn't have forgot that.
There were inconsistencies in the story, and 'cause he noticed what he was stating was not possible, and then he changes his story, "No, no, I wasn't there.
" So it I mean, there were so many holes we could shoot in his story that it we knew that he was not really a credible witness.
I actually thought that we were gonna find something.
I do believe that he is telling the truth.
We can't prove it because there is no physical evidence, but did he do it? I really honestly, honestly, honestly, I do believe it.
Well, I took it after we heard from you guys that things didn't look good.
Well, we went out to the spot.
Did John and Gabriel go in there? Oh, yeah.
Well, the Chief came out and said there's no way that that's the spot.
Well, let me ask you all this.
Do you think this is a big con? At this point, I don't know.
- What do you think, Eric? - I think, John, in his mind does he truly believe what he's saying? Yeah.
It kind of surprises me that he goes this far with the police.
The conversation that John had with the Police Chief, "If you'll give me immunity, I'll show you and tell you everything.
" But why would you plead immunity to show him that? Is it for publicity or just the thrill of being arrested or to prove to Gabriel that he was a part of it, and, "I'm being truthful about it", "so keep supporting me," you know? It's just which one of them do you want to believe? It's not the outcome that we were hoping for today.
I guess we're just gonna have to pack our bags and go home.
You know, you just go home and move on with life, like we've tried to for the last 12 years.
The lead was pursued to the end, and it'll sting for a while like it always does, but you know, you prepare yourself for that disappointment over 12 years of disappointments.
We got our tickets, and we're on our way.
This is the last time, John, the very last time.
Oh, I know.
We're getting closer and closer by the day.
- Yeah.
- Let's bring Natalee home.
I'm gonna get you.
Yeah.
You sure you went you sure you went - What is that? - That's a bird, dude.
I know it's along this stretch.
I had some dirt thrown over it.
Maybe I will need the shovel.
This is kind of hard for me right now.
Yeah, I mean, I used to catch snakes and shit like that, Fuck.
Yeah, but this is, um And it just got [PENSIVE MUSIC.]
[PHONE LINE TRILLS.]
This time John's story is, is that after he and Joran crushed up the bones, they put them in a box along with dog bones, mixed them together, and buried them in the pet cemetery.
John held back a few of the pieces as a prize, so to speak.
John has told us a number of lies.
I don't know what to think.
I don't even want to go there at this point in time, because I don't know if I can handle it anymore.
[INTENSE MUSIC.]
Mm-hmm.
[PHONE RINGS.]
Oh, here it is.
Hello? Right.
Okay.
So what about the other two? You can't determine whether they're human or not human unless you do a DNA test on them, and that's gonna take several weeks.
Yeah.
What are you all gonna do with them after you test them? 'Cause I think T.
J.
wants to take legal action against them.
Okay.
I still can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that John isn't lying, so I'm gonna go ahead and search the pet cemetery, obtain those bones and have them tested to finally put this to rest.
- Hey, Dave Holloway.
- Hey, how are you doing? Good.
How are you? How was your trip? Oh, just like everything else, long.
Well, I can't believe we're here again.
- Where we going? - I thought we'd go ahead and look at this pet cemetery, kind of have an idea of what we're talking about.
Wow.
Check this out.
- What the hell is that? - Somebody dug out a hole.
- Tire tracks.
- Four-wheeler tracks.
That's interesting.
And they've dug a grave or excavated a grave.
That's really, really weird.
And here's some potholes dug up here.
If somebody came out here looking with a dog, they would dig down in the ground a little bit to aerate the soil, and that's what they've done on this mound.
That's kind of suspicious.
Why would somebody dig a hole here and not put anything in it? And then I got to noticing some of the ground effects and potholes and four-wheeler tracks and where they led, and there's always that in the back in your mind, the suspicion of doubt, you know? What the heck is going on here? I mean, what are the chances? You have the suspicion that, you know, the bones were not checked, and that was very, very bothersome for me, is, you know, you put your trust in them to, you know, do at least a DNA test on them, and then you come to find out they didn't do a report or anything on them, and then you walk up on that, a fresh hole dug in the ground.
Richardson and the police team, may have decided that they would go ahead and search that pet cemetery, is what I'm thinking.
- Think they dug something up? - I don't know.
That's a good question.
But it's awful suspicious to me.
We're going to meet with.
Chief Richardson and his team to discuss the bones that were turned in to him by Gabriel several weeks ago.
They had indicated they were non-human.
Even though the Arubans seem willing to help, I've always had my doubts about them because of their past track record, so, you know, it was something that we wanted to do just you know, just erase that doubt.
What are you thinking? I was just thinking about the bones.
Now that they have the bones, why did they why didn't they take them in for that? I mean, I don't know.
How's he gonna know what they're talking about if he hasn't sat them down? All's he's gotten is what we told him.
I just think they're afraid to take two Americans in custody right now 'cause it's gonna be all over the news.
I guess where we want to back up first is when John and Gabriel, my informant, showed up here without us knowing it.
I was real surprised that you didn't bring them in and sit them down and question them.
You base your investigation on leads that are credible or it just will be a waste of manpower and resources.
We have a guy coming in saying, "I was involved with Natalee Holloway.
I know "maybe he hasn't taken us to the right place", but the mere fact he's claiming he had a relationship with Joran van der Sloot in 2010.
We've confirmed he was here.
Even if he did help, what we need is evidence.
He said, "These are the bones of Natalee.
" He presented us that, and it was bogus.
It I mean, it's not even human bone, so for me it's John Ludwig is he's not a credible source.
Now, what about the bones? They all came out to be animal bones.
What kind of animal was it? Do you know? Just animal bones.
- Okay.
- Not human bones.
Is there any reports or anything you can give us about the bones? No, you're not law enforcement.
