Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Dream-Vacay-Turned-Nightmare: American mom missing in Belize
Episode Date: April 16, 202043-year-old Alison MacKenzie vanishes while on vacation with her boyfriend in Belize. MacKenzie's boyfriend, Paige Rote, reported her missing after waking and realizing she was gone. Searches were con...ducted and multiple theories about her disappearance have surfaced. What happened to Alison MacKenzie?Joining Nancy Grace today: Darryl Cohen, Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney Bruce Johnson - Owner of ISP Investigations-Master Sgt Region One Crime Scene Commander, Chicago Metro Area (Ret) Joseph Scott Morgan - Forensic Expert, Professor of Forensics, Author of "Blood Beneath My Feet" Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, Beverly Hills Levi Page - Investigative reporter CrimeOnline Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hi guys, Nancy Grace here.
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Goodbye, friend.
Keep the faith. Why do so many U.S. women, beautiful young ladies, go on a vacation and never come home?
Why does that keep happening?
We all know about Natalie Holloway.
You may have heard of Robin Gardner.
They go to Aruba.
They never come back. But have
you heard of this young woman, Allison McKenzie? A brunette beauty goes missing off Belize, and
I've noticed that nobody's covering it. Allison McKenzie, in my mind, is dead. What happened in Belize? What are the Belize police, the law enforcement,
they're doing about it, if anything?
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace this is Crime Stories thank you for being
with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111 the Triumph Channel not only do they go missing
it gets buried we never hear a thing about it. But I'm very curious.
What, if anything, are local police doing about it?
Take a listen to our friends at News 5.
This is Anja Polanco.
An immediate search for Mackenzie on Rendezvous Quay didn't turn up anything.
The authorities were called in that same morning.
The Belize Coast Guard searched the area, but Mackenzie was nowhere to be found over the weekend.
Al's search efforts today proved futile.
Since Saturday, we've deployed one unit, a boat and a crew,
and they've been doing searches in the area of Rendezvous Key,
English Key, Midland Quay, which those are the surrounding
areas in the area of Rendezvous.
Also, this morning, we had the assistance of the BDF air wing who conducted flyovers
in the area to see if we can spot something from the air.
However, we have not come up with anything.
Okay, that was a local island reporter and local law enforcement.
But I've been studying the case very carefully.
And so far, I alone at thousands of miles distance have come up with three different stories
people have told about what happened to this Arizona mom, Allison McKenzie.
They can't even nail down a timeline? Big, big problems with the investigation. Let's introduce
our guests. An all-star panel joining me today. Daryl Cohen, former prosecutor, now defense
attorney in the Atlanta jurisdiction. Bruce Johnson, owner of ISP Investigations,
former Chicago Metro scene commander.
Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics,
Jacksonville State University,
author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon.
Dr. Bethany Marshall joining us from Beverly Hills.
You can find her at drbethanymarshall.com.
But first, to CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Levi Page. Levi, I don't get it. She disappears.
I got three conflicting stories that she's on a catamaran. I mean, here you go. This is their
official missing persons doc. And it says that she's last seen on a catamaran tour with Ragamuffin Tours.
That suggests to me that she's out on a catamaran.
She couldn't have been by herself with Ragamuffin Tours.
That's what that suggests.
Then I hear she was out walking along the beach at 2 o'clock in the morning.
I find that really hard to believe.
And then I hear sheclock in the morning. I find that really hard to believe. And then I hear she
was in a tent. I'm hearing all sorts of stories, but let's just start at the beginning.
How do we think she went missing? Let's just start with her in the U.S. Okay. She decides to take a
vacation and it's going to be an extended vacation, a couple of months. She's really seeing it all.
And just so you know, FYI, Levi, that's what I'm planning to do this summer.
Not months, but a couple of weeks with the children in an RV.
We're going to Mount Rushmore, whether anybody wants to or not.
I'm seeing Mount Rushmore.
Did you see National Treasure?
I think that's the name of it.
