The ten day evidence cleansing.

An essay by Sam Redman

Many people commented publicly about the ten day delay before the arrest of Joran and the Kalpoes. Even the news wags (like Nancy Grace, Greta, O'Reilly and Scarborough) talked about how, during this time, the "suspects" must have totally sanitized and cleaned their vehicles and their homes, stripping away all evidence of the crime, which according to their judgmental perspective, they most surely committed. These commentators (those who would have convicted these three without a shred of evidence) said that this ten day "delay" is why the case could not be solved.

If that amazing "sanitizing" had taken place, these guys have figured out (evidently, quite by accident or just dumb luck or genius) how to beat the very latest in forensic investigative techniques. Microscopic evidence of blood traces in vehicles, which have been totally cleansed with bleach, are found even years later. Ten days? They were not seen by anyone cleaning their vehicles (although there was witness rumored to a cleaning of the car on the night of the disappearance, but he never materialized). They were not seen purchasing cleaning chemicals. Luminol tests as well as microscopic vacuuming of the vehicle and the homes showed absolutely nothing. These prosecutors and the Aruban investigators would have given all they had to have cracked this career making case. They spared no tool after the arrest to discover even the tiniest fiber evidence. The FBI assisted in every step of all of the searches. The finest forensic laboratory in the world (well, maybe, second only to the FBI) located in the Netherlands studied everything which was microvacuumed from homes and the vehicles. Nothing at was found which would have indicated that a crime occurred, much less the culpability of the "suspects," who for all we knew simply had the misfortune of escorting a young gal around the island on her last night in Aruba.

If you have the pleasure of getting ID TV channel, you may have seen a series called Forensic Files. It is very interesting and nightly you will see case after case solved years later from studying locations which were thought to have been cleaned up by the perpetrators of crimes. The methods today are just too sophisticated to escape detection by using only the crude methods for cleaning which would have been known and available to the likes of Joran and the Kalpoes (or their families).

If these three amateurs figured out how to clean up a crime scene they have mastered the best that modern forensic science has to offer. Highly unlikely.

I don't think those ten days (in which they were followed and monitored, incidentally) had anything to do with Natalee's disappearance. That doesn't mean they are innocent, however, because Natalee could have died (accidently or otherwise) and the body could have been taken out to sea or put into a plastic bag and then into a freezer at some friends house and later disposed in any backyard in one of many neighborhoods (or any other of a thousand similar scenarios). If they are guilty or if they are innocent, I am sure they did nothing during those ten days or the police would have caught them, which is why that oft criticized method produced nothing.