We don't just give reports out to third party.
Can we can we look at them, the bones? We've got to get any question of doubt.
Can we get them the bones? Can we get that? - [INDISTINCT.]
- Yeah? - [INDISTINCT.]
.
- Okay.
This is what was handed to us.
The Aruban police are saying these bones are animal bones, but they haven't had those bones long enough to have them properly tested, so, you know, I have my doubts, and I think what I will do is have the bones tested myself to make sure that they are nonhuman or exactly what they are.
Look, if John Ludwig did hand over evidence to us and that happened to be human bones, he would have been arrested, believe you me.
Okay.
We will send an army to pick him up.
Just to be clear on that.
He's not my concern.
Natalee is my concern.
Did you all go out to the pet cemetery? Yes, we set up an surveillance, and we looked at the whole charade.
He had no idea where he was.
He was moving up and down.
He couldn't pinpoint - He couldn't pinpoint - A specific site.
Yeah.
We went out there yesterday, and we I walked it, and I got to the very end near the cliffs, and I noticed a big hole dug out.
You know, if somebody digs a hole, they're gonna put the dog in it right then.
Judging from the size of that hole, that is something else.
That's not for a dog.
Yeah, it's fresh, too.
You see the tire tracks.
I didn't want to say that, but that more looks like a drug smuggling action, yeah.
What concerned me was how quickly they gave a response.
The response immediately from them was it was where drugs were buried on the beach, covered back up, and then dug back out again, and I know that there might not be anything to it, but it's really coincidental that you find an uncovered dug-out grave at the pet cemetery.
We're going to solve this case one of these days.
Because it's an ongoing investigation, we're not we cannot reveal everything, but let's put it like this.
We obtain a lot of information and have a lot of information, and we didn't give up.
What are your plans with the bones? I know you and I talked about us taking and having those bones analyzed.
We didn't have no problem with that.
Just we're trying to safeguard your case.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
But if you're not going to press any charges, you can I will gladly give hand you the bones.
You'll take care of that.
If I retrieved those bones, I was told by the Aruban authorities I could not use those in a criminal investigation or a fraud charge against John because T.
J.
and I are not law enforcement.
But that was not really my concern at that point in time because how did you determine they were nonhuman? I need to know, and I never got a clear answer on that.
So I hand it over, which means you cannot use it in court anymore, yeah, okay.
You know, I thought, well, they're they probably are nonhuman.
They probably are animal bones, but he's created a little bit of a doubt now that in my mind I don't believe him, and so we got them and I've got the bones.
Now I can have them tested.
I'm gonna move forward until we know for sure, 100%.
Yeah, we're outside of Washington, D.
C.
, and we're going to Dr.
Jason Kolowski's office and hopefully get some good results about the bones that were found in Aruba.
I'll be honest with you, I don't have my hopes up high.
- We'll see.
- Oh, I know you don't.
- Ready? - Yeah, let's go.
- T.
J.
- Hey, Jason.
- Good to see you again.
- Good to see you.
- How you doing? - Good.
How are you? - Good.
Please have a seat.
- Hey Jason, how are you doing? - Hi, Jason Kolowski.
- Hey, Jason, Dave Holloway.
- Nice to meet you, sir.
- Welcome.
Well, as you know, we received some bone samples.
T.
J.
recovered them from the Aruban authorities, and he sent them to me, and I've arranged some testing for those samples to be done at the laboratory here in Virginia, which is why we called you up today.
As you know, we received these four bone samples.
All four of these bone samples went to the laboratory.
They were cleaned.
They were weighed.
They weighed about 2.
5 grams, which was well within the range for that laboratory to test these bone samples.
They ground these samples down to a fine powder, and then they carried out a chemical extraction process to see if they could remove any DNA from these biological bone samples.
When we attempted to measure the nuclear DNA, the actual DNA that makes us us, that was negative.
These samples didn't have any nuclear DNA.
It was retested again and still negative.
At that point we made an executive decision to move on to try some mitochondrial DNA testing.
Are you familiar with mitochondrial DNA? - No.
- All right, mitochondrial DNA is really, really unique stuff.
It's inherited maternally, so it's passed from mother to daughters and from daughters to sons, but sons never pass it on past that point.
So we decided to take a look at some of these mitochondria that were within the bone samples.
When we actually took the DNA extract and ran it through this screening process, it came back positive.
It came back human.
- You got to be kidding me.
- No, I'm not.
Unbelievable.
When we actually took the DNA extract and ran it through this screening process, it came back positive.
It came back human.
- You got to be kidding me.
- No, I'm not.
You say those are human bones.
There is human DNA in these bone samples, yes.
As to which one of the four is human or all of them, that's where some additional testing is gonna need to be done.
So these are human bones, or human DNA.
There's human mitochondrial DNA in these bones.
And that, I think, is fairly significant.
Yeah, I wasn't expecting this.
And there's even a more interesting aspect here.
So the test we ran right now is designed to screen in a very broad way, just look to see if there's any human mitochondria there, but it's really interesting because not only does it align perfectly to our standard reference sequence that we use in mito, there are no differences to the reference sequence.
The reference sequence was actually built on a European Caucasian DNA sequence.
[WHISTLES.]
The fact here is that that's the that's the ancestry that we're questioning.
[WHISTLES.]
[EXHALES.]
Yeah, you caught me by surprise.
Golly.
I never expected this.
All of these dominos are tipping over the right way, telling us that we need to proceed forward with some testing.
There's a possibility, though, that this could be somebody else.
There is.
Let me take a few minutes to digest all this stuff.
I understand.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
I ain't believing this.
- Huh? - I ain't believing this, T.
J.
I wasn't ready for this.
This is huge.
