For more than six months, I've been doing a slow burn over the media's over-reaction to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. It's been tabloid TV at its worst, and plenty of individuals deserve censure for their role in it. Nancy Grace and Rita Cosby, to name a couple, earn dishonorable mention.
However, the very worst offenders in keeping this sordid drama simmering are Natalee's mother and step-father, Beth and Jug Twitty. They have been arrogance personified.
I suspected from Day One that the Twittys' intrusion into the case did more harm than good. My hunch was right.
Gerold Dompig, the island's deputy police chief and the man in charge of the case of the Holloway case,
told Vanity Fair correspondent Bryan Burrough that the Twittys were the biggest obstacles to finding Natalee. He added that pressure from the family sidetracked the investigation from the beginning, forcing premature arrests and not allowing Aruban authorities enough time to gather evidence.
Dompig told Burrough:
They [the Twittys] didn't understand the way things are done in our system. They act like they came from a world where you can just crush people. It was very harmful to our investigation...
Basically, Jug wanted us to come over and beat a confession out of these boys. We couldn't do that.
Dompig also told Burrough that the Twittys threatened to ruin the island if Natalee wasn't found:
They would bring hell to our island--'burn it down'--were the exact words. That's when I knew we were in trouble."
So the Twittys are Ugly Americans. The kind of people who believe that the end justifies the means and force trumps everything. The kind of people who voted for George W. Bush.
Tonight, on the Rita Cosby Show (against my better judgment, I left MSNBC on after "Countdown"), Ms. Twitty was on the air again to respond to Dompig's accusations. It turns out that she's not just an expert on Netherlands Antilles law but an accomplished detective as well. Twittty claimed she cracked the case within 72 hours of arriing on the island, and that she gave the Aruban authorities a 10-day deadline to arrest the men she considered the perpetrators. First the sentence, then the trial, I assume.
There's a strong odor of racism emanating from this case. The Twittys are white, Natalee is young and blonde, Aruba is a small island with a majority of people of color, and the legal system is different from ours. All of which makes it an easy target for brickbats from people like the Twittys. Not to mention people like Nancy Grace, who has practiced law and ought to know better.
Dompig has a good response to critics of the Aruban justice system:
She attacks our justice system? What about yours? JonBenét. Was that ever solved? Michael Jackson--he gets off. O.J. That's American justice, and the woman is criticizing us?
There's one final note to this story. Dompig also said that Natalee and her friends partied so hard that the hotel where they stayed declared them persona non grata for future trips. I'm not a bit surprised. Ours is the only Western country that has a drinking age of 21, and whose government spends hundreds millions of dollars to tell young people not to have sex unti marriage or horrible things will happen to them. When you bring Natalee and her friends up in that environment, then drop them in a place with different rules, what on Earth do you expect to happen? Morning prayer services on Manchebo Beach?