Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Vegas hero driver 'Eric' & Natalee Holloway's bone update

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

Crime Stories' call for help identifying the hero driver who plucked Jason & Beri Adams from the Las Vegas massacre was answered. Listeners pointed us to Eric Gomez, who joins Nancy Grace for a reunion with the woman he rescued. Nancy also discusses the latest on how the shooter possibly planned other attacks. She is joined by reporter Alexis Tereszcuk and forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan. DNA testing on bone fragments purported to be those of Natalee Holloway are not remains from the missing Alabama woman, according to revelations in the final episode of Oxygen's docu-series. Grace, Morgan and investigative reporter Art Harris discuss.   Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. February 2004, Maura Murray empties her bank account, drives four hours from school, crashes her car, and vanishes. Join the search as an investigative reporter uncovers new evidence, interrogates new witnesses, traces down new leads in this riveting new investigative series the disappearance of maura murray saturdays 7 6 central and 9 8 central on oxygen the new network for crime crime stories with nancy grace on sirM Triumph, channel 132. A chillingly meticulous plan put together by Steven Paddock, which included weapons modified into machine guns.

He fired off and on for somewhere between 9 and 11 minutes. He was perched high above the Route 91 Harvest Festival. We finally realized it was bullets when Jason Aldean actually missed the lyric and was looking left, and he kind of stopped singing, but the band was playing, and then he ducked and ran off the stage. I turned around and looked at my husband and we knelt down on the ground and we immediately prayed. It was just amazing to see her kneel down and immediately start praying. And I knelt down with her and started praying as well. It sounded like the closest thing I could imagine to being in a war. You're pretty much caged in there. There was no way out. The gunshots were reverberating, so you couldn't tell where they were coming from.

And we saw boots laying on the ground where people literally ran out of their boots, just escaping the situation. Saw a guy, a young guy, drive down the street, and he just flagged them down. This young man, his name was Eric, I forgot how to call, was able to pick us up on the street. And he was driving blind into it as well. He didn't know. He took us back to our hotel it was a couple blocks away and before he left he said you know i just i live in that area and i'm gonna go back and see if i can get some more people out of there that's incredible whoever he is god bless him we actually have his picture she took his picture

when we got out of the car because he was you send it to me and I'll put it on Crime Online. We'll try to find him and thank him. In the midst of all of the trauma, the strewn bodies out in the field littered with trash and shoes and fast food wrappers, something good, something good has happened. We did just that. We found the driver, the mysterious driver that drove Barry and Josh to safety. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. With me, that mystery driver we have been searching for. Eric Gomez is with us. Barry Adams, she and her husband somehow managed to survive the Vegas massacre. Alexis Tereschuk, investigative reporter with RadarOnline.com and death scene investigator, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University, Joseph Scott Morgan. And of course, the Duke, Alan Duke, joining me from LA.A. But most important, with us, you.

Thank you for being with us. Barry Adams, can you believe we have somehow managed to find Eric Gomez? I cannot believe that you found him. That is so amazing. I really can't believe it either. Eric Gomez, thanks so much for being with us. Eric, you know, you're a hero. You are a hero.

You drove not only Barry and Josh to safety, but others as well. Tell me your recollections the night of the Vegas shootings. I want to hear something good, Eric. Before I go into the fact that the Vegas shooter has now been sleeping with prostitutes offered up by a Vegas casino. News' girlfriend always felt nervous and jittery whenever she was around him, according to family and friends. The way he mowed down hundreds of people. Out of all that, I want to hear something good. So tell me your story, Eric Gomez.

Absolutely. Thank you, Nancy, for having me. And, of course, I'd like to say hi to Barry as well. It was a really crazy night. I think I will never forget this, of course. It's something really crazy that anyone expected. Absolutely. I just recalled, you know, driving towards the street and seeing a bunch of people. I mean, I'm seeing thousands of people running towards my car. Of course, I was going to freak out. I didn't know what to do.

Well, had you heard the bullets yet? Did you hear anything? I didn't hear anything. I was listening to music, you know, commuting to my house. And of course, I was never aware of anything until I saw everybody running towards my car. You know, it was like a sci-fi movie. What time of the night was it?