Yeah, it still could not be it could be somebody else's, and sheesh.
I'm shocked.
I'd I expected to come here and hear the same thing that I heard from Dolfi and that they were nonhuman and animal bones, and I fully expected that, you know, John planted those bones, and and then I even now, right now I'm thinking, "Okay, but they're somebody else's bones.
" Sheesh.
I am not believing this.
Those dirty bunch in Aruba.
Well, we know that.
We knew that since '05.
When the Prime Minister made that statement, it got back to me that they can't afford to find the body a dead body on this island, and they've done every damn thing they could do to cover this up.
Well, the plan's over now.
And then I started getting a little pissed off, I guess, and I see all these things that you didn't see from the very beginning that you see when you look back.
You know, I can't think of all of them, but the list goes on, and now several people need to be concerned.
Um I'd rather not say at this point in time.
You probably know what I'm talking about.
What do we need to do? A simple oral swab from Beth could be submitted to the laboratory, and they will just use it as a reference sample.
- Okay.
- We have a potential to now test these this bone sequence, the mitochondrial DNA sequence against Natalee's mother and perhaps even make a match there.
There's still avenues in which this testing is going to yield a result that may not be Natalee, but there's definitely pointers in the direction right now that tell us that there is a possibility it could be her, so we should do this testing.
We absolutely should test these bone samples and find out the truth.
Now the big decision does have to be made 'cause unfortunately, the remaining testing will consume the remaining samples.
- Yeah, that's fine.
- Okay.
As soon as I have that information, you'll have those reports.
- Thank you.
- You're very welcome.
- Well - Yeah.
- Thank you very much.
- No problem.
- I appreciate it.
- Mr.
Holloway, pleasure.
- Thank you very much.
Yeah.
- Good luck.
Nice to meet you.
T.
J.
, always.
Okay.
- Thanks, man.
- Thanks, Jason.
[TENSE MUSIC.]
I'm not gonna believe it until the final test is done.
I can't believe this.
Mm.
And I'll be on pins and needles until that test is determined one way or the other, I'm sure.
Now, as you're well aware, Beth submitted a DNA swab for comparative testing.
This is a graphic representation of the sequencing work that we did on Beth's sample, and so what we're looking at here is the comparison of Beth's profile against the profile that we already had from the combined bones.
- Okay.
- As of right now, we have the results of that sample.
We were expecting one of three outcomes.
That there would be a match, that there would be some level of inconclusiveness, or that there would be a full exclusion.
We're not seeing the match, but I am not prepared to call this a full exclusion yet, and I need to explain to you why.
I don't feel right now against just this combined bone profile that it's a match.
Comfortably, this is still inconclusive because there could be these underlying profiles from the one of the other bones that we're just not seeing come through.
The combined bone sample sequence is not a match to Beth Holloway's mitochondrial DNA.
And in your reports you'll see we cut each of those bones in half, as we had discussed.
We sent the halves of each of the four bones to a laboratory, and then they combined those together.
So by combining all four samples together, you would expect there to be an equal amount of contribution from all four bones, but we do also know that some of the bones were slightly bigger than the other ones.
Those differences right there might have been contributing different amounts of mitochondrial DNA into the sample.
By testing those bones now individually, we'll know for sure.
We can make the assumption that at least one of those samples that was turned over to us is not Natalee.
If one of them comes forward and comes through in the testing and shows to be her, then it's Natalee and an unknown individual, and that's really not likely.
But this profile right here, it's not a match to Beth.
It's somebody else.
So we're not at a total loss in the investigation.
We know it's somebody human.
One of these bones is definitely human.
- We know that.
- Okay.
And if not three, four of the bones.
You know, they all could be.
We just have to have a couple more pieces of information, and then I can give you the truth of the matter.
How does that how long does that take? Right now phyto-mito testing on those four bones is scheduled to be done October 6th.
This laboratory is working as fast as they humanly can to get these bone samples done.
- Well, there's a process.
- There's a process.
I know it's slow, and I know it seems like it's being dragged out, but at the end of the day it's being done the best way it possibly can.
Should the results yield anything, anything that can help us out, you're going to have a rock-solid, airtight database to be able to move forward with.
Okay.
Coming in today, I was middle of the road, prepared that it's not and reluctant that they were because I want to see a DNA sample.
All right, Jason, appreciate it.
But there's a slight chance, I'd say slim chance that they are, but like I said, I've got to see a string of DNA that matches, and until I see that, you're just not gonna get your hopes up high.
Hey, Robin, you want to look at this these reports? Yeah.
You finally got them in, huh? Yep.
This is Jason's report on the DNA.
I'm sure Aruba would like to have a copy of that to put it in their trash can.
They're human bones, and they're from either Natalee or somebody else, and basically, it's inconclusive.
So he wouldn't he wouldn't know until October the 6th that until they see DNA on each each individual bone, so that's where they're at now, so So more waiting, huh? [GENTLE MUSIC.]
I know we'll meet her again one day, and we'll know the truth.
It's been 12 years, and our life has been put on hold, and it's time to get our life back.
What if it's not Natalee? Well, if it's not Natalee, it's somebody else, and I think that and I've said this before, John has so had somebody's bones on that island, and either the Aruban police or the FBI's got to get involved.
I mean, something's got to give.
I mean, you just can't just have human remains and no one do anything.
I mean, I'm I wish I could do more, but I mean, one of those two agencies has got to get in got to get involved or either the Dutch have got to get control of the situation.
Somebody's got to investigate it.
There very well could be another family out there that is missing a loved one whose bones that those belong to.
It's very, very important for somebody to do an investigation to get down to the bottom of how did you come up with these human remains, and whose are they? They're gonna have to man up and they're gonna have to If it's not her, are you going to stop? What do you mean stop? - Just stop.
