What Natalee Holloway's Friends Have To Say About Her Disappearance.

At night everyone got really dressed up to have dinner at the Aruba Holiday Inn , and afterward people would go to Carlos'n Charlie's. 

It was your average beach bar; everybody mixed together, American kids and Arubans.
The Aruba Holiday Inn had a casino that they all went to the last night of the trip. 

Her friends found out after Natalee disappeared that Joran was a regular gambler there. 

Her friend Claire left, and Natalee went to Carlos'n Charlie's with some of the others.
The next morning Natalee's roommate and another friend noticed Natalee was missing and told some of the police stationed around the hotel.

Claire said as she was boarding the plane to leave Aruba, two of our friends ran up and said, 

"Natalee's not on the plane! 

We don't know where she is!" 

She said she thought that Natalee's might still be lying on the beach.

But by the time she landed in Atlanta, her dad called her and said,

                              "things aren't looking good."

Her fried Mallie said,

"We knew in our gut it was Joran. 

We just knew."

While the students were returning to Birmingham, Natalee's mother, Beth, talked to one of the boys who'd been on the trip.

She learned that he'd seen Natalee with van der Sloot on the last night. 

Beth was in Aruba and got the address of Joran's house.

She was standing outside the gates when she called Natalee's friends, who were gathered at Claire's house.

They put her on speakerphone and Beth said, 

"Kids, I need more details!" 

Anyone who had seen Joran in Aruba shouted whatever information they had. 

Beth pleaded to be let in the house so she could talk face-to-face with Joran,

Leaning into the speakerphone in Claire's living room, her friends were all screaming.

All of Natalee's friends thought that he was keeping her in his house.

Claire said,

"We were enraged Beth wasn't being let in. 

We were pacing the room and freaking out. 

Here is a mother in crisis, and if nobody will let her in the house…well, something is really suspicious! 

We knew in our gut that Joran was behind her disappearance.

 By now we knew from talking to other kids who'd been on the trip that Joran was a regular at the casino, and that Natalee had left Carlos'n Charlie's in the backseat of a car with him. 

Nobody would let Beth into the house. 

It just added up. 

He'd done something bad to her—we didn't know what, but we knew it was him."

On June 9, van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, who had been in the car with him and Natalee, were detained as part of the investigation.

The Kalpoe brothers were released on July 4, but van der Sloot was still being detained.

Searches for Natalee continued that summer, but with no results. Van der Sloot was released from custody on September 3 for lack of evidence.

In November 2007,van der Sloot was taken into custody again, as were the Kalpoe brothers, for "suspicion of involvement in voluntary manslaughter." 

But the prosecutors did not present enough evidence to charge them, and all three were released.

Mallie said,

"I used wine to hide my feelings from myself. I drank and drank. Numbness was what I was after."

Claire said she had horrible anxiety.

"I was afraid of parking my car in the dark. 

I would fly out of the car and into the house."

In March 2008 a Dutch journalist had taped van der Sloot saying that he had seen Natalee die on an Aruban beach.

All of Natalee's friends got together to watch the video on TV.

Claire said,

"There were 12 of us in our friends' basement, watching Joran saying 'of course' Natalee was dead. 

Did we believe it? 

Yes."

Mallie said, 

"We never spoke of Natalee anymore. 

She'd not only disappeared from our lives, she disappeared altogether."

Where do they think Natalee's body is?

They won't even talk about it.

Natalee Holloway