What was that, I'm sorry? What time was it? I believe it was around 7 p.m. I really can't recall the time. Was it dark yet? I was just coming into my house. It was dark. Yes, it is.

So in the dark, you're driving along listening to music, and you see people running toward you like the apocalypse, running toward your car. What happened? Actually, you know, everybody started knocking on my windows, asking for help, and telling me to turn around, that there was a shooter. I was just speechless, and I was in shock for a little bit. Then I saw Barry and Jason knocking on my window to let them in. I didn't hesitate.

What did they look like? Eric Gomez, when you saw everybody running toward you, you see Barry and her husband Josh. What did they look like? They were just petrified, really scared. I just remember Barry was really, you know, scratched from her body. They told me that they had to, you know, put out the fence, and I was just in shock. Then what happened, Eric? You see her all scratched up and bleeding. Everybody is panicking, mamming on your car. What did you do? You know, a lot of people would have

just driven off and go, I'm not letting a stranger in my car no way go ahead you know um at that point seeing so many people i wasn't able to really think who i was going to live inside my car because i knew something wrong was happening of course in that moment i was just thinking about my family because i was asking where we're, you know, I was asking everyone what was going on and they told me it was a shooting. They didn't know where it was coming from, but it was near the strip. I live near the strip. My family lives near the strip. We actually live in front of the Mandalay Bay. To my surprise, I was not even able to get home because of all the traffic, of all the people running, of everybody screaming. It was unbearable.

Honestly, when I took them to their hotel, the first thing I did was to call my mom, call everyone to see if they were safe. I saw so many people crying and limping and injured. Honestly, I offered so many people to use my car to get to their hotels, but some of them, they're really scared, so they didn't know to trust or not. Honestly, I have no words to explain this situation. It was something that I... When you say, Eric, that you see people, you saw people crying and limping and just, were they just sitting on the side? What were they doing? They really was just trying to look for a safe place. They didn't know where the shooting was coming from, and I didn't either.

So I was also scared for my life. And when you refer to your family, who's your family? My family was actually at the shooting. The only thing that I can tell you is that we were really scared. When I called my aunt, she was the one that picked up the phone and she said that to not come to the house because there was a shooting going on, and that they were saved and they were trying to stay safe, but to not go there. I don't know. It's just unexplainable. The feeling is still there. Did you ever think that you would see or hear from these people again?

I honestly didn't know. Not at all. It will never pass in my mind that we'll ever see them again. You know, the last words that I remember Barry telling me before she got out of my car was that if it was okay for her to take a picture of me because she wanted to remember me forever and she thanked me and I had no no words of course to to say anything to her but to say goodbye and I hope you guys get home safe. When they were in your car, Eric Gomez, now held as a hero across the country, when they were in your car, what were they saying? What was their demeanor? They were, of course, really scared. I remember very, like, hardly speaking. She had a broken voice. Of course, I understand why she was that way. She was not even able to speak at moments.

She was just, you know, thinking, please can you get us to a hotel, please? Get us to a hotel, please. That's all I remember her saying. Of course, it was traumatic. Barry Adams is with us, whose husband, Josh, managed to, excuse me, Jason, managed to pull her to safety. And I've been thinking about him, Barry, and him standing there exposed in the open as he tried to get you and some other ladies over that huge fence. He was just standing there as the shooter unleashed a hail of bullets

and then stopped to help the other woman who got her legs stuck in a fence and everybody was about to trample her. You stopped to help her. You stopped to dwell, Barry. And then you find Eric. Here's my question, Barry. When you hear him, like, when I go through my life every day not thinking about my fiance's murder, because if I do, if I let myself do it, it will mess my head up. For I don't even know how long. Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month. And I don't want to do that to my twins. I want them to have a happy mommy, not a sad mommy. So I don't think, I don't let myself think about it.

