Search for Natalee Holloway: Dutch Testing Jaw Bone Found on Beach in Aruba
Nov. 16, 2010— -- A Dutch forensics teams is awaiting the OK from an Aruban prosecutor to test a bone fragment that some people believe could belong to missing U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway.
Officials at the Netherlands Forensic Institute confirmed that they have received the bone and are prepared to conduct DNA testing to compare to that of Holloway's.
The Dutch-language newspaper de Telegraaf reported that the bone -- thought to be the lower half of a human jaw -- was found by tourists Friday on a beach in Aruba. According to the paper, pictures of the mandible show an intact molar.
The Forensic Institute said today that the announcement of the findings would be left to Aruban authorities, but it was unclear how long it would take to produce results. The chief Aruban prosecutor on the Holloway case is in the Netherlands.
A lawyer for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, said she would not be heading to the Netherlands in light of the discovery. While there's always hope, John Q. Kelly pointed out, they have been disappointed before.
"This could be the time. I don't want to say it's not, but there have been other bones found and gathered and tested," Kelly said. "There have been photos of skeletons. There have been pictures of clothes and remains in lobster cages and sand dunes and everything else."
Holloway, 18, disappeared in Aruba in May 2005 while on a school trip. Dutch playboy Joran van der Sloot is widely believed to be involved in her disappearance and, in all likelihood, her family believes, Holloway's murder.
Van der Sloot is jailed in a Peruvian prison after confessing to the murder of Stephany Flores, 21, earlier this year.
According to his signed confession, van der Sloot killed her in his hotel room in a rage after she discovered his connection to the Holloway case and struck him.
There have been many false hopes regarding Natalee's disappearance in the five years since she went missing.
Twitty, her mother, has made several attempts to get information out of van der Sloot, who has promised to talk then reneged or spoken only in vague terms.
Hidden-camera video footage surfaced last week of Twitty meeting with van der Sloot in the rat infested Castro Castro prison in Peru, imploring him to talk to her, even offering to help him.
"I want to know what happened and I want to move on, Joran," Twitty is seen telling van der Sloot, who was 17 years old at the time Holloway disappeared. "I want to move on in my life and I can't close the book."