- Stop what? Looking for Natalee? I think our I think this is probably um probably the end.
I mean, we've searched all of the island.
We've just about had every lead that's possible.
I don't know that there's anything else we can physically do.
You know, you'd like to get finally get justice, but unfortunately, it may not happen.
I guess from Natalee's perspective, she'd probably say, "Yeah, you done enough.
" You know, a lot of people say, "Well, you just need" to forget about it and move on.
" Well, you can't do that.
I can't do it.
I just can't.
So October the 6th we'll know for sure.
We'll just have to wait and see, so "Disappearance of Natalee Holloway,"
Can a cadaver dog pick up a human scent at that location? Has to be.
Just has to be.
He's picking up minute scent.
I think now is the time to get the Arubans involved.
You know, I'm not gonna stop until we finally get justice for Natalee.
He's getting away.
He's getting away.
He's in a taxi.
He's getting away.
He's running like a bat out of hell.
Oh fuck.
Could you believe he sat down and interviewed with me? Where'd you take the remains? The idea was to crush everything to the point where it's not recognizable as arm bones or skull or anything like that, and then by that night it was disposed of.
If the Aruban authorities want to know what happened, are you gonna be honest with them and tell them what happened as you told me today? Yes.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC.]
I came to Tampa, Florida, to meet with Gabriel to discuss the next steps and get a plan going on what we're gonna do next.
This has been going on for 18 months.
John has indicated to Gabriel that he's willing to pinpoint the exact location and cooperate with the Aruban authorities in showing the exact location and hopefully solving this case.
You're coming in to Aruba on Saturday, and we want to make arrangements to go out there to where he's talking about so he can show us - Correct.
- Where it is.
Then I want us to go to his aunt's house.
- Correct.
- And I want him to show us - the spot behind his aunt's house.
- Correct.
And then where they dismantled Natalee's body.
After we've gone this far, I need to follow it through to the end.
You know, I know John's lied a number of times, but there's some things that he has said that no one else would know.
If he is a fraud, I'm going to expose him as a fraud.
Would he go walk into the police department if I t we took him there? I promise you I'll have him there.
I said, "What would you do" if Dave Holloway seen you face to face?" He goes, "Well, he might want to shoot me" "and kill me for what I did, but I didn't kill her.
" Yeah, just make sure that he and I, our paths don't cross when we're down there.
I cannot let that happen.
Chief, I wanted to let you know we just met with our my informant and, as I told you in my message, that they're traveling early Saturday morning, and he wants to take us out to the gravesite.
He's got Ludwig convinced to turn himself in to Aruban authorities and give them a statement.
We have talked to Chief Richardson today with the Aruban police and got joint cooperation with that to go forth and to get the evidence and do what we need to do.
All right, sounds good.
All right, thank you.
Bye.
Okay.
When we got back from Aruba last time, you got in touch with John, or he got in touch with you.
What happened? When we got back, Gabriel just Gabriel put all of his stuff out of the house and didn't want anything to do with him, so they weren't speaking, but he called me the next day and then convinced John to go to the FBI in Sarasota.
Oh, really? So what did the FBI do with all that? Well, the chain that the process goes through, they'll refer it to the office that handles Aruba, and they'll contact the agents in our legal attaché will contact the Arubans and present it to them as part of their investigation, and it's up to the Arubans to request assistance, but there is a process that has to be followed.
I don't know what what prompt him I don't know if there's emotional stuff going through his mind now, but he's wanting to get all this out.
You know, he's coming down here to set the record straight.
You know, is this another lie? Who knows? Yeah, he kind of reminds me of Joran van der Sloot.
"Oh, I'm gonna tell the truth this time.
" Lie.
"Oh, I'll tell the truth this time," and he's following that same pattern.
You know, I've been through this so many times.
I have my reservations, but between John knowing the exact drop-off point and the forensic expert stating that his description of the state of the body is accurate, and this is something I need to follow through to the end for my own peace of mind.
What time they gonna be here? 11:37.
- 11:37.
- Yup.
What's gonna happen next? Well, I asked him to take me to the scene.
From there we're going to his aunt's house where they took the remains.
He knows there's a cadaver dog here? He knows there's gonna be one today, I told him.
That if he lies, then we're gonna know? So the three of y'all will be going out there? All us three, and I've already sent an email to the Chief this morning.
I'm a little unclear on I mean, you've described it somewhat, but can you give me more detail? I'm hoping to figure out just what happened there at the aunt's house.
What did they do? That's where they destroyed the body.
So they dug her up after five years and then brought her back to the back room? And I don't mean being disrespectful, Dave.
Took her back and opened the tarp up, and van der Sloot beat the back of the neck and the head.
Why don't I leave the room, and you explain to her in detail so I won't have to listen to it again, okay? - Sorry, Dave.
- Yeah.
- That's all right.
- Okay.
Yeah, it's tough.
He knows his daughter's dead, but to hear about what happened to her remains and what they did to her afterwards, no parent should have to hear that.
I don't need to hear all this again and again and again, you know? If it's real, it's real.
If it's not, it's not.
You know, you hear something bad happened with Natalee, it's something you don't want to think about the details, but you just don't throw your hands up.
You know, you've got to check it out, and we're still looking, and we'll know before we leave this island whether or not we should ever come back again, especially on this lead.
I just texted the Chief of Police and told him we'd meet him at the church in Oran.
I hope John tells the truth and takes us to the right spot and by some chance there's still DNA present.
John's scared as can be he's gonna be arrested.
Gabriel said he had to chase him down, and he they almost missed the flight.
I'll have to see what the Chief feels about going in behind his aunt's residence.
It's not on the not on the aunt's property, then we may be all right.
Oh, that's Tracy.