When you hear Eric recounting you bloody and scraped up and your voice breaking in the car. What is going through your mind? What are your recollections of that car ride, Barry, that you took with your husband, Jason? Well, my recollection is very similar to what Eric just told you. It makes me very emotional. I haven't gotten very emotional up until this point, but just hearing him tell that story again makes me very emotional. I remember when he let us in that car, when he opened that door, it was the first time that I felt remotely safe. And I was scared to get in the car because I didn't know who he was. I didn't know, you know, there's a shooter

out there. I don't know how many, but I was more scared not to get in that car. And when I got in that car, it was the best feeling in the world. he did not hesitate. Like he said, he let us in and he was so kind and he was so brave. I just, um, I'm forever grateful and I don't know how I'm not a documenter. Um, the last thing I would do is pull out my phone and video what would have been happening, but I knew I needed something good to hold on to from that night, and that was the good that I needed to hold on to forever. So I just asked him, could I please take his picture, and I wanted to be able to thank him when I could form complete sentences because I really couldn't talk.

I just couldn't talk. Just hearing the two of you, I don't know why it's just so upsetting to me because it's happy that you both lived and you have found each other. It's happy. But when I think about that moment of you running and you're bleeding and you're with your husband, I can just see the two of you holding hands and you can still hear the bullets in the background. And it just makes me think of all the people that heard that and were trying to get away, and they didn't make it. And they lost their lives right there in our great country where you think this wouldn't happen.

You know, you hear things, stories like this about other countries, you know, with ISIS or uprisings or upheaval or unstable governments. And you read the stories and it sounds so awful, but here in our country, one of the greatest cities, tourist spots in the world. And I just think about all the people that experienced what you did, but then lost their lives. And I think about you, Barry, trying to get away and thinking, you told me you immediately, when you realized it was a good fire, you got down on

your knees and started praying. And I think about how many times that I have done that and your prayers were answered. You know, Barry, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I am proud to be an American.

But the only thing that I'm not proud of is how the government doesn't really have any solution to this. And it is a tragedy. And I think we should all be aware that we need conscious minds in the world. We need to put aside hatred, start building a new place where we all feel safe, especially for the children that are our future. We need to nurture and understand that violence is not the answer. And for America, it shouldn't be impossible to handle these situations in both of the countries. I think that's something that we should be aware of,

and I hope somebody in the government, I hope our president, can really find a way to stop this, because this should not be happening, especially in America. I pray to God you're right. I'm very torn. Always have been because I'm a victim of gun violence as you

two are now as well. And why would someone need assault weapons? Why? On the other hand, I've prosecuted so many crimes where it looks like the only people, normal people follow the laws and follow the rules. It's only the bad guys that get their hands on and create weapons like this. I don't know the answer, but I agree with you, Eric, that there has to be an answer. I also want to take this moment, which I don't really get the chance to do that much,

and thank Alan, thank Jackie Lee, all the wonderful people that joined together at CrimeOnline.com and Crime Stories here on Sirius. And thanks, Sirius, for letting us somehow pull together Barry and Eric, because from now on, their fates and their futures will always be linked together. And, Barry, it was such a fluke that I found you. My daughter had had an orthodontic emergency. And we raced in. And everyone was talking about Vegas and what had happened.

And my friend there who deals with my daughter, we were all sitting there. She worked on Lucy. And she told me about you. And that's how I found you. And then you told us about Eric and we've made a really big, scary, cold world a little bit warmer today. You know, Eric, I'm so grateful to meet you and God willing, we'll meet in the flesh. Barry, thank you, my friend.

Thanks for letting, giving me the opportunity just to thank Eric again. Eric, thank you so much for just being so brave and so kind and letting us into your car and taking us back to our hotel. It was just such a,

I mean, it wasn't, I don't know, there's just not any words. And we'll be right back with Barry and Eric. And joining in will be Alexis Tereszczuk, RadarOnline.com, and my friend and colleague, Joe Scott Morgan. But I want to thank our partner that is making this reunion possible. It's LegalZoom. When you run your own business, you know time equals money.

