Justice for Joran van der Sloot: throw him overboard.

[shereads]

This is a random rant about how arrogance can't keep its mouth shut, and how justice can't seem to use that fact to its advantage.

I'm against capital punishment because juries make mistakes and innocent people are condemned. I'm also sick to death of the Natalee Holloway murder hype, because it exemplifies the inequity with which the world treats the relatively rare murders/disappearances of white, middle-class, and photogenic blondes. But tonight I'm in a fury at the thought that this arrogant, politically connected brat van der Sloot will get away with the two-years-long torture of Natalee Holloway's family. (In a secretly taped confession, he brags to a friend that he "lost no sleep" after asking a buddy to dispose of Holloway's unconscious body.)

Was she dead before she was thrown over the side of the boat? Or might she have been revived? We'll never know. Because when the cowardly little prick who'd been fucking her phoned for help that night, it wasn't for his unconscious date. It was for himself.

If he can't be charged with murder, or with illegally disposing of a body, or with lying to police and obstructing an investigation, he should be tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty of being irredeemably vile. He should be shunned. Instead, I'm willing to bet he gets O.J. Simpson justice: a coterie of fawning hangers-on who will remain drawn to his celebrity, no matter how it was achieved.

Maybe an expensive tourist boycott of Aruba will make the courts take notice. If they're really as timid as they seem to be with this brat and his family, it's no wonder Joran van der Sloot can claim he hasn't suffered any sleepless nights.

 

[jomar]

Yeah, I'm hoping they can find a way to use the tape against him. Maybe run it through some super-secret software. Or at least put his ass on Moment of Truth!

 

[cloudy]

He's guilty as sin...but I think he's also Romney's lovechild.

 

[rgraham666]

Um. Who?

 

[shereads]

He's guilty as sin...but I think he's also Romney's lovechild.

Sorry the poll wasn't structured to allow multiple answers. I use the same polling company that predicted a sweep for Obama in Massachusetts.

 

[Guest]

What a little pissant bastard.

 

[McKenna]

I'm bumping this because even if she doesn't write (many) stories, Shereads is one of the best writer's I've known. This deserves more reads.

 

[neonlyte]

I'm bumping this because even if she doesn't write (many) stories, Shereads is one of the best writer's I've known. This deserves more reads.

I know exactly what you mean... I wouldn't like to on the other end of a tongue lashing from Shereads Then again...

I agree, he's an asshole but in the UK we don't know who he is

 

[keeblercrumb]

Great rant.

Exactly right.

But it bums me out because I liked Aruba......



-KC

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Look, Van der Sloot's father is a bloody judge, for shit sake. He's acted just as odd in this whole affair as his snotty little brat.

As I heard the tape, he said, "We were kissing and she started to tremble. Then nothing."

Sounds like a date-rape drug to me.

Soirry, you little fuck-wad, but you need to spend 20 years minimum in prison with gay rapists. You'll find out what bar soap is really for.

<thread jack> I'm surprised that Mitt Romney is so popular in the AH. </endjack>

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Mitt is history.

 

[BlackShanglan]

As I heard the tape, he said, "We were kissing and she started to tremble. Then nothing."

I have to agree that that was one of the least convincing explanations of how someone died that I've ever heard. Not only does it seem medically unlikely, but the psychology of the situation makes no sense at all. A man innocently kissing a consenting girl feels her collapse, and the first thing he thinks is, "Gee, I'd better dump her body in the ocean"?

The problem, of course, with there being no body is that there's no way to know how she actually died. We certainly don't seem likely to learn the truth from van der Sloot.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I think a total boycott by all Americans of Aruba might get some results. I would never go there anyhow, but many groups vacation there. If they stop, the place may go broke. The only other industry they have is drug smuggling.

 

[shereads]

I know exactly what you mean... I wouldn't like to on the other end of a tongue lashing from Shereads

There have been no complaints, and more than one standing ovation.