Let Eric and I get out of the car, and you all just stay in the car.
We'll leave it running, okay? Oh, boy.
- Hey, man.
- Hey, how you doing? - Good, how are you? - Fine, good, you? - I'm T.
J.
- I'm Fred.
- Good, nice to see you.
- Hi, how you doing? Good to meet you.
This is Tracy Sargent.
- Hi there.
- Hey, Fred.
That's the Chief.
How are you? You know, I want I want to get it out as much as you do.
Yes.
He's, yeah, filming me.
We're doing a documentary.
Is that okay? So the police chief asked to be no recordings or anything like that.
No recording.
I'm not sure he was looking in the car the whole time, so I'm not sure if he knew we were there or he just had a hunch that we were both in the vehicle.
So essentially what happened was, is we rode with T.
J.
and Eric, went straight to the church - Oh, church, okay.
- To meet with the Chief.
So the Chief was there.
Tracy was there.
Then all of a sudden the Chief of Police was like, "Listen, is there anyone rolling right now?" and was like, "Listen, this is serious.
" "Like, if you guys are shooting anything right now, we'll have you arrested," and that's basically when everything kind of was like, whoa, so we Yeah, so we just turned off everything.
Tracy came around the car, told us that we had to leave.
Well, I think they don't want any filming going on because of this current investigation, you know? It's they don't want it out on the news, and, you know, and I know what happened in the past in 2005.
They're conditioned to think that, you know, a lot of s a lot of the news cameras and the news media outlets, some of them used some of those videos against them.
Right after Natalee's disappearance the news media attacked the police investigation on how they were trying to investigate this.
With all the filming we've been doing and the times we've been on the island, I think they want to quickly resolve this lead as soon as possible to keep media attention away from the island.
We'll just see.
Hopefully we can just go back there.
Yeah.
You know, and get what we need to get.
Yeah, no, I got it.
This location that John is showing us is in the same cul-de-sac that we looked at two weeks ago.
You go with them.
The Police Chief asked me to actually go up there and with the perpetrator and look at it myself and see if it would be a location that would be viable for the dog to check.
Can you show me that location? Yeah, this is the area.
She was in that crevice, which it was a mound of boulders right here.
And were you here in 2005, here? 2010 is when I was here.
Okay, so when you came back in 2010, you came back here with van der Sloot.
What time of day was that? Right before daybreak.
That's when, yeah, a blue tarp was unearthed.
Anytime we have a perpetrator come out to the scene and we're able to actually meet with them face to face, talk with them, it really does help out a lot because maybe he might say something or do something that will help us in this case.
How how confident are you that this is the right rock? Oh, I'm 100%.
I know it was under that branch, and there was that big rock concealing most of the area.
Okay.
A bullshit artist telling a fucking lie.
Who carried her body up here in 2005? Him and his dad.
He was told that Natalee's body was carried into this wooded area at night.
The location that he showed us was much further than a night trek would have been.
Even someone as small as Natalee, that's dead weight.
It's very heavy to carry.
Who came up here in 2010 to remove her remains? Joran and I.
Did it take both of you to carry her out or one person or Well, John, I just want to assure you I'm not trying to trick you at all.
I'm just trying to find the answers like everybody.
Even though perpetrators do horrible things to people, you want to still project an aura of respect because oftentimes they will be more receptive to that and maybe touch a nerve that, "Hey, maybe I should tell the truth instead of playing all these games.
" So John, what we're gonna do next is go to that cave site - Okay, that sounds good.
- That you described.
- Okay.
- So we'll go check there next.
Yes, sir? No.
No.
There's been no activity there whatsoever.
- Hmm.
- Nope.
If he was involved, is this just little bits and pieces of truths, or is it just a complete lie? That is the big question mark here.
[PHONE RINGS.]
Hello? Hey, we're leaving the scene up here - at the cul-de-sac.
- Okay.
After going out there with the Chief.
- Well, what happened? - We went out there.
Even Tracy went out there with him with the place he showed, and it's impossible for him to place a body there.
Now we're going to the aunt's house where they claim that they did other things, and so we'll see what pans out here, and then I'll let you know.
All right, bye.
Not good.
We've gone to the area behind his aunt's house where he said that they burned Natalee's head to get rid of the hair.
He said, "This is where we destroyed the body.
" Because it had grown up so much, the perpetrator was a little confused and just wasn't sure about the area.
[INDISTINCT.]
Yeah, it's just He described it cave-like.
It was flat, and it came up a little bit, and it had a large tree that had a huge canopy over it, and then on the other side was a bowl-shaped type area.
This has to be it.
It has to be.
How long was the fire burning, John? About ten minu I'm the hair burnt within seconds, but he let it smolder for about ten minutes.
John, what did you guys bring to this location exactly? Just a backpack, and he had the skull in it and Just only the skull? No, he had a bottle of lighter fluid and a bottle of water.
Okay.
The areas that we've gone to, all of those areas were negative.
We did not find any physical evidence.
I think the fire pit was under the tree ca tree-looking cave type structure and not an actual rock overhang 'cause that's the only thing in a decent distance to the house.
I don't think it was way over there, and I would have remembered boulders that size.
I wouldn't have forgot that.
There were inconsistencies in the story, and 'cause he noticed what he was stating was not possible, and then he changes his story, "No, no, I wasn't there.
" So it I mean, there were so many holes we could shoot in his story that it we knew that he was not really a credible witness.
I actually thought that we were gonna find something.
I do believe that he is telling the truth.
We can't prove it because there is no physical evidence, but did he do it? I really honestly, honestly, honestly, I do believe it.
Well, I took it after we heard from you guys that things didn't look good.
Well, we went out to the spot.
Did John and Gabriel go in there? Oh, yeah.