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can count on upfront pricing and clarity. So invest your time and money in growing your business. Let LegalZoom help with the legal stuff. For special savings, be sure to enter promo code Nancy, N-A-N-C-Y in the referral box at checkout for special savings only at LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. LegalZoom.com. With me, Eric Gomez, now hailed as a hero across the country. Barry Adams, she and her husband, Jason, survived the Vegas massacre. Alexis Tereszczuk, RadarOnline.com. Joe Scott Morgan joining us, death scene investigator. Alexis Tereszczuk,RadarOnline.com. Joe Scott Morgan joining us, death scene investigator.

AlexisThereseChuckRadarOnline.com. When you're hearing these stories of survivors and thinking about those that didn't make it, I almost feel sick to my stomach when I'm hearing about the Vegas shooter was sleeping with hookers offered by casinos, according to reports. This makes me sick. He's doing that, ordering room service, as he mounts his weapons and prepares for the worst shooting in U.S. history. Alexis, what do we know? Well, we also know he was comped these rooms. Like, he was such a high roller in Vegas.

He spent so much money gambling that the casinos gave him rooms for free. They gave him meals for free. And apparently, according to some reports, they gave him hookers for free. And his girlfriend, Mary Lou Danley, her sister's boyfriend has spoken out. And he has said that he has no doubt in his mind. He knows that when Paddock was offered these hookers, that accepted them he said he was a creepy man he was a mean man he was very mean to mary lou and he said he kept an arsenal of weapons in his home not a gun cabinet which a lot of gun owners have my cousin has one you have about six weapons in there an entire room of weapons which we know because when the police raided the home

they found all of them. They found the thousands of rounds of ammunition. And this family member's boyfriend says this guy was somebody that he thought was mean. He thought he was cold. But he still said he was shocked by this murder because he could never imagine Mary Lou being with somebody and somebody that he's hung out with that caused this mass murder. You know, it's a conundrum. People are close to killers. And, I mean, I was thinking of BTK by Torture Kill. I believe his name was Dennis Rader.

And he was a dog catcher, of all things, with a wife and a family. And nobody, they had no idea what he really was. To Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, Joe Scott, it's funny how the people around these killers can be so blind to what they're dealing with, but I did notice this, Joe Scott, it's very telling. Other people would say they always felt nervous and jittery when they were around him. There's just some kind of freaky vibe he gave off. And, I mean, be honest.

Don't name them right now, but don't you know people in life that they just put you on edge? You never know if they're going to be, you know, tell a joke. It's kind of like a bully joke. Or their sense of humor is kind of like always got a little bit of a mean edge to it. Or you just never know how they're going to react or people like that you know there are clues joe scott there are clues yeah yeah there are and uh you know i think the old term the old adage is they set my teeth on edge uh when you're around certain people like that i think that if the family and friends of this fellow retrospectively looked back, they might very well be able to see indicators in the past with interactions they've

had within comments that he's made and this sort of thing. And lots of times with these types of cases, people become very reflective and sensitive to what they remember, things he may have just said in passing. And sometimes when the police go back and do interviews with these individuals, these principals in their lives, they can begin to put a picture together. And this is a picture that up to this point is still incomplete, but I don't like the way it's going at this point. It's painting a very, very dark image. You know what's funny, Alexis Derezchuk, RadarOnline.com.

I'm going to be right back with Eric and Barry who are with us, who survived this. Alexis, I'm all about the Constitution. I have studied it. I know it like the back of my hand. It is a living and breathing document that protects us all, and it does give us the right to bear arms, and I get it. I get it. We need the right to bear arms, but why is it so many freaks, gun freaks, they're not out hunting or shooting or protecting themselves. They're freaks and they'll have like an arsenal of weapons. Why? And then they hide behind the right to bear arms. This is not what the founding fathers intended when they gave the right to bear arms. That was to protect American colonists against British officers and others. That's what that was about. You know, Stephen Paddock was very deceptive. I spoke with one of

the gun owners, Gunworks in Dixie Gunworks is actually the name of it in Nevada, which is about, I'm sorry, in Utah, which is about a 45-minute drive from where Paddock lived in Nevada. And they told me, so he came in there three different times. And they said, these guys have owned gun shops. They've owned this for over 20 years. They know their clients and their customers. And they said they never saw this about him. They said he was, they called him John Q. Neighbor.

