Lunatic in the Netherlands takes whole "pitfall" idea a little too far

(photo: traugott/ De Telegraaf)
Some lunatic has been digging pits in a Dutch forest and lining them with spikes.

International Herald Tribune story.

A passer-by alerted police after finding a pit 1.5 meters (5 feet) deep and 80 centimeters (2 1/2 feet) wide in Helden's Forest near the southern city of Venlo on Sunday.

It had been camouflaged with leaves and at the bottom were 25 steel spikes ranging from 15-30 centimeters (6-12 inches) in length, fixed in a concrete block, police spokeswoman Nicole Theun said.

"We've never seen anything like this before — I don't think anybody in the Netherlands has," Theun said. "It's out of a horror movie."

-Associated Press



According to De Telegraaf (Dutch), a month ago a man was injured by a similar trap.

The paper quotes an expert as saying "this must be the work of a psychopath."

"This is not a joke any more _ children could fall into this," said Cees Meijer of Consumers and Safety.

Put yourself in the mind of the person(s) that did this for a minute: if he were targeting someone in particular, he had a very small chance of actually getting him or her in this way, so that can't be the aim.

If he was targeting a class of people: why? In any case it couldn't be bikers or motorcyclists, as some Dutch media have suggested, because if they rode into the pit, they'd just be thrown over the handlebars.

If it's just a joke, it has obviously gone too far.

In every scenario, it's an insane amount of work and planning to fix the spikes in concrete, lug it out there, dig a pit that deep, and then cover it up.

The chance of getting caught would be much less if he would just go shoot random people in the woods...



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Work supercedes Blog

(I had to pull my earlier post because it seemed like a conflict of interest for me to put the photos on my site while it's not clear who owns the copyright to them and they are newsworthy. Hopefully I'll restore it when this is "old news" again.)

AP story on Joran van der Sloot

Screen grabs of the incident are available on Francisco van Jole's flickr feed:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fvjole/2188558424/in/photostream/

The film (in Dutch) is on:

http://www.novatv.nl/

Watch minutes 3-4.

Van der Sloot's mother was left to try to smooth things over:

Corrie Gerritsma http://www.camathome.com/



For a nice website on evidence in the Holloway case without any nutso raving, I recommend:

http://www.hollowaycase.com/


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Joran van der Sloot loses temper after Dutch TV interview

(photos are copyrighted by francisco van jole, at full resolution on his Flickr feed http://www.flickr.com/photos/fvjole/2187264074/in/photostream/)

Friday night was supposed to be Joran van der Sloot's "final" goodbye interview with the Dutch press. He appeared with both his parents and left most of the talking to them. Nothing much interesting was said, or done, until the moment the "live" cameras stopped rolling.

Then, Joran threw his glass of wine in the face of one of the show's other guests, crime reporter Peter R. De Vries.

De Vries had zeroed in on several uncomfortable inconsistencies in Joran's story, and hammered on him being a liar. Of course Joran himself has admitted he lied to police in the early part of the investigation into Natalee Holloway's disappearance, but it apparently angered him to have his nose rubbed in it.

For background, De Vries is known in the Netherlands as kind of a real life "Tintin." He has a TV show where he cracks cases where the police have given up or failed. He went to Aruba to solve the Holloway's disappearance, but didn't unearth much new.

He does say he believes Van der Sloot knows what happened to Natalee.

An eyewitness account of the incident:
"There really wasn't very much discussion, because De Vries wasn't given any room for it by the hosts.
"Joran presented himself very calmly, but apparently he was boiling with rage within and couldn't control himself."
...
(after the wine was thrown:) Panic. De Vries yelled that it was stinging his eyes, his wife went to get water. Joran disappeared quickly from the studio with his father, and the audience was saying 'ooh' and 'aah' and 'why on earth'?"

Van der Sloot's mother was left to try to smooth things over:
(Quotes and photo from Corrie Gerritsma http://www.camathome.com/ but it's Dutch language; http://www.flickr.com/photos/camathome/2185737245/ for full resolution. De Vries is on far left.)

NOS news interviewed De Vries about the incident.

"This says something about Joran of course...he can't doesn't have complete control over his behavior. His parents did their best during the program to underline that he had manners, that he treated girls properly, and that there are some things that he really wouldn't do. Now, this is something that if you had asked them before the show, they probably would have said, 'my child wouldn't do that'."

Joran declined to be interviewed about the incident.