Well, the Chief came out and said there's no way that that's the spot.
Well, let me ask you all this.
Do you think this is a big con? At this point, I don't know.
- What do you think, Eric? - I think, John, in his mind does he truly believe what he's saying? Yeah.
It kind of surprises me that he goes this far with the police.
The conversation that John had with the Police Chief, "If you'll give me immunity, I'll show you and tell you everything.
" But why would you plead immunity to show him that? Is it for publicity or just the thrill of being arrested or to prove to Gabriel that he was a part of it, and, "I'm being truthful about it", "so keep supporting me," you know? It's just which one of them do you want to believe? It's not the outcome that we were hoping for today.
I guess we're just gonna have to pack our bags and go home.
You know, you just go home and move on with life, like we've tried to for the last 12 years.
The lead was pursued to the end, and it'll sting for a while like it always does, but you know, you prepare yourself for that disappointment over 12 years of disappointments.
We got our tickets, and we're on our way.
This is the last time, John, the very last time.
Oh, I know.
We're getting closer and closer by the day.
- Yeah.
- Let's bring Natalee home.
I'm gonna get you.
Yeah.
You sure you went you sure you went - What is that? - That's a bird, dude.
I know it's along this stretch.
I had some dirt thrown over it.
Maybe I will need the shovel.
This is kind of hard for me right now.
Yeah, I mean, I used to catch snakes and shit like that, Fuck.
Yeah, but this is, um And it just got [PENSIVE MUSIC.]
[PHONE LINE TRILLS.]
This time John's story is, is that after he and Joran crushed up the bones, they put them in a box along with dog bones, mixed them together, and buried them in the pet cemetery.
John held back a few of the pieces as a prize, so to speak.
John has told us a number of lies.
I don't know what to think.
I don't even want to go there at this point in time, because I don't know if I can handle it anymore.
[INTENSE MUSIC.]
Mm-hmm.
[PHONE RINGS.]
Oh, here it is.
Hello? Right.
Okay.
So what about the other two? You can't determine whether they're human or not human unless you do a DNA test on them, and that's gonna take several weeks.
Yeah.
What are you all gonna do with them after you test them? 'Cause I think T.
J.
wants to take legal action against them.
Okay.
I still can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that John isn't lying, so I'm gonna go ahead and search the pet cemetery, obtain those bones and have them tested to finally put this to rest.
- Hey, Dave Holloway.
- Hey, how are you doing? Good.
How are you? How was your trip? Oh, just like everything else, long.
Well, I can't believe we're here again.
- Where we going? - I thought we'd go ahead and look at this pet cemetery, kind of have an idea of what we're talking about.
Wow.
Check this out.
- What the hell is that? - Somebody dug out a hole.
- Tire tracks.
- Four-wheeler tracks.
That's interesting.
And they've dug a grave or excavated a grave.
That's really, really weird.
And here's some potholes dug up here.
If somebody came out here looking with a dog, they would dig down in the ground a little bit to aerate the soil, and that's what they've done on this mound.
That's kind of suspicious.
Why would somebody dig a hole here and not put anything in it? And then I got to noticing some of the ground effects and potholes and four-wheeler tracks and where they led, and there's always that in the back in your mind, the suspicion of doubt, you know? What the heck is going on here? I mean, what are the chances? You have the suspicion that, you know, the bones were not checked, and that was very, very bothersome for me, is, you know, you put your trust in them to, you know, do at least a DNA test on them, and then you come to find out they didn't do a report or anything on them, and then you walk up on that, a fresh hole dug in the ground.
Richardson and the police team, may have decided that they would go ahead and search that pet cemetery, is what I'm thinking.
- Think they dug something up? - I don't know.
That's a good question.
But it's awful suspicious to me.
We're going to meet with.
Chief Richardson and his team to discuss the bones that were turned in to him by Gabriel several weeks ago.
They had indicated they were non-human.
Even though the Arubans seem willing to help, I've always had my doubts about them because of their past track record, so, you know, it was something that we wanted to do just you know, just erase that doubt.
What are you thinking? I was just thinking about the bones.
Now that they have the bones, why did they why didn't they take them in for that? I mean, I don't know.
How's he gonna know what they're talking about if he hasn't sat them down? All's he's gotten is what we told him.
I just think they're afraid to take two Americans in custody right now 'cause it's gonna be all over the news.
I guess where we want to back up first is when John and Gabriel, my informant, showed up here without us knowing it.
I was real surprised that you didn't bring them in and sit them down and question them.
You base your investigation on leads that are credible or it just will be a waste of manpower and resources.
We have a guy coming in saying, "I was involved with Natalee Holloway.
I know "maybe he hasn't taken us to the right place", but the mere fact he's claiming he had a relationship with Joran van der Sloot in 2010.
We've confirmed he was here.
Even if he did help, what we need is evidence.
He said, "These are the bones of Natalee.
" He presented us that, and it was bogus.
It I mean, it's not even human bone, so for me it's John Ludwig is he's not a credible source.
Now, what about the bones? They all came out to be animal bones.
What kind of animal was it? Do you know? Just animal bones.
- Okay.
- Not human bones.
Is there any reports or anything you can give us about the bones? No, you're not law enforcement.
We don't just give reports out to third party.
Can we can we look at them, the bones? We've got to get any question of doubt.
Can we get them the bones? Can we get that? - [INDISTINCT.]
- Yeah? - [INDISTINCT.]
.
- Okay.
This is what was handed to us.
The Aruban police are saying these bones are animal bones, but they haven't had those bones long enough to have them properly tested, so, you know, I have my doubts, and I think what I will do is have the bones tested myself to make sure that they are nonhuman or exactly what they are.
Look, if John Ludwig did hand over evidence to us and that happened to be human bones, he would have been arrested, believe you me.