They said he was very nice. He was very respectful. And they questioned him extensively, which they do with everyone who purchases a gun. He passed all the background checks, of course. But they still talked to him. And he just said he just moved to the area. He was concerned about home defense. He just said, well, the things that are going on in this world.

Concerned around home defense. He had walked off the whole garage. Have you seen his house? I mean, his garage is like i'm sure the neighbors love this the whole garage is like plywooded shut and that was that's where he barricaded all those guns an arsenal of weapons and i mean he had pounds and pounds uh tenonite in his car he could have blown up his car at any moment how many people would that have killed that is not what the constitution is talking about. But he hid it from people. He hid it

from gun store owners. He hid it from so many people. He portrayed himself as just this aw shucks down home guy who just, you know, wanted to make sure that if somebody was banging on his door in the middle of the night that he would have a small weapon to protect himself. He was so deceptive. He is such a mastermind criminal that he was able to convince people who are in this business who know they recognize people when they come in, and they did not see this at all on three different occasions with him, the gun store owner. Joe Scott Morgan, the whole thing with the hookers and the guns and berating the girlfriend,

even the people at the coffee shop can tell you that. It's all about a feeling of power and control. And that's just what he had. When you look at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, the way he's broken out windows at two areas, it looks like there are huge penthouse rooms adjoined. So he had two gigantic rooms, you know, much bigger than my little apartment in New York. I mean, huge, huge, huge, huge expanse, bigger than homes for Pete's sake. And he had broken

that windows on either end. He had the power. He had control over people like Barry Adams and Eric Gomez down below him like ants. That's what I'm saying, Joe Scott Morgan. Yeah, and isn't it interesting that he kind of takes this eagle-eyed view over the crowd and is looking down well above 300 feet in the air, down at a crowd of 22,000 people that essentially are in a huge kill box. Let's not forget as well, and this needs to really be emphasized moving forward, this is not something that this guy just decided to do on the spur of a moment. This was a planned action. Nancy, he had, over those period of days that he was in that hotel room, let's just wrap our mind around this. He had transported roughly 800 pounds, 800 pounds worth of equipment up into that huge room that he had, which, you

know, by the way, is actually bigger than my home, 1800 square feet and 800 pounds. How do you even begin to do that? This took careful planning. He had picked up points along the way in order to attack this particular area. Now it's coming out that apparently he had been scoping out other concert venues in other locations around the country. You mean like in Boston? Yes, that's what I'm hearing. With me, Survivor Barry Adams and the hero, driver Eric Gomez. Eric, you refused to take money that night when you were offered money. Why? Absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't be able to be so heartless and not to do a favor that I know it's

going to be good for somebody else. I think it's a no-brainer, of course, to reject something that it's not supposed to be there. It's something that I wouldn't do. I was not raised in a home where I'm trying to take advantage of people. Of course not. My mom never told me that. I wanted to say, of course, that it's not capable of how everything happens. You can see the broken window from my room. In my room, it's actually closer than the event where he was shooting at.

So it's something crazy, something that it should have been prevented. I don't know how the security guards from the man who lived there didn't know that he broke a window. What do you mean by that, Eric? Yes, I mean, there's a lot of security guards throughout the property. Deborah Moran, of course, just to check on that, make sure everything is right. I don't know how they did not find where he was shooting from, because you can see from one of my cousin's videos, you can see the gunfires.

And I don't know why the police was not able to really locate the shooter. I'm just wondering, Alexis, to RedshirtRaterOnline.com, if he broke out the windows right before he started shooting at people like Barry and Jason. I mean, it all probably happened so fast. I mean, Alexis, you can get off hundreds of rounds with an automatic and, you know, just minutes. He was only shooting for about 10 minutes, and he didn't—he got, I want to say, thousands of rounds out in those few minutes. I mean, there were studies done where they listened to the recording of what he was shooting.

