Aruba Halts Ocean Search For Holloway Remains

Police found nothing but rocks and coral while searching underwater for the remains of missing U.S. teen Natalee Holloway, the Aruba prosecutors' office said Thursday.

Police dove several times on Wednesday and Sunday after an American couple turned over an underwater photo of what they believed might have been her remains, said spokeswoman Ann Angela. The couple were diving while on vacation in Aruba last year.

Divers didn't find any items in the photo, Angela said.

"We looked at it seriously," she said. "It did not prove successful."

The 18-year-old from Mountain Brook, Alabama, disappeared while on vacation in Aruba in 2005 and was last seen leaving a bar with Joran van der Sloot on the final night of a high school graduation trip.

Van der Sloot has been detained several times, but Aruban prosecutors say they lack evidence to charge him.

Police believe the couple from Manheim, Pennsylvania, likely zoomed in on some coral, giving the impression that it might have been a skull and bones, Angela said.

The search was one of many launched to find Holloway.

One The Web:

Photo of Holloway's Remains?

Reuter's; BBC; AP.

Report: Holloway Suspect Involved in Thai Sex Trafficking

A suspect in the 2005 disappearance of an Alabama teen in Aruba is involved in selling Thai women into prostitution, a Dutch TV reporter claims.

Reporter Peter De Vries has made a second hidden-camera expose on Dutch student Joran Van der Sloot, who was believed to be with Natalee Holloway when she vanished while on a senior trip to Aruba. De Vries won an Emmy this year for another report on Van Der Sloot, 21, in which the student admits to dumping Holloway's body after she suddenly began shaking and died as they were kissing.

De Vries' latest report, which was shown Sunday night on Dutch television, shows Van der Sloot telling someone posing as a sex-industry boss that he can get passports for Thai women and girls who think they are going to the Netherlands to work as dancers, DutchNews.nl reported.

Van der Sloot makes about $13,000 for every woman sold into prostitution in the Netherlands, De Vries claims.

The pictures show how little respect this 21-year-old has for the lives of others, De Vries told a Dutch newspaper. The fact that he goes into the trafficking of women after the disappearance of Natalee is typical of him.

In February, judges rejected an attempt to arrest Van der Sloot for a third time in her disappearance. He was released due to insufficient evidence the first two times he was arrested.

Aruban prosecutors had sought to detain him based on hidden-camera recordings captured by a Dutch TV crime show. In the video, Van der Sloot said Holloway collapsed on the beach after they left the bar and he called a friend to dump her body at sea.

Joseph Tacopina, a lawyer for student Van der Sloot, said in February that his client was not responsible for the Alabama teen's death and that the tapes did not amount to a confession.

"There was no confession, no admission of a crime by Joran on any of these tapes, which is very telling," Tacopina said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

LISA

DutchNews.nl