 

[shereads]

<thread jack> I'm surprised that Mitt Romney is so popular in the AH. </endjack>

He IS?

It's that hair, I'm telling you. Also, after seven years of George W. Bush almost anyone seems normal.

 

[Guest]

He IS?

It's that hair, I'm telling you. Also, after seven years of George W. Bush almost anyone seems normal.

I thought it was his panties.

Er, special underwear.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think a total boycott by all Americans of Aruba might get some results. I would never go there anyhow, but many groups vacation there. If they stop, the place may go broke. The only other industry they have is drug smuggling.

To be fair to the Aruban authorities, I don't think that an American investigating body could have done much more. Whatever the man's said in various half-recorded and dubious situations, the authorities still haven't got any serious evidence. There have been plenty of cases like that in the States, and some with a great deal more physical evidence to go on (Mr. Simpson?).

It would be cruel to the Aruban population to punish them for something that they can't help. A murder with no body, no known crime scene, and no witnesses is an extremely difficult challenge. I don't blame the Aruban authorities for being unable to prosecute it. They've certainly shown willing, but other than disregarding all rule of law and outright lynching the man, I don't see what options they've got.

Sometimes that's the extremely frustrating price we all pay for the rule of law. We can have a very strong suspicion of guilt, but to convict, we must have evidence. I strongly suspect that van der Sloot is lying, but I try to bear in mind a case where I certainly would have convicted: a man found standing over his estranged wife's body with the bloody knife nearby, at her isolated home that a stranger would be unlikely to find, with no sign of forced entry, on the day (her birthday) he'd been threatening to "give her a nasty present" with a knife.

He was innocent. It was a repairman. He just happened to find her body.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If Natalie's mom wanted justice she'd use some of her money to pay a thug to kill those kids. Anything else is bullshit.

 

[Boxlicker101]

To be fair to the Aruban authorities, I don't think that an American investigating body could have done much more. Whatever the man's said in various half-recorded and dubious situations, the authorities still haven't got any serious evidence. There have been plenty of cases like that in the States, and some with a great deal more physical evidence to go on (Mr. Simpson?).

It would be cruel to the Aruban population to punish them for something that they can't help. A murder with no body, no known crime scene, and no witnesses is an extremely difficult challenge. I don't blame the Aruban authorities for being unable to prosecute it. They've certainly shown willing, but other than disregarding all rule of law and outright lynching the man, I don't see what options they've got.

Sometimes that's the extremely frustrating price we all pay for the rule of law. We can have a very strong suspicion of guilt, but to convict, we must have evidence. I strongly suspect that van der Sloot is lying, but I try to bear in mind a case where I certainly would have convicted: a man found standing over his estranged wife's body with the bloody knife nearby, at her isolated home that a stranger would be unlikely to find, with no sign of forced entry, on the day (her birthday) he'd been threatening to "give her a nasty present" with a knife.

He was innocent. It was a repairman. He just happened to find her body.

The foul-ups were at the very beginning of the investigation. She was missing, and had last been seen with Van der Sloot and the Kalpoe Brothers. I don'r know that much about the Dutch laws, but they are probably not too much different from those in the US. There was a very reasonable possibility that those three we responsible for her disappearance, but there was no search for evidence until much later, when it could have been all eliminated.

The police also asked, very early, if Natalee was subject to seizures, which seems like a strange thing to ask about an 18 year old. Later, Joran was recorded talking about her having some kind of seizure. If he told the same thing to the cops, and they hushed it up to save tourist dollars, they deserve to be boycotted for allowing that crap.

I believe the recording amounts to a confession. People have been executed on less evidence. I don't know that it is enough, but it is certainly enough to hold the man.

 

[BlackShanglan]

The police also asked, very early, if Natalee was subject to seizures, which seems like a strange thing to ask about an 18 year old. Later, Joran was recorded talking about her having some kind of seizure. If he told the same thing to the cops, and they hushed it up to save tourist dollars, they deserve to be boycotted for allowing that crap.