He was shooting like a hundred bullets in 24 seconds. I mean, just crazy things like that. So he was, but the police actually, there was a security guard who actually was the first person at his room. And I believe it was within 12 minutes. They found him very quickly. They worked and he he at that point had stopped shooting and they were trying to negotiate with him. He then exchanged gunfire. He shot through the door. He shot the security guard. He shot another man. But the police actually did get there very quickly. I don't believe they broke into the room as quickly as perhaps we would have liked. But I think that as professionals and what they were doing, they had

stopped the outside gunfire and they were trying to negotiate with him. And I think everybody would have probably liked to have had him be alive and been arrested so that we could get an answer as to the reason behind this cruelty. But that didn't happen. He took his own life. But the police were there very quickly. And it was a Mandalay Bay security man who was there. And he started unloading bullets at the security guard. Mm-hmm.

Shot him through the door. Through the door. You know, Barry Adams, survivor, I wonder if you ever thought that would be attached to your name, Barry Adams, survivor. You know, sometimes people break down after the danger has passed because during the danger, you told me all you were thinking about was getting back home to your boys and did not want them to be raised without a mother. But now that you're safe and you're home, what thoughts are going through your mind, Barry Adams? I think it's starting to settle in now for my husband and I both. We were just talking about this yesterday.

We're starting to get a heavy feeling. You start to think about all of the people that didn't make it out. You start to wonder why not you, why them. You realize that so many of them didn't even have a chance. He had gotten off so many rounds before anybody even realized it was gunshots. Those people didn't even have a chance. He had gotten off so many rounds before anybody even realized it was gunshots. Those people didn't even have a chance to run, you know, which was the only thing you could do was run. So it's starting to take a toll on us and just become a heavy feeling.

And then you start to think about, you know, things that you have planned in the future. We actually have concert tickets for Florida Georgia Line coming up in just a few weeks. And, you know, we have to make a decision. Are we going to go through with that? Are we going to be afraid? Are we not going to be afraid? And what are your thoughts? What are you going to do we're going to go if we don't go then he wins you know barry i'm so glad you said that eric gomez now held as a hero barry adams alexis joe sc you, friends. You spend your whole life working for your children. You know, people say, what do you do? And I say, I work for John, David, and Lucy.

They're my boss. I wake up in the morning, 5.30 in the morning, and hit the ground running, trying to make their life great. Okay. Imagine you spend your life devoting it to your children, to your daughter. And she goes away on a high school senior trip. And you're so proud that you could give her a trip that's probably pretty expensive, going on a fancy cruise to Aruba. And then you never see her again, alive or dead. That waving goodbye, that bye mom, bye dad,

I'll see you in a week, that's it. That's your memory. You never see them again, dead or alive. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us

as we seemingly head to a new chapter in the search for Natalie Holloway. Joining me right now, investigative reporter, five-time Emmy Award winner, Art Harris, also with me, forensics investigator, professor of forensics at Jacksonville State University, Joe Scott Morgan, death scene investigator. We are now learning the very latest in the search for Natalie Holloway. Art Harris, for those people just joining us that may not be familiar with Natalie's story, the straight A honor student from Alabama, Mountain Brook area, already had a scholarship, flag girl. I'll never forget the video of her dancing out on the football field at halftime in her little dance tuxedo with all her little friends.

Just in a nutshell, Art, if you could start at the beginning and bring me up to date. Joe Scott, jump in when you need to. Okay, Nancy, she goes down to Aruba with high school classmates, graduation trip. They are having a great time going to the the bars of aruba and so she is going to different bars with the girls and winds up a place called carlos and charlie's is last seen leaving with a tall aruban guy identified as joran vandersloot you know it's one of the first things you see you can see it that the minute you see the island you can see carlos and charlie's it's not it's not hard to find okay so she goes It's not hard to find. Okay, so she goes.

She's not alone. She's following all the rules that we put on people for a good reason. I'm going to write about that, Joe Scott. Don't go to bars and drink, ladies, by yourself. Absolutely not. Is it fair? Is it fair? No, it's not fair that we have to live with those rules.

Do you want to get a roofie, a GHB, a gamma hydroxybutyrate, date-break drug in your drink? No. So stick with your friends and keep your drinks attended. Back to Art Harris, please. So she's at Carl's and Charlie's with her friends. She's there, Nancy, and she's last seen leaving her friends' report, leaving with this guy and a couple of others, the Calpo brothers.