"His mother of course, looked very foolish. She had just done her best to protect him, to portray him as a well-raised boy; and at the moment that he does something like that, all their efforts are negated in an instant."
-De Vries.



De Vries was strongest when questioning why Joran decided to lie, and co-ordinate a lie, with his friends, from the very start.


Again, for a nice website on evidence in the Holloway case without any nutso raving, I recommend:

http://www.hollowaycase.com/


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Van der Sloot, Kalpoe Brothers, Holloway and Libel

(photo: billpstudios. View from the Marriott hotel over the beach in Aruba).


****UPDATE 12/29: After some looking around, I realize the information Joran gave DAG is already certainly publicized elsewhere. The question of whether prosecutors can libel suspects is for me still unresolved, but for a complete list of all evidence in the Van der Sloot case and a thoughtful analysis (without all the nonsense), I recommend the following site:

http://www.hollowaycase.com/

In other words, I wouldn't bother reading this post, but I'm not deleting it for archeological reasons...

Prosecutors closed their investigation into the 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba this month without filing any charges. They said the trio of former suspects, Joran van der Sloot and the brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe _ the last three people seen with her before she evaporated _ remain "persons of interest" in what is now a cold case.

All say they are innocent of any wrongdoing.

On Christmas Eve, an expansive interview with Van der Sloot was published in the Dutch newspaper "DAG." Although he said he no longer wishes to discuss the case with prosecutors or the U.S. press, DAG's reporter got access presumably because he trusted her: she has written a book about the Holloway case, a book which has Van der Sloot's approval (he wrote the forward to it).

In that interview, he said one thing about prosecutor's evidence that I don't think has quite come out before.

"There was also a new witness: a girlfriend of one of the three suspects. She said that a little more than five hours after the disappearance, she was called by one of the three suspects with the information that 'something bad' happened that he couldn't talk about over the phone. It appeared that didn't concern Van der Sloot but Satish and Deepak. Van der Sloot: 'That wasn't any new evidence against me. It concerned a tapped conversation between Satish and his girlfriend from Suriname, in which he so-called* told her that something bad happened and that Deepak supposedly said the girl was dead'."

-DAG newspaper Dec. 24, 2007.
*[Dutch: 'waarin hij haar zogenaamd vertelt'. 'Zogenaamd' is bad Dutch, it must mean 'supposedly' or 'allegedly' so I use "so-called" to capture the nuance. In addition, I think that by 'tapped,' Van der Sloot must mean that the call was registered by the phone company. There wouldn't have been a tap on Satish's phone 5 hours after the disappearance. It's also clear because if it were actually tapped there would be no question about what was said.]

CNN interviewed Arbua prosecutor Hans Mos, who said the following:

"Other evidence against the three included two new witness statements. In one, a female friend told authorities that one suspect called her about five hours after Holloway was last seen leaving an Oranjestad, Aruba, nightclub with van der Sloot and the Kalpoes.
The female friend said that she could tell during the conversation that something was wrong, Mos said. When she asked about it, the suspect -- whom Mos did not name -- told her that "he didn't want to cause her any trouble, and that what had happened couldn't be discussed over the phone," he said."

-CNN, Dec. 21, 2007.

What's interesting is that Mos deliberately didn't mention which suspect it was on the phone. Why not?

In the absence of any charges against the former suspects, would it have been libelous? As a reporter I know that certain speech (during a trial or on the floor of parliament) is absolutely "privileged" and you can repeat it without fear of libel no matter what is said.

But I don't think that a prosecutors' press conferences fall under that category. So Mos probably had to watch his step a little bit _ by his own admission, there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute anybody.

Van der Sloot told DAG he's considering suing Aruban Justice.

In any case Mos did the same thing _ not naming exactly which suspect was intended _ when discussing the other witness statement.

"A second witness statement came from a teacher who said that another one of the suspects exhibited "very peculiar behavior" the day after Holloway's disappearance, including making or receiving a lot of telephone calls, Mos said."

-CNN

Again, no specificity as to which.
(elisart: aruban cactus)

(photo: elisart)


Now, Van der Sloot may not know it, but by repeating what the prosecutors told him during interrogation, perhaps he was slandering the Kalpoe brothers?

And perhaps DAG opened itself up to libel charges by printing what he said?

And perhaps I'm doing the same by reprinting it here?

I'm not too worried because in all situations, truth is a defense against libel, and as long as the prosecutors/Van der Sloot/Dag have it right about those phone calls, as incriminating as they sound, no problem.

