In an Internet chat shortly after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Natalee Holloway on Aruba, one of the three main suspects in the case said the Alabama teenager was dead, the island's chief public prosecutor told on Thursday.
Natalee Holloway disappeared while on vacation in Aruba with classmates in 2005.
1 of 2 The chat, retrieved from a computer hard disk, was among new evidence prosecutors used to justify re-arresting the three in November, Hans Mos said.
New technology that was not available to authorities in 2005 was utilized to find that chat and more between two of the three suspects as well as others, he said.
Judges, however, ruled the new evidence was not enough to keep the suspects -- Joran van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe -- behind bars. Mos' office said Tuesday they will not prosecute the three in Holloway's disappearance.
But his office also said the case is not closed, rather that it has now entered "a new phase" with four Aruba detectives still working on it, looking for new evidence.
In the chat one of the suspects said, "The fact that she's dead is not good," referring to Holloway.
Other chats occurring before May 30 were also found, in which the suspects discussed "picking up American girls and what they plan to do with them," Mos said. Such chats gave authorities an idea of how the suspects operated, he said.
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