Natalee Holloway's disappearance in Aruba 10 years ago remains a mystery after prosecutors there said the "crawlspace" where a recent eyewitness report said her body was hidden by Joran van der Sloot didn't exist at the time.
Jurrien de Jong, who said he did not speak up at the time because he was involved in "illegal activity," told
Inside Edition earlier this month that he saw Holloway running from Joran van der Sloot into an unfinished building and then saw van der Sloot with the Alabama teenager's lifeless body.
"I saw Natalee Holloway on the last night she was alive. I was the eyewitness,"
de Jong said in the "Inside Edition" interview. "I saw that Joran was chasing Natalee into a small building under construction. In about five minutes he came out with Natalee in his arms, and slammed the body of Natalee on the floor, and then he made an opening in a crawl space . . . I knew she was dead."
De Jong's claims renewed interest in Holloway's 2005 disappearance while van der Sloot sits in a prison in Peru convicted in the 2010 murder of a young woman there. The case has been featured on national newscasts for the past two weeks, including a
CNN news investigation in Aruba with de Jong.
Prosecutors, though, doubt de Jong's story, saying his description of events and the construction schedule of the building he was referring to, Spyglass Tower of the Marriott Hotel, do not match,
according to AL.com.
"From (construction) information, it becomes indisputably clear that on the 30th of May 2005, no construction or building activities were started at the location that Mr. de Jong has specifically pointed out as the spot where Natalee Holloway would have been hidden and/or buried,'' said Ann Angela, a spokeswoman for Aruba chief prosecutor Eric Olthof.
"This leads to the conclusion that the claims made by Mr. de Jong of what he saw on the night of 30th of May 2005, cannot be correct, and that his testimony, considering the afore-mentioned, does not add to the solving of this case,'' said Angela.
T.J. Ward, a private investigator hired by Natalee Holloway's father Dave Holloway, told AL.com he believes de Jong is telling the truth based on a voice analysis.
Van der Sloot attorney Maximo Altez slammed de Jong's testimony, telling London's
Daily Mail that "Joran doesn't care at all about what is going on in Aruba, because none of it is true."
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