If they got it wrong _ well, I guess nobody can call my raising the point in this context a "reckless disregard for the truth." Van der Sloot is a pretty well-placed source in this story.

The Oracle of Amsterdam says: unless there is an unprompted but credible confession, AND a body is found, the Holloway case will never be resolved.

(elisart)
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't Zandt pyromaniac / We didn't start the fire

(philippe bunge)

I'm usually not a big one for media criticism, because _ well, because of the famous relationship between glass houses & stones.

But today I wanted to make an exception. Here are three headlines from the Dutch news about the arrest of a suspect in 18 arsons in a podunk town up north called "'t Zandt." Nobody has been hurt, by the way, but the hunt for the culprit has been a top ten story in Dutch press for a month now.

Dutchies: Spot the hidden assumption....

105 Teletekst wo 19 dec
***************************************
Pyromaan van 't Zandt aangehouden

***************************************
=Pyromaniac from 't Zandt arrested

RTL Nieuws
't Zandt opgelucht na arrestatie pyromaan
='t Zandt relieved after arrest of pyromaniac

And just in case you thought I was a completely uncritical fan of GeenStijl, I have to say I object to their approach:

Is dit de pyromaan uit het 't Zandt?
=Is this the pyromaniac from 't Zandt?

Now, while I am all for naming suspects when they can be identified (and not just using their initials as per Dutch media rules) I am firmly opposed to convicting suspects in the headline!
Maybe this guy will turn out to be guilty _ but it's a little early, folks.

The GeenStijl tack is especially weak because they're trying to dodge responsibility for calling him a 'pyromaniac' by merely phrasing it as a question _ and then then they link to a broadcast in which the suspect is shown, with his full name printed.

I mean, either I.D. him or don't. This is not the bold GeenStijl we know and love.

(ben morson)



For balance, an English language story that I saw on Google's most popular that made my toenails flip backwards.

(CNN) -- Parents are struggling with what to tell their children after finding out that Britney Spears' younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, is pregnant.

Attn: CNN: on behalf of at least some parents, and I'm pretty sure most parents, I'd like to say:

"Wij ons niet herkennen in dit verhal"

That means, this doesn't really apply, since neither me or my kids knew of the existence of someone called Jamie Lynn Spears, nor her pregnancy, until seeing this story.
Now that I know, I'm not really struggling with how to tell my children. I'm perfectly content not to tell them. I suppose that on the off chance they asked me about it, I'd say: Jamie Lynn Spears had sex, and didn't use birth control, or didn't use it correctly.

Any other questions, kids?


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Yellow Journalism, Blue World

"Police in the Dutch city of Eindhoven have arrested a man suspected of attempting to defraud the parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann.
The 39-year-old man, whose name was not released, allegedly pretended to know that Madeleine had been kidnapped and to know the whereabouts of her and her abductors. He demanded a payment of US$2.7 million in return for the information, a prosecution statement said.
After his arrest on Wednesday, the man confessed to making the whole story up, and there is no evidence he was involved in her abduction or has any actual information about her whereabouts, prosecutors said."

-Associated Press


This is one of the less pleasant parts of my job.



We the media have a role to play in helping get the word out when, say, a dangerous criminal is on the loose, or, as in this case, when a little girl has been kidnapped.

And no one would say that the McCann family doesn't have the right to attempt to do everything they can to keep their daughter's case in the public eye.

But in the absence of any news in the case, there's an amazing amount of pressure for us to write up any kind of incremental development, even when it doesn't add anything to 'what we know' that might help locate the girl.

This helps paint a more complete, if dreary picture of our world: an unemployed guy in Eindhoven is willing to try to defraud desperate parents. Are we surprised? Disappointed? You (I) wonder how that guy can look at himself in the mirror _ but of course, you (I) have no idea what his story is, so we're not sitting in judgment. Or are we?

***

On a lighter note, I was contacted by a British tabloid (NOT the one in the story link) that was trying to find a freelance gumshoe willing to go out and find out the scammer's name and story. You know, go fishing around the unemployment office to find out more about him, maybe knock on his parents' door to ask for a picture.

That's the kind of bottom feeding attitude that I love (no sarcasm here) about the British press.

Did anybody hear the story about how they set up the country's national soccer coach to believe he was being offered $billions$ to coach a Saudi soccer team? Flew him in a private jet, champagne and caviar, etc. _ all just to get him to divulge any little gossip about his players?

*That's* dedication...
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