Natalee Holloway's Father Hopes for the Best

ByABC News via logo
April 10, 2006, 8:46 AM

April 10, 2006— -- It has been almost a year since Natalee Holloway vanished from her spring break trip in Aruba. Since then, her parents, Beth Twitty and Dave Holloway, have struggled to keep her name in the news.

Holloway has released a book called "Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise."

He said that when he first arrived on the island, he stopped at two police stations to inquire about his daughter's disappearance and was asked for money.

"The detective in charge, the first question he asked me was how much money I had," he said. "I was in a state of shock. We finally gathered ourselves together and met with him and decided that we probably would be doing this search on our own."

Natalee Holloway was captured on video last May at an Aruban casino, sitting and drinking with a group of young people, including Joran van der Sloot. Van der Sloot, a Dutch teen, told ABC News he left the casino with Natalee that night and spent time alone with her on the beach.

When Natalee wasn't on the flight home, her mother flew to Aruba to search for her. In the next few months, Aruban police took a number of men into custody, including van der Sloot and his father, Paulus van der Sloot. All were eventually released because of a lack of evidence.

Last October, Dave Holloway journeyed to Aruba to search the waters offshore, but found nothing. He said that unraveling the mystery of his daughter's disappearance was like trying to figure out a crossword puzzle.

"I have a lot of information in this book. Hopefully someone will read it and get some answers," he said.

Holloway's ex-wife, Beth Twitty, has said that she has accepted the fact that her daughter has died, but Holloway has not been able to come to that place.

"As a parent, you hold out hope that maybe -- look at this investigation and you look how it has gone, maybe they are wrong," he said. "You really have to look at what the FBI has said. They told us about the 10th day in that Natalee was probably not with us."

Holloway said there had been no substantial developments in the case except that the police and Dutch authorities had cleared the sand dunes to look for new evidence. The FBI is also requestioning Natalee's classmates from Alabama.