And there was a giant treasure behind one of the noses, Mount Rushmore. Did you see National Treasure? I think that's the name of it. And there was a
giant treasure behind one of the noses, Mount Rushmore. We're going there. So it's not that
hard to imagine she's going to be gone for a while. But tell me about Allison McKenzie. What
do I know about her? She's 43 years old and she is from Prescott, Arizona. She's the mom of two
adult children, adult females.
And she vanished in Belize while on vacation with her boyfriend.
And she got to Belize in December and was planning on staying until around May 5th.
And her family says that she and her boyfriend were planning on buying property in southern Belize.
Interesting. I wonder if they were going to move there or build a vacation home there.
What does she do for a living? What do we know about her?
When you say adult, the woman has just basically turned 40.
Her children can't, her two daughters can't be that old.
But she goes there, and we know the boyfriend was in his tent at night.
So let's talk about why was she going there? Did you say they're looking at
buying property, building a home, buying an existing home? What do we know about that?
We know that she was going to, looking into her and her boyfriend were looking into
buying property in Southern Belize. I want you to take a listen now to, you just heard our friends
at News 5 there in Belize.
Take a listen again, this time to Andrea Polanco.
While police reports say that Mackenzie was last seen around 10 on Friday night,
her family claims that they've received information that she was seen going into her tent around 2.30 on Saturday morning.
According to police, Mackenzie was drinking that night.
Other reports say that Mackenzie didn't appear to be
her usual self. So what happened on Rendezvous Quay? Did Mackenzie go for a night swim and got
swept away? Or did something more sinister happen on the sandy beaches of this idyllic quay?
Information is that she was drinking on Friday night. Sir, is there anything to suspect that something went wrong or foul play
on the island? Investigators at the island and searches are being conducted to find out
what are the circumstances that led to her disappearance. At this time, there's not
that much to go on. Okay, right, there's not much to go on.
Okay, right there, I'm already getting another story.
The flyer says she was last seen on a catamaran tour.
And we all know what a catamaran is.
It's kind of, I take it to be like a pontoon boat.
Is that how you see it, Joe Scott Morgan?
They go really slowly.
It's not like a speedboat it's um have you ever been to disney and they
take you on the pirates of the caribbean tour it's going about one mile an hour that's what i
think it's nothing like that i've actually been on catamaran before and it has kind of a big
canvas area in the center between these two outrigger pontoons like you mentioned it's
generally driven by a sail and it might have a motor on it as well but it doesn't go too terribly
fast and it's kind of stable in these waters interesting that everybody in her family says
she's not a drinker not just one person in her family but everybody in her family says she's not a drinker so i'm hearing she's out
on the catamaran tour i hear she went in her tent two o'clock in the morning i'm also hearing she's
walking along the beach that she's quote acting erratically right there to dr bethany marshall
why is it always the woman who ends up dead or missing is acting erratically?
Just another crazy woman, right?
I don't like it.
Nancy, I was just, you took the question right out of my mouth.
I was thinking, why are victims re-victimized again and again?
The stories I always hear are, she's a sex worker.
She got drunk.
She was dressed inappropriately.
She was out till three in the morning.
All of these stories. What about painting an accurate picture, which is she's a beautiful woman.
If you've seen her picture full of life going down to Belize, wanting to buy a vacation home, potentially maybe wanting to bring her grown children there.
And she was enjoying life and it was snatched away in some way.
I don't know if she's alive or dead or what's going on,
but this whole experience was snatched away.
And I think it's unfortunate that in the press,
they keep talking about her being inebriated.
According to her sister and her grown daughter,
they never, ever saw her drunk, ever.
And I do know that they serve rum drinks on these trips.
I mean, that's sort of a Caribbean-type drink,
but that doesn't mean she overindulged in it.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we are talking about the disappearance of a young American mom, Allison McKenzie.
We've already gotten, at quite a distance, several thousand miles away, have discerned that there are three, at least three stories circulating about her disappearance.
Some of them seem to indicate it's somehow her fault that she was drinking.
We know for a fact she was not a drinker.
So what happened to Allison McKenzie?
Take a listen now to News 5 Belize.
Did she seem sad? Did she seem maybe overly excited?
What was she showing?
I would say kind of erotic, erroneously.
And this is what we received after gathering information from the tour guys who were out there along with them.
