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AMSTERDAM (BNO NEWS) — Dutch suspect Joran van der Sloot has confessed to disposing the body of missing American student Natalee Holloway while on the Caribbean island of Aruba, a Dutch newspaper reported on Tuesday. He made the statements in front of an RTL television camera.

The statements by van der Sloot follow a similar confession more than two years ago during an undercover operation by Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, which prosecutors said did not constitute new legal evidence.

Natalee Holloway went missing on May 30, 2005 during a high school graduation trip to Aruba. The case received international media attention, but her body was never found.

The prosecutor’s office, which reportedly confirmed Monday’s report, did not immediately respond to inquiries left by BNO News as its officers were closed.

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Media on Aruba are reporting that Paul van der Sloot, the father of the main suspect in the Natalee Holloway disappearance case, has died.

Joran van der Sloot’s father collapsed on Wednesday evening when playing tennis at the Tierra del Sol estate on the Dutch Caribbean island. Emergency service staff were unable to resuscitate him. Paul van der Sloot was aged 57.

His son Joran is still suspected of involvement in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway on Aruba in May 2005. The case was brought back into the limelight when crime reporter Peter R. de Vries secretly filmed Joran van der Sloot claiming that he had dumped Natalee’s body in the ocean. The potentially incriminating statement was not accepted as evidence by the court.

Denial
The suspect, who is living in the Netherlands, was interviewed by Aruban police in Rotterdam early in 2008 and declared persona non grata shortly afterwards, making it practically impossible for Joran to return to Aruba.

Joran’s lawyer says that the TV admission was untrue; his client had only wanted to impress the man he was talking to, trying to gain some credibility in the crimininal world.

Later in 2008 the Fox TV channel in the US broadcast an interview with Joran van der Sloot. He told interviewer Greta van Susteren that he had sold Natalee Holloway on the beach to a Venezuelan for 10,000 dollars. The man was apparently looking for a blond sex slave. In the interview, Mr Van der Sloot also claimed that his father Paul had bribed policemen on Aruba to the tune of 50,000 dollars. These statements, too, have not been taken into account by the legal authorities.

Trainee judge
Paul van der Sloot, a lawyer who was training as a judge on Aruba, was repeatedly interviewed by the media in connection to his son’s alleged involvement in the case. It has never become clear to what extent Mr Van der Sloot knew what Joran’s role may have been.

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On Thursday, more than four years after the Mountain Brook teen disappeared while on a senior trip in Aruba, Natalee Holloway was added to a list of missing children on the Alabama Department of Public Safety Web site.

Special Agent Judy Orihuela, a spokeswoman with the Miami office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said tonight that Holloway’s family requested that information be added to the site.

The notice describes her as an “endangered” missing person and lists her current age as 23. It asks that anyone with information call 1-800-228-7688.

Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005 hours before she and classmates from Mountain Brook High School were to return home from their trip.

Orihuela said she did not know what prompted the family to request that her picture be posted alongside 13 other missing children and teens from across Alabama, some who have been missing for more than 10 years and others who disapperared as recently as a few months ago.

In March, an investigator hired by Holloway’s father, Dave Holloway, who has said many times that he would not give up until all options were exhausted, searched a pond in Aruba. Nothing was found. Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, has also continued to press for answers in the case and in April ”Loving Natalee,” a book about her family’s ordeal, was published.

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Dave Holloway, the father of missing teenager Natalee Holloway who disappeared four years ago while on a senior trip to Aruba, said this morning he really doesn’t think his daughter’s body will be found during this latest search.

But he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life wondering, “What if”, either.

“The guy whose claims prompted this latest search at the pond has been bugging me for some time,” said Holloway of Meridian. “He is convinced he saw something and he passed not one but two polygraph tests conducted by reputable technicians. Now, I’m not really sure just how accurate polygraph tests are but I kept thinking what if he is right. I just couldn’t see any reason why he would lie about what he believed he saw.”

The latest search is centered around a water run-off retaining pond on the island. Aruban police say previous searches of the marshy area have turned up nothing. Holloway admitted all indications have pointed to the ocean as to where his daughter’s body is likely located. But the little bit of doubt placed in his head by this “witness” gave Holloway pause.

Holloway contracted a tracker dog specialist to begin his latest search for evidence into Natalee Holloway’s May 2005 disappearance early Monday. Nothing was found during Monday’s search.

Natalee Holloway, from Mountain Brook, Ala., was 18 when she was last seen in May 2005 in the Aruban capital Oranjestad on the final night of a high school graduation trip. She reportedly left a bar with Dutch man Joran van der Sloot. No trace of her has been found despite extensive searches involving hundreds of volunteers, Aruban soldiers, FBI agents and even Dutch F-16 jets with special equipment.

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CHICOPEE – A Chicopee man left for Aruba Friday morning to help with the search for Natalee Holloway, of Alabama, who has been missing for nearly four years, television station abc40 of Springfield is reporting.

The station, also known as WGGB-TV, Channel 40, is reporting that Fred A. Golba, who runs a canine rescue unit he calls Coast to Coast Canine, left for Aruba at 6 Friday morning.

The television station says that Golba was sent by Natalee’s Holloway’s father. He and a cadaver dog will be searching the bottom of an Aruban pond, according to the station.

Natalee Holloway was reported missing in Aruba in May 2005 when she was 15 years old.

In an exclusive interview with abc40, Goldba said that a witness has just come forward, claiming he saw lead suspect Joran van der Sloot leaving a pond the night the girl disappeared. The witness said van der Sloot was wet up to his chest and was missing a sneaker. Golba will be looking for either Natalee’s body or that sneaker.

“I have more confidence in this pond than any other of the eight trips I’ve made to the island,” he told abc40’s Kathy Reynolds.

Golba brought his search dog Rhino to Aruba with him.

Golba has been involved with the case since 2005, according to abc40.

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