Okay.
We will send an army to pick him up.
Just to be clear on that.
He's not my concern.
Natalee is my concern.
Did you all go out to the pet cemetery? Yes, we set up an surveillance, and we looked at the whole charade.
He had no idea where he was.
He was moving up and down.
He couldn't pinpoint - He couldn't pinpoint - A specific site.
Yeah.
We went out there yesterday, and we I walked it, and I got to the very end near the cliffs, and I noticed a big hole dug out.
You know, if somebody digs a hole, they're gonna put the dog in it right then.
Judging from the size of that hole, that is something else.
That's not for a dog.
Yeah, it's fresh, too.
You see the tire tracks.
I didn't want to say that, but that more looks like a drug smuggling action, yeah.
What concerned me was how quickly they gave a response.
The response immediately from them was it was where drugs were buried on the beach, covered back up, and then dug back out again, and I know that there might not be anything to it, but it's really coincidental that you find an uncovered dug-out grave at the pet cemetery.
We're going to solve this case one of these days.
Because it's an ongoing investigation, we're not we cannot reveal everything, but let's put it like this.
We obtain a lot of information and have a lot of information, and we didn't give up.
What are your plans with the bones? I know you and I talked about us taking and having those bones analyzed.
We didn't have no problem with that.
Just we're trying to safeguard your case.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
But if you're not going to press any charges, you can I will gladly give hand you the bones.
You'll take care of that.
If I retrieved those bones, I was told by the Aruban authorities I could not use those in a criminal investigation or a fraud charge against John because T.
J.
and I are not law enforcement.
But that was not really my concern at that point in time because how did you determine they were nonhuman? I need to know, and I never got a clear answer on that.
So I hand it over, which means you cannot use it in court anymore, yeah, okay.
You know, I thought, well, they're they probably are nonhuman.
They probably are animal bones, but he's created a little bit of a doubt now that in my mind I don't believe him, and so we got them and I've got the bones.
Now I can have them tested.
I'm gonna move forward until we know for sure, 100%.
Yeah, we're outside of Washington, D.
C.
, and we're going to Dr.
Jason Kolowski's office and hopefully get some good results about the bones that were found in Aruba.
I'll be honest with you, I don't have my hopes up high.
- We'll see.
- Oh, I know you don't.
- Ready? - Yeah, let's go.
- T.
J.
- Hey, Jason.
- Good to see you again.
- Good to see you.
- How you doing? - Good.
How are you? - Good.
Please have a seat.
- Hey Jason, how are you doing? - Hi, Jason Kolowski.
- Hey, Jason, Dave Holloway.
- Nice to meet you, sir.
- Welcome.
Well, as you know, we received some bone samples.
T.
J.
recovered them from the Aruban authorities, and he sent them to me, and I've arranged some testing for those samples to be done at the laboratory here in Virginia, which is why we called you up today.
As you know, we received these four bone samples.
All four of these bone samples went to the laboratory.
They were cleaned.
They were weighed.
They weighed about 2.
5 grams, which was well within the range for that laboratory to test these bone samples.
They ground these samples down to a fine powder, and then they carried out a chemical extraction process to see if they could remove any DNA from these biological bone samples.
When we attempted to measure the nuclear DNA, the actual DNA that makes us us, that was negative.
These samples didn't have any nuclear DNA.
It was retested again and still negative.
At that point we made an executive decision to move on to try some mitochondrial DNA testing.
Are you familiar with mitochondrial DNA? - No.
- All right, mitochondrial DNA is really, really unique stuff.
It's inherited maternally, so it's passed from mother to daughters and from daughters to sons, but sons never pass it on past that point.
So we decided to take a look at some of these mitochondria that were within the bone samples.
When we actually took the DNA extract and ran it through this screening process, it came back positive.
It came back human.
- You got to be kidding me.
- No, I'm not.
Unbelievable.
When we actually took the DNA extract and ran it through this screening process, it came back positive.
It came back human.
- You got to be kidding me.
- No, I'm not.
You say those are human bones.
There is human DNA in these bone samples, yes.
As to which one of the four is human or all of them, that's where some additional testing is gonna need to be done.
So these are human bones, or human DNA.
There's human mitochondrial DNA in these bones.
And that, I think, is fairly significant.
Yeah, I wasn't expecting this.
And there's even a more interesting aspect here.
So the test we ran right now is designed to screen in a very broad way, just look to see if there's any human mitochondria there, but it's really interesting because not only does it align perfectly to our standard reference sequence that we use in mito, there are no differences to the reference sequence.
The reference sequence was actually built on a European Caucasian DNA sequence.
[WHISTLES.]
The fact here is that that's the that's the ancestry that we're questioning.
[WHISTLES.]
[EXHALES.]
Yeah, you caught me by surprise.
Golly.
I never expected this.
All of these dominos are tipping over the right way, telling us that we need to proceed forward with some testing.
There's a possibility, though, that this could be somebody else.
There is.
Let me take a few minutes to digest all this stuff.
I understand.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
I ain't believing this.
- Huh? - I ain't believing this, T.
J.
I wasn't ready for this.
This is huge.
Yeah, it still could not be it could be somebody else's, and sheesh.
I'm shocked.
I'd I expected to come here and hear the same thing that I heard from Dolfi and that they were nonhuman and animal bones, and I fully expected that, you know, John planted those bones, and and then I even now, right now I'm thinking, "Okay, but they're somebody else's bones.
" Sheesh.
I am not believing this.
Those dirty bunch in Aruba.
Well, we know that.
We knew that since '05.
When the Prime Minister made that statement, it got back to me that they can't afford to find the body a dead body on this island, and they've done every damn thing they could do to cover this up.
Well, the plan's over now.