And the judge's son, Jorn Vandersloot. May he rot in hell. And I don't really feel bad about saying that. Joe Scott, I think that she had already been slipped a GHB in her drink right then because Natalie Holloway, to all of her friends' and mother's accounts, had never once left with an unknown person. This is a rule follower. And I usually don't like that term

because it makes you sound like you're pigeonholed. What I mean is this is a girl who did what her parents asked. She wasn't somebody that snuck out at night or did drugs or got tattoos on her private parts. This was a good girl in the classic sense of the word. And suddenly she leaves with these guys, Joe Scott.

Right. And you know, the thing about it is you need to throw in one more word. At this age, it's not like she's a senior in college. All right? She's, you can still actually use this word, innocent. And she doesn't know, this VanderSloot character is very worldly.

And God only knows what else he's been involved in. And the thing about about it if this was ghb which now we will never ever know uh if this was ghb you know anybody can have their way with somebody with this stuff it's that powerful it's a hypnotic it is that powerful of a drug and lord only knows what they can do or did with her at that point in time. So she's in the car. Go ahead, dear, go ahead. Yeah, this was a common theme in VanderSloot's life. He would go to Carlos and Charlie's,

and sources tell me that she was not the first woman he had dosed, as it were. So there they knew who he was, but girls like Natalie did not know not to turn their heads. Let me understand something, guys. And I know this is painting quite the picture, but when you are under the influence of GHB, a guy puts it in your drink, and then they have relations with you, it is like you're unconscious. It's like a bag of sand. You're just laying there, right?

Yes, yes. They say that there's kind of a sleepy awareness, if you will. I think back to the movie Rosemary's Baby, where she wakes up in the nightmare and says, I can't believe this is happening. There's nothing she can do about it. It's kind of like that. It is a hellish nightmare. There's only a slight awareness. Let's think about it. This is on the same level, level almost with light anesthesia, if you will. And that's what makes it just a horrible set of circumstances. Can you imagine just being completely helpless? Well, I can understand why a guy would be interested in that experience.

But, okay, she's in the car. She leaves. Art, what happens next? Nancy, they reportedly go to a beach where your aunt reports that she has had a seizure and chokes on her own vomit. And then the question is what to do with the body. But I'd like to point out, Art Harris, that he told, he described her underwear that she was wearing that night. So more than her choking on the beach happened.

Another story he told was that she wanted to sleep with him, and he said, no, right, and left her there on the beach alone. Then there's the seizure story. Then there's the underwear story. But what we know for sure, all these stories come from Jorn Vandersloot, the judge's son, the judge who covered up for his son. All we know for sure is she was never seen alive after that night by her friends or family. Now, giant search ensued.

Art Harris was there on the island of Aruba as I covered it live. Remember, Art, you join me practically every night on our HLN show. And to this day, bring me up to date now, Art. Nancy, there were so many searches for her that were led by tips from questionable characters who were friends with Vander Sloot. She was dumped in the ocean. She was buried. And the police did not find anything. So here we are. The Holloways are desperate to find out what happened to their daughter.

No one can get answers from the Aruban authorities because everyone seems to be tied to Yoran's father, who is a very connected judge. And this is something that, to this day, you wonder what will be able to be pried out of that place on the case. But getting back to what happened. Oh, we left out one thing. Five years to the day of her going missing, Stephanie Tassiano-Flores, another beautiful young girl that Jorn Vandersloot meets in a casino slash bar, is murdered by Jorn Vandersloot. So there's two dead bodies.

Okay, back to now in the search for Natalie. In Peru. And so he is in prison, but before he leaves Aruba, he is befriended by this character in our search for Natalie, a character named John, who becomes his friend. And John's parents or John's relatives have a business on the island of Aruba in the real estate business. So John reaches out. He's smitten with Joran like some groupie, contacts him, and Joran doesn't respond. But finally he goes and he meets him in Aruba, and they become fast friends because he likes the same things as John.