Have you gathered anything as to maybe
her her state was she in a depressed state any at all so far we have not received them that kind
of information it's been two days since Mackenzie disappeared without a trace she's a resident of
Prescott Arizona and a mom of two girls she and her boyfriend Paige Roth arrived in Belize in
December 2019 they were scheduled to return home in May of this year.
Mackenzie's family in the USA is pleading for help.
Her mom, Sheree Mackenzie, wrote on Facebook,
quote, everyone everywhere, I'm asking for your help.
We've received three different stories about what happened that morning,
none of them consistent with the others.
Well, the mom is right. Three
stories is exactly what I've got. Why don't they just come on out and say it? Joe Scott Morgan,
she's hysterical. That's normally the phrase that they describe women who go missing and they can't
find them or won't find them. Somehow it's the woman's fault because she's hysterical. That is not true. This woman
had no history whatsoever of hysterics of any type of emotional or mental problems. As a matter of
fact, she's down there looking for a second property. This is a responsible mom of two
young ladies. She's not hysterical. She's not drunk. She's not erratic. So why are they saying that?
Well, I don't know.
One account that I had come across, Nancy, actually states that she was going on this trip in order not just to find property, but also to take a break, to find some peace.
Apparently, her father and her stepfather both died last year.
And she had apparently told family members at that moment in time that she was looking for a respite.
So I don't know if that's what the genesis of this is.
I know from an investigative standpoint that they need to stop releasing these narratives
and get to work to try to solve what happened to this woman instead of just speculating all over the place.
Because it drives the story.
Release the narratives.
Well put.
You know, Daryl Cohen, you have been in the business with me
working inner city Atlanta crime for so many years.
That's a very accurate description, just releasing one, quote, narrative,
i.e. story after the next, putting it out there and selling, that's the
truth because it was put out there. That's not true. Do you remember when Julie Love went missing
and everybody, a young preschool teacher, everybody started suspecting her boyfriend?
I went and had more than one conversation with the elected DA, Mr. Slayton, about indicting the boyfriend.
He wouldn't do it. Said it wasn't time yet. He was right because it turned out to be someone
completely unconnected to her that killed her. My point is you get one narrative after the next,
as Joe Scott puts it, and suddenly somehow that becomes the truth of what happened.
There's no evidence this woman was hysterical, erratic, drunk, nothing like that.
What ends up happening, Nancy, is the press picks up something that they think they can run with, and the story has legs.
But let me throw this out.
It's obvious that she had not been a drinker. So I wonder if she had a drink or two on the catamaran
and because she was not a drinker, it affected her in a very different way, much more strongly
than it would someone who drinks constantly. And I'm wondering if that may have played a part.
Just throwing that out there. Take a listen to what we know regarding her personality. Take a listen to
News 7 Belize. I will say it is not like her to be intoxicated. Maybe have a drink, but to be
intoxicated, like I've never seen her drunk in my life. But when I talked to Ragamuffin Tours,
there was a woman that I spoke to on the phone her name was charlie
and she told me that the um captain of the tour was the last person to see my sister that he that
she was walking on the beach after everybody had gone to bed and which which is not unusual she
absolutely loved the beach um she was afraid to swim in the ocean but she loved the beach. She was afraid to swim in the ocean, but she loved the beach.
And he said that, and this is what the tour lady told me, not the police and not Paige.
He said that the captain walked her back over to her tent and told her that she shouldn't be out at night and, you know, made sure she got back in her tent.
So, and that was supposedly at like 2.30 in the morning.
So that, a report about 10 o'clock at night is confusing to me.
We are hearing various timelines, and if you don't have a timeline nailed down,
you're up the creek without a paddle.
You were not only hearing seven news police reporter Cherise Halshall,
but you were also hearing Allison's own
sister. I'm very curious as to why no one, even in the States, really picked up on Allison's
disappearance. Bruce Johnson, owner of ISP Investigations, why is it that some victims get
so much attention, so much coverage, and others get practically none.
Well, she's getting a lot of attention, as you said, because she's a beautiful woman.
Actually, she's gotten very little attention, Bruce. Natalie Holloway got a ton of attention.
