Aruban authorities have dispatched a prosecutor to consult with the FBI and brought in experts from the Netherlands as they investigate the disappearance of an Alabama teenager, the Aruban prosecutor’s office said Monday.
Aruba has agreed to show transcripts of interrogations to the FBI, which is acting in an advisory role in disappearance of Natalee Holloway, in a sign of increased cooperation that drew praise from the family of the teen who vanished on the last night of a high school graduation trip to the Dutch Caribbean island.
No one has been charged in the case. Joran van der Sloot, a 17-year-old son of a judge in training on the island, has been detained as a suspect.
Four experts from the Netherlands came to the Dutch Caribbean island to assist with interrogations, while two members of the team investigating the Holloway case traveled to the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Va., the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Aruba said.
The FBI has also collected a sample of hair found on duct tape along the shore of the island for a DNA analysis.
Holloway, 18, disappeared May 30, hours before she was to catch a return flight to Mountain Brook, Alabama, at the end of a trip with 124 classmates. Extensive searches of the island have failed to find a trace of her.
Her mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, said the reward for information leading to her safe return had been increased to $1 million, from $200,000.
