ORANJESTAD, Aruba — The father of missing American teenager Natalee Holloway said Thursday he will relaunch a search for evidence of her remains in waters off Aruba after police re-arrested three suspects in her 2005 disappearance.
While authorities searched the sea to depths of 330 feet, Dave Holloway said he believes his 18-year-old daughter was thrown into deeper waters — a belief based on talks with a police official and a private forensic expert.
Holloway said a private boat owner is providing divers, sonar equipment and the ability to map the ocean floor.
“It’s like this: We’ve searched all the land areas … It’s common knowledge on the island that if someone were to dispose of the body, it would be out in the ocean,” he said.
Holloway said he would alert police on the Dutch Caribbean island if anything is found.
Authorities announced Wednesday they had found “new incriminating evidence” and re-arrested three men — Dutch student Joran van der Sloot and brothers Satish and Deepak Kalpoe of Suriname — on suspicion of involvement in voluntary manslaughter and causing serious bodily harm that resulted in Holloway’s death.
“I hope I’m not going to be disappointed,” Dave Holloway said. “We’ve seen these arrests and re-arrests in the past.”
The 18-year-old from Mountain Brook, Ala., was last seen leaving a bar with the three men on May 30, 2005, hours before she was scheduled to fly home with high school classmates celebrating their graduation.
A search by hundreds of volunteers, soldiers, police and FBI agents — even Dutch air force planes — turned up no trace of her.
Van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were first detained in June 2005, but they denied involvement in the woman’s death and a judge later released them for lack of evidence.
Van der Sloot, 20, was re-arrested in the Netherlands, where he was attending a university. The Kalpoe brothers — Deepak is 24 and Satish is 21 — were taken into custody in Aruba.
On Thursday, a Dutch judge cleared the way for van der Sloot’s transfer to Aruba within days, prosecutor Dop Kruimel said.
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