Robin Gardner, not so much. But Allison McKenzie, I bet before you were told about this story that nobody had heard of it.
Before we started investigating this, nobody had even heard of Allison McKenzie.
And I don't understand why that is.
A couple of things they have in their favor.
You know, this was a three-day trip that they were going to.
So they were going to this island for two nights and three days.
So what day or night was it? Was it the first night? Was it
the second night? The second thing is there's only 15 people on this catamaran and the island itself
in the articles, it's only about an acre big. So there's not a lot of area to cover. She was
reported, you know, fairly quickly the next morning, they noticed that she was gone. So there
wasn't a, you know, a five day waiting period or they didn't wait till they got back
from this cruise. So you have a couple of things in your favor. You have people that are on a small
island. There's 15 people. You have the witness account. The last person to see her alive is this
supervisor at two thirty in the morning. And then we want to know, are they in separate tents
or are they, you know, each couple in a tent? Was she in the same tent as her husband or boyfriend?
Really interesting point. I want you to take a listen now to News 5 Belize, Andrea Polcano.
Today, Operations Officer of the Belize Coast Guard, Lieutenant Roque Canul,
confirmed the end of the search. He wrote, quote,
We have now concluded the search mission.
It's five days today and we think that chances of survival is nil.
Our search policy is 72 hours, but we had extended it for another day.
I sympathize with the family, but we had to put a cut off time, end quote.
On Monday, Canul told us that Mackenzie was acting oddly on Friday night before she vanished.
He lamented that authorities weren't called in, which he believed could have prevented this tragedy. I really want to stress on the importance of being attentive from the part of the tour guides.
Okay, so now somehow they're blaming it on the tour guides.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
For those of you just joining us,
we are analyzing the disappearance of another American beauty
who goes missing on a vacation in the Caribbean.
This time, it's Belize.
We've all heard about Natalie Holloway.
Many of us have heard about Robin Gardner.
But this woman, Allison McKenzie, just has turned 40,
and she is looking at an investment property or vacation home there in
Belize and somehow goes missing, never seen again. Now theories are out there that she's really
living secretly on another island. That's not true. That's not true. Let's just nip that in
the bud. That is absolutely not true. Is that Bethany jumping in?
Yes, because another story that always circulates with female victims is that they got sold into the sex trade
or they took off, left their children, left their family, and they're living the life somewhere else.
All these narratives, as Joe Scott Morgan said, you know, I want to say this sounds a little bit like an Agatha Christie.
Have you ever read Agatha Christie? Every single one. All right. There's always a German, an Italian,
a Frenchman, you know, people on a vacation from all over the world. It's a very small group.
And, you know, you look at every single member and you take a look at their history and what
their motivation would be. The story holds here are that we know nothing about the people who were traveling with her.
Who are these people?
Have they been interviewed?
Who's the tour captain?
Let's say somebody is kidnapped off the streets in Chicago, right?
You get the timeline.
You know who that person is.
You know what their relationships are like with their intimates.
You know if somebody was stalking them. You know if they had strange financial arrangements with
somebody or if a spouse or a partner had just taken a life insurance policy out on them.
All of this is missing. We just have three narratives with huge story holes and it's so
frustrating. And in the face of the unknown, we kind of interject all these crazy,
wild fantasies. And that's all we have here are all these wild fantasies.
You know what? You're right. And so often, Dr. Bethany, when a woman goes missing,
usually the perpetrator or someone says, oh, she went off with another man, a boyfriend.
She was tired of her life as a mom or as an office worker.
This woman was already planning to be in the Caribbean for several months, checking out
investment properties. She was already with a boyfriend. She wasn't escaping a marriage or
the boredom of family life. That's not the case. So you can't argue that here. And the suggestion out to Joseph
Scott Morgan, forensics expert, that she's somehow living secretly on another island. What did she do?
Swim there? Yeah. Give me a break. No, that did not happen. Give me a break. And I wanted to go
back to something that Bruce had mentioned just a moment ago. And I think this is critical. He
kind of broke down the setting, if you will. This is a very limited space,
and I'm not trying to diminish the tragedy of this case.