If they hushed it up to save tourist dollars, it was a very peculiar way to achieve that objective. Having an unsolved murder of a photogenic young lady seems to me a great deal more damaging than a swift capture and punishment of the criminal. I can't see how they could have thought that this problem would go away if they ignored it.

You've got a point with the delay in searches, but then we don't know the local law. If I'm not mistaken in my memory, I believe that van der Sloot's father is a judge and was alleged to have conferred with his son the night Holloway disappeared. If there's any way to stall a search or frustrate attempts at a warrant, he had the most useful person in the world on his side to help him do that.

I believe the recording amounts to a confession. People have been executed on less evidence. I don't know that it is enough, but it is certainly enough to hold the man.

People have also been wrongly imprisoned on less evidence. The authorities did recently have another go at arresting the three chief figures, but they couldn't make it stick legally. Whatever their law requires, they didn't have it.

But let's take the worst case scenario. Suppose there's a deliberate conspiracy. Suppose that persons unknown in the Aruban authorities have stalled and covered up for van der Sloot. There's still nothing that the average Aruban could do about that, any more than the average American can personally intervene to stop CIA renditions of foreign nationals. Why make an entire country pay for the actions of people as much beyond their reach as they are beyond ours?

 

[Misty_Morning]

if my memory serves me correctly, during the first 2 months of the investigation, the Aruban authorities also questioned some individual with a boat that had some connection with Joran.

Am I the only one that remembers this?

 

[Boxlicker101]

If they hushed it up to save tourist dollars, it was a very peculiar way to achieve that objective. Having an unsolved murder of a photogenic young lady seems to me a great deal more damaging than a swift capture and punishment of the criminal. I can't see how they could have thought that this problem would go away if they ignored it.

You've got a point with the delay in searches, but then we don't know the local law. If I'm not mistaken in my memory, I believe that van der Sloot's father is a judge and was alleged to have conferred with his son the night Holloway disappeared. If there's any way to stall a search or frustrate attempts at a warrant, he had the most useful person in the world on his side to help him do that.

People have also been wrongly imprisoned on less evidence. The authorities did recently have another go at arresting the three chief figures, but they couldn't make it stick legally. Whatever their law requires, they didn't have it.

But let's take the worst case scenario. Suppose there's a deliberate conspiracy. Suppose that persons unknown in the Aruban authorities have stalled and covered up for van der Sloot. There's still nothing that the average Aruban could do about that, any more than the average American can personally intervene to stop CIA renditions of foreign nationals. Why make an entire country pay for the actions of people as much beyond their reach as they are beyond ours?

I don't know much about Dutch or Aruban law, but I understand it is quite liberal. They would need solid evidence to get a warrant to conduct a search, but I think they had that evidence.

Perhaps the authorities didn't realize what a commotion there would be about one missing person. They might have thought it would blow over in a week. It has been kept alive by her parents and the American media, but they might not have anticipated that.

Boycotts have been shown to be an effective way to make the citizens of a nation force their governments to do what's right or to stop doing what's wrong. It worked extremely well in South Africa. It's a slow process, but it can work quite well. As for the innocent people, if they tolerate such corruption, maybe they aren't so innocent.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I still think it's a long throw from "didn't get the result we wanted" to "corruption." It would take stunning naivete to assume that the unsolved murder of a tourist, on an island that depends heavily on tourist dollars, was just going to blow over. I think it's more likely that the evidence they needed simply wasn't there. If the victim died in a way that didn't include bloodletting, what were they ever likely to find? All three men admitted being with her, so evidence that she was in contact with them proves only what they've already admitted. As little as we may like it, there are some cases for which it's very easy to see the most likely answer and very difficult to prove it.

 

[pellso27]

Hell awaits sinners! Oh and rapist

 

[shereads]

Why make an entire country pay for the actions of people as much beyond their reach as they are beyond ours?

One excellent reason: to make Nancy Grace shut up about it.