Where is Natalee Holloway? Part two: in the car

Natalee Holloway had met Joran van der Sloot only briefly in the afternoon of May 30, 2005, at the Holiday Inn casino, where he regularly played free poker tournaments. Later that evening they met again at Carlos ’n Charlie’s, and there was an amorous rapprochement between Joran and Natalee.

Joran had meanwhile called in his friends Deepak and Satish. Deepak drove around in a tricked-out Honda Civic with which the trio tried to impress a lot of girls. Did that also happen when Natalee left the bar with Joran and got into Deepak’s car? Was she really impressed by the low chassis, the muffler, and the screens on the back of the front seats on which the boys played movies and music videos? In any case, Natalee got in and found herself alone in the car, in the company of three boys she barely knew.

A Dangerous Situation

Natalee’s decision to go along with Joran, Deepak, and Satish does not match what you would expect from a young woman known as thoughtful, helpful, and intelligent. It is whispered that Natalee was drunk, perhaps under the influence of drugs, and it is reasonable to assume she felt something for Joran. As the four of them drove off together, someone from her group noticed Natalee in the car and shouted to her from a bus stop: “Get out of that car! Now! What are you doing? Are you crazy?” That’s how it appears in Joran’s book and it comes back in multiple testimonies. According to Joran, Natalee was hanging out the window and shouted back to the friend: “Whoohaa! I love Aruba. I want to stay with him (Joran).”

Joran adds the following in his book:

Deepak asks her: “If your friends say you should go with them, maybe you should. Are you sure you want to come with us?”

Natalee: “Yes, I want to go with you.”

In a 2005 interview for Current Affairs, Joran van der Sloot says about this:

Joran: “She wanted to come with us. And, uh. It was probably a bad choice. We probably should have told her to get out of the car when her friend told her to get out of the car.”

This specific moment is also highlighted in the testimony of Nadira Ramirez, the mother of brothers Deepak and Satish, with Greta Van Susteren of FOX News, not long after Natalee’s disappearance.

Ramirez states (about Deepak):

“He said: I stopped my car, that if she want to go, it's fine. It's not that, yes, we forced her.”

No Coercion

What Joran and the brothers (through their mother) repeatedly state is that Natalee herself (of her own free will) chose to go with them. This statement also holds. There is not a single witness who states that Joran and the brothers sped off with Natalee while she was hanging out the window screaming for help. On the contrary. It was her free choice to go with the three. This is repeated and emphasized by Joran and the brothers.

Repetition in language points to importance. It is a very simple but important indicator of deception. As analysts we mark when someone repeats something—such as Joran and the brothers repeating that it was Natalee’s choice to stay in the car with them. Why is this detail—it was only a moment—so important to Joran and the brothers? What Joran is really saying is: “If Natalee had simply listened to that friend and gone back to her hotel, none of this would have happened.” Joran says this literally in the Current Affairs interview: “We probably should have told her to get out of the car.” In his view, he, Deepak, and Satish are the victims—not Natalee. She mostly brought it upon herself that things went wrong.

Victim Blaming

Joran engages in victim blaming here. He does that more often. He also repeatedly claims that Natalee approached him and wanted to talk to him (and not the other way around), that she wanted to dance with him at Carlos ’n Charlie’s (and not the other way around), that she took him by the hand (and not the other way around), and that she insisted on a Jell-O shot, which he drank from her navel (and not the other way around). To top it off, according to him, Natalee chose to stay with him in the Honda when a friend asked her what on earth she was doing.

Blaming the victim—or placing the blame on the victim—is a strong indicator (not direct proof) of guilt. Suppose Joran were completely innocent: that he had politely given Natalee a ride to her hotel, that he had dropped her off at the beach at her request because she wanted to be alone for a while. And suppose she had vanished without a trace the next morning—would he then have felt the need to indirectly blame her, the victim, for the ride he had given her? Unlikely. Because what would be wrong with that lift to the hotel if the crime happened later? Joran would not have borne any responsibility there, nor would he have felt the need to shift the blame from himself to Natalee.

Victim blaming is aimed at not appearing guilty. Guilty suspects feel that need because they know what happened and fear being unmasked as the perpetrator. That this manifests in a guilty suspect’s language is one of the pillars of truth analysis. It is psychologically quite logical that a guilty suspect will want to exculpate himself, while an innocent suspect does not feel that need.

One pressing question remains. If Joran and the brothers reproach Natalee for getting into the car…

What, exactly, is there to reproach her for?

You’ll read it soon in Part 3 of this blog: Where Is Natalee Holloway?