Jackie, how big is Belize? If you could just look that up for me real quick. Go ahead, Joe Scott.
Yeah, this island itself is very self-contained. And again, I'm not trying to diminish the horrible nature of this woman disappearing, but this is a crime scene investigator's dream.
You have a contained area, Nancy.
You've got, you know, Bruce had mentioned this space that they are in where she was last seen is less than an acre, essentially.
I think the thing's only got 10 palm trees on it, and you're completely surrounded by water.
There's only one way to get off the island. minute whoa whoa i've got the authority google country's greatest
length north to south 170 miles its greatest width is 68 miles that's about an hour across
and has over 200 k's or islands right ranging in size from a few hundred feet to 25 miles.
There's no way that she has swam to one of these other islands.
Most of them are only a few hundred feet big.
That's a big working theory right now.
Oh, before I lose this thought, Joe Scott, did you hear the authorities say,
Oh, we had to call off the search.
Why? Why did you have to call off the search?
What else are you doing? Yeah. What else do you have to do? What other dead body are you looking for?
None. Yeah, exactly. And this is one of the problems that we hear over and in these Caribbean
islands like this many, many times, they fall greatly short relative to crumpling processing,
the processing of forensic evidence.
You know, you remember all the controversy over the alleged bones that were found in Aruba, this sort of thing.
And so if you don't get to this point in the early stages of the investigation, the whole thing is blown.
You're right up the creek without a pattern.
And the people, come on, guys.
Who's jumping in?
Daryl, go ahead.
What are you blowing?
She's disappeared.
It's a small island.
She may have swam off.
She may have been thrown off.
Something could have happened.
What are you going to look for?
Daryl, just so you know,
there are people that will remain unnamed, Jackie,
that are laughing right now at what you're saying now.
I know this has been successful for you, whether due to your charm.
This woman did not swim off the island.
She just stopped right there.
No, Nancy.
I'm not saying that.
She was actually afraid.
Did you hear?
She was actually afraid of being in the water.
But I want you to take a listen, Daryl Cohen,
to what we are hearing about another timeline set forth about that night. Take
a listen. Paige Rott reported his girlfriend, Allison McKenzie, 43 years missing. Information
is that they arrived on the island on Friday and were camped in tents. And she was last seen walking around the island around 10 p.m.
On Saturday around 6 a.m.,
Pedro Ratt reported that when he woke up, he could not find his girlfriend.
And he made this report to the boat captain,
who then conducted a search of the island,
and she was not found.
Information is that she was drinking on Friday night.
That's for News 5 Belize.
That was Andrea Polanco speaking to Deputy Head Senior Alberto Romero.
And here we have another timeline.
Have any of you people on the panel right now, I'm not asking you, Dr. Bethany Marshall,
because you're way too glam to rough it.
But aside from Bethany, have any of you people ever camped out?
Let me start with you.
Levi Page, that's a yes, no.
No, I don't like that.
Okay.
I knew that.
I knew that.
I just knew without even asking.
Joe Scott, yes, no.
Yes.
Okay, a man's man bruce johnson yes
no camped out yes daryl cohen now oh that's an iffy one daryl have you camped out it is not the
answer is yes though i prefer a nice motel with a great tv and as much okay i knew you would not
be able to say yes no okay but i don't hold that against you. You know, did you ever argue in front of an appellate court of any type, Daryl?
No.
Okay, because if you had been responsible in the DA's office for legal research and writing appeals,
you would have gone to the Georgia Supremes or the Georgia Court of Appeals,
and they actually have on your lectern red, green, and yellow lights to tell you if you go beyond the
red, they're going to come and make you sit down. A bailiff is standing there to make you sit down,
but I'm not holding the lack of a yes, no answer against you. My point is, how do you sleep on the ground on a rock?
I've camped out many, many times.
How do you sleep through the night?
This guy is saying, I'm not saying he's guilty of murder, but I am saying, how do you let your girlfriend, you know she's out walking on the beach at, I think you said 10 o'clock at night and you wake up at six,
how do you sleep through the night? First of all, in a tent on top of a rock,
because that's where I always end up camping on top of a rock. That's where I'm sleeping.