And then I started getting a little pissed off, I guess, and I see all these things that you didn't see from the very beginning that you see when you look back.
You know, I can't think of all of them, but the list goes on, and now several people need to be concerned.
Um I'd rather not say at this point in time.
You probably know what I'm talking about.
What do we need to do? A simple oral swab from Beth could be submitted to the laboratory, and they will just use it as a reference sample.
- Okay.
- We have a potential to now test these this bone sequence, the mitochondrial DNA sequence against Natalee's mother and perhaps even make a match there.
There's still avenues in which this testing is going to yield a result that may not be Natalee, but there's definitely pointers in the direction right now that tell us that there is a possibility it could be her, so we should do this testing.
We absolutely should test these bone samples and find out the truth.
Now the big decision does have to be made 'cause unfortunately, the remaining testing will consume the remaining samples.
- Yeah, that's fine.
- Okay.
As soon as I have that information, you'll have those reports.
- Thank you.
- You're very welcome.
- Well - Yeah.
- Thank you very much.
- No problem.
- I appreciate it.
- Mr.
Holloway, pleasure.
- Thank you very much.
Yeah.
- Good luck.
Nice to meet you.
T.
J.
, always.
Okay.
- Thanks, man.
- Thanks, Jason.
[TENSE MUSIC.]
I'm not gonna believe it until the final test is done.
I can't believe this.
Mm.
And I'll be on pins and needles until that test is determined one way or the other, I'm sure.
Now, as you're well aware, Beth submitted a DNA swab for comparative testing.
This is a graphic representation of the sequencing work that we did on Beth's sample, and so what we're looking at here is the comparison of Beth's profile against the profile that we already had from the combined bones.
- Okay.
- As of right now, we have the results of that sample.
We were expecting one of three outcomes.
That there would be a match, that there would be some level of inconclusiveness, or that there would be a full exclusion.
We're not seeing the match, but I am not prepared to call this a full exclusion yet, and I need to explain to you why.
I don't feel right now against just this combined bone profile that it's a match.
Comfortably, this is still inconclusive because there could be these underlying profiles from the one of the other bones that we're just not seeing come through.
The combined bone sample sequence is not a match to Beth Holloway's mitochondrial DNA.
And in your reports you'll see we cut each of those bones in half, as we had discussed.
We sent the halves of each of the four bones to a laboratory, and then they combined those together.
So by combining all four samples together, you would expect there to be an equal amount of contribution from all four bones, but we do also know that some of the bones were slightly bigger than the other ones.
Those differences right there might have been contributing different amounts of mitochondrial DNA into the sample.
By testing those bones now individually, we'll know for sure.
We can make the assumption that at least one of those samples that was turned over to us is not Natalee.
If one of them comes forward and comes through in the testing and shows to be her, then it's Natalee and an unknown individual, and that's really not likely.
But this profile right here, it's not a match to Beth.
It's somebody else.
So we're not at a total loss in the investigation.
We know it's somebody human.
One of these bones is definitely human.
- We know that.
- Okay.
And if not three, four of the bones.
You know, they all could be.
We just have to have a couple more pieces of information, and then I can give you the truth of the matter.
How does that how long does that take? Right now phyto-mito testing on those four bones is scheduled to be done October 6th.
This laboratory is working as fast as they humanly can to get these bone samples done.
- Well, there's a process.
- There's a process.
I know it's slow, and I know it seems like it's being dragged out, but at the end of the day it's being done the best way it possibly can.
Should the results yield anything, anything that can help us out, you're going to have a rock-solid, airtight database to be able to move forward with.
Okay.
Coming in today, I was middle of the road, prepared that it's not and reluctant that they were because I want to see a DNA sample.
All right, Jason, appreciate it.
But there's a slight chance, I'd say slim chance that they are, but like I said, I've got to see a string of DNA that matches, and until I see that, you're just not gonna get your hopes up high.
Hey, Robin, you want to look at this these reports? Yeah.
You finally got them in, huh? Yep.
This is Jason's report on the DNA.
I'm sure Aruba would like to have a copy of that to put it in their trash can.
They're human bones, and they're from either Natalee or somebody else, and basically, it's inconclusive.
So he wouldn't he wouldn't know until October the 6th that until they see DNA on each each individual bone, so that's where they're at now, so So more waiting, huh? [GENTLE MUSIC.]
I know we'll meet her again one day, and we'll know the truth.
It's been 12 years, and our life has been put on hold, and it's time to get our life back.
What if it's not Natalee? Well, if it's not Natalee, it's somebody else, and I think that and I've said this before, John has so had somebody's bones on that island, and either the Aruban police or the FBI's got to get involved.
I mean, something's got to give.
I mean, you just can't just have human remains and no one do anything.
I mean, I'm I wish I could do more, but I mean, one of those two agencies has got to get in got to get involved or either the Dutch have got to get control of the situation.
Somebody's got to investigate it.
There very well could be another family out there that is missing a loved one whose bones that those belong to.
It's very, very important for somebody to do an investigation to get down to the bottom of how did you come up with these human remains, and whose are they? They're gonna have to man up and they're gonna have to If it's not her, are you going to stop? What do you mean stop? - Just stop.
- Stop what? Looking for Natalee? I think our I think this is probably um probably the end.
I mean, we've searched all of the island.
We've just about had every lead that's possible.
I don't know that there's anything else we can physically do.
You know, you'd like to get finally get justice, but unfortunately, it may not happen.
I guess from Natalee's perspective, she'd probably say, "Yeah, you done enough.
" You know, a lot of people say, "Well, you just need" to forget about it and move on.
" Well, you can't do that.
I can't do it.
I just can't.
So October the 6th we'll know for sure.
We'll just have to wait and see, so "Disappearance of Natalee Holloway,"