And you don't notice that the love of your life is gone. I got a problem with that. Jump in,
Bethany. Can I add to that? Okay, if you look
at the picture of this island. I obviously cannot stop you, so go ahead. It's less than an acre.
It's seven or eight beautiful thatched huts, and it looks like they are open to the trade winds.
In other words, when you're sleeping at night, you may have an option to roll like a canvas wall down.
But some people actually just leave those canvas sidewalls up so they can feel the trade winds.
So if she was walking on the beach, not only would the boyfriend have known that she was missing,
but she's going to walk within a few feet of all of these other thatched huts where
people could see her. So there are so many possible eyewitnesses to what happened that
it's inexplicable to me that there are so many different stories. It would be like if somebody,
you know, set up five cots in your backyard and then somebody got up at two in the morning and
started walking around the perimeter of the yard,
well, the other people on the cots are going to feel somebody's presence.
At least somebody there knows what happened.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
I believe Daryl Cohen is about to call Bethany out for not camping out.
But remember, Daryl, when you point the finger, there's three pointing back at you.
Mr. Not likes to stay in a luxury hotel.
But hold on, I think I hear...
Go ahead, you were merely going to what?
I was merely going to point out that Bethany has obviously not seen the old cowboy and Indian movies
where someone would sneak into the village and do whatever dastardly deed and then sneak out.
Okay, we are hearing that Cherie McKenzie stated on Facebook that Rendezvous Island, where the couple stayed that night,
is approximately two acres with, as I think Joe Scott or someone said, 10 palm trees.
The tour the couple took of inaccessible parts of Belize's reef began at Kai Kalker,
ended at D'Ingresia, staying in the inner reef where the water is calm
okay good point jackie thank you for showing that to me so what does that mean in the search for
allison mckenzie i'm still hung up on the boyfriend claiming he sees her walking out on the beach on
the water she's afraid of beach. She won't get in the ocean
at 10 o'clock. He doesn't notice she's not in her tent till 6 a.m. Right. That's eight hours
of not noticing she's missing. This is not the first time an America, young American girl
has gone missing. Let's take a listen to another, a cut from another missing American.
Brand new developments this morning in the case of 35-year-old Robin Gardner,
the American tourist who vanished in Aruba more than a month ago.
The prime suspect in her disappearance and her travel companion, Gary Giordano of Maryland,
remains jailed as his attorney continues to fight for his release.
50-year-old Giordano says it all began as a snorkeling trip in Aruba
with his 35-year-old traveling companion, Robin Gardner.
But it ended with her disappearance and his arrest.
I feel in my heart that something happened at this person's hand.
Gardner's boyfriend fears the worst.
Stateside, the FBI is also involved.
Just over two weeks ago, federal agents scoured Giordano's Maryland home
at the request of the Aruban government.
The pair headed to Aruba after meeting online.
But after Gardner's disappearance, Giordano reportedly stood to gain $1.5 million in insurance money
through a policy he bought specifically for their five-day trip. He apparently tried to cash $1.5 million in insurance money through a policy he bought specifically for their five-day
trip. He apparently tried to cash it in just two days after she went missing. Just so you know,
the boyfriend Giordano has never been convicted in the disappearance of Robin Gardner and maintains
his innocence. She goes to Aruba and goes missing. Now, the big story was that she,
like Allison McKenzie, went into the water and just was never seen again. But it was immediately
pointed out that she had just had her hair done and she, like Dr. Bethany, did not like to rough
it. I believe she just had a perm, Dr. Bethany, and would not go in
the water because it would ruin her hair. I don't know exactly what happens when you have a perm
when you get in the water, but I know this, it's bad, whatever happens. Well, let me tell you,
the one thing that stands out about this story is that he took an insurance policy out on her
before they went on the vacation.
And we always talk about following the money trail.
What were her financial arrangements in her life,
this woman who went missing?
Did her boyfriend take out an insurance policy on her?
How were they going to finance that vacation home
they were gonna buy?
Had they put all of their money
into one bank account together? Was he power of attorney? And now you're talking about Allison McKenzie,
correct? Yes, Allison McKenzie. You're right, following the money trail. But Jackie, let's
hear about another young woman, an American that goes missing in the Caribbean. In 2005,
the 18-year-old from Birmingham, Alabama, vanished from a high school graduation trip to Aruba.
Natalie, in a sense, became America's child.
And Aruba became the center of this international mystery.
She was last seen leaving a popular bar with then 17-year-old Joran Vandersloot.
Joran Vandersloot was not arrested until 10 days after Natalie went missing.
And I think the news media, their involvement, forced this.
International news crews descended on the tiny island nation
as the mystery around Natalie's disappearance became a major story.
The enormous American media pressure is what I think drove the Aruban government
to understand that this case was not the ordinary criminal case.
Vandersloat was never charged.
Joran Vandersloat, the prime suspect, was such a sleaze.
It was clear that he was not telling the truth.
You were hearing from our friends at Fox News, that was Jonathan Siri,
and earlier from CBS, Elaine Quaggiano, the reality is that all of these women allegedly are in or near the water and they just vanish.
These are just three.
This is the tip of the iceberg regarding Americans that go missing while they are on vacation, specifically in the Caribbean.
The reality is Natalie Holloway's body and Robin Gardner's body,
Allison McKenzie's body, have never been found.
We don't know what happened to them.
To CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Levi Page,
what is the latest in the search for these women?
Of course, there's no search going on right now.
Their bodies haven't been found.
In fact, a lot of people have forgotten about the cases.
So Natalie Holloway, Nancy, she was at a bar, Carlos and Charlie's,
and she left with Joran Vandersloot. He was the last person to see her alive on the beach at midnight,
and he told several stories.
He said that he left her there on the beach and he went back home.
He then said that she started convulsing, and then he dumped her body in the ocean.
Then he said that he sold her into sex slavery.
And then he tried to extort her mother, Beth Holloway, saying, I'll tell you where her body is if you give me money.
And when he is finished serving his prison sentence in Peru, he's going to be extradited
to Alabama to face trial on that case. So that case has never been solved. And with Robin Gardner,
she was allegedly snorkeling, according to Gary Giordano, and the current took her away.
But people found him suspicious because he had scratches on him.
He took out a life insurance policy before they went to Aruba.
And there was a civil suit that her family filed against him, and he was found guilty in a wrongful death suit.
But he's never been arrested or convicted for a murder.
Never done.
Jail time maintains his innocence, and suspicions do not a murder conviction make.
Correct.
What is the big difference?
Out to Bruce Johnson, owner of ISP Investigations.
Bruce, the big difference in American police investigations as opposed to
the investigations on the islands? Well, we always do a complete and thorough investigation. We start
from, you know, obviously we create a timeline first and we work backwards. So in the case
we're speaking of, the timeline is there, the location is don't you have a limited amount of people i don't know
about the timeline because um but but i agree with you as to how we typically move forward in the
states but to joseph scott morgan the timeline is muddy and all of these i think natalie holloway
was slipped a roofie ghb gamma hydroxybutyrate their date rape rape drug, in her drink at Carlos and Charlie's bar, as Levi pointed out.
I don't know what time she was actually killed regarding Robin Gardner.
We don't have an accurate timeline in the case we're talking about right now.
Allison McKenzie, Joe Scott, we've got three different stories and three different timelines.
Yeah, and many times in other countries, what you will find, and I found,
even looking all the way back to Oscar Pistorius with the way that case was handled,
in these particular instances, many times in our country, the media will hold law enforcement,
they'll hold the feet to the fire, particularly if the case catches the attention of the media.
In these other countries, that doesn't happen.
You know, the law enforcement authorities there will say, well, we're working on it.
And the media just kind of accepts it.
And they go on about their business.
So when you come down to things like timelines, which is our bread and butter, that's what
we work off of with these cases.
If you cannot establish that from Jump Street, from that central point
of when this event happened, you take all of this information from these individuals
where these principals that are involved in it and kind of run it down this line, then
you've got a real problem.
From Jump Street, your pool is tainted at that point, and you cannot go back and unring
the bell, unfortunately. Guys, if you have information or you think you have information, go to
crimestoppersbelize.org. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.
Goodbye, friend.
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