And finally Joran trusts him enough to ask him to help him bury or cover or dig up Natalie's bones to rebury them. We now hear someone in the States hears this named Gabriel who contacts Natalie's father, and the hunt is on. There's a plan to go back to Aruba and see if this friend of Yoram's, by now he's in prison in Peru, will lead them to the grave, lead them to sites where her remains can be found. Now, this is the guy Joran van der Sloot asked to dig up Natalie's remains and put them somewhere else. And according to reports, Joran van der Sloot then crushed the bones as best as he could,

mixed them with dog remains, and tried to burn them. Remains were found, and this is what we hear about the bones. We're going to meet with Chief Richardson and his team to discuss the bones that were turned into him by Gabriel several weeks ago. They had indicated they were non-human. Now, what about the bones? They all came out to be animal bones. What kind of animal was it? Do you know?

Just animal bones. Okay. Not human bones. Is there any reports or anything you can give us about the bones? No, you're not law enforcement. We don't just give reports out to third parties. Can we look at them? The bones? We've got to get any question of doubt. Can we get up the bones? Can we get up?

Yeah? Okay. This is what was handed to us. The Aruban police are saying these bones are animal bones, but they haven't had those bones long enough to have them properly tested. So, you know, I have my doubts and I think what I will do is have the bones tested myself to make sure that they are non-human or exactly what they are. So the fact that dog bones were mixed in, not a surprise. We knew that Jorn Vandersloot had tried to mix in dog bones with Natalie's remains. What effect would that have, Joe Scott Morgan? This is going to throw off the

testing, Nancy, because we've got bones that are what are referred to as commingled. And so you will get a, it's good in that it gives us a different type of result. We can, you know, test the DNA for the dog will look completely different than the DNA for, say, a human. Got it. So it would just throw off the test. Take a listen. Well, one thing, the fact that there were dog bones really corroborates part of what these informants were saying that Jorn Vandersloot did. Now, this is the latest. A world-renowned doctor, a DNA expert here in the U.S., who worked at Ground Zero, has established a DNA unit at a college. It's Dr. Kulkowski, says the following.

Take a listen. When we actually took the DNA extract and ran it through this screening process, it came back positive. It came back human. You got to be kidding. No, I'm not. You say those are human bones. There is human DNA in these bone samples. Yes. As to which one of the four is human are all of them, that's where some additional testing is going to need to be done. So these are human bones or human DNA? There's human mitochondrial DNA in these bones. And that I think is fairly significant.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting this. And there's even a more interesting aspect here. So the test we ran right now is designed to screen in a very broad way, just look to see if there's any human mitochondria there. It's really interesting because not only does it align perfectly to our standard reference sequence that we use in Mito, there are no differences to the reference sequence. The reference sequence was actually built on a European Caucasian DNA sequence. The fact here is that that's the ancestry that we're questioning.

Yeah, you caught me by surprise. I never expected this. All of these dominoes are tipping over the right way, telling us that we need to proceed forward with some testing. There's a possibility, though, that this could be somebody else. There is. Take a listen to Dave Holloway. This is Natalie's father. They're human bones, and they're from either Natalie or somebody else. And basically, it's inconclusive. So he wouldn't know until October the 6th that until they see DNA on each individual

bone. So that's where they're at now. So there you hear Natalie Holloway's father, who has been on a quest since his daughter disappeared. I've spoken with him many, many times. He's traveled the world as far as Nicaragua, trying to find out what happened to his daughter. So, Art Harris, after all this, all of this, we learn that it's not Natalie, but there is human mitochondrial DNA of an Eastern European descent woman? Yes, that's right, Nancy. This raises questions. Who is this victim?

Who is this woman who was supposedly dug up near his house? Was this possibly another victim of Jorn Vandersloot? We do not know that. I'm just sick, Art. I'm sick, A, that it's not Natalie, and B, that this is another woman that Jorn Vandersloot had dug up and her remains hidden.

I mean, and destroyed. This is the response from Aruban police. We're going to solve this case one of these days. Because it's an ongoing investigation, we cannot reveal everything but let's put it like this we obtained a lot of information and have a lot of information and we didn't give up so there you hear aruba police saying they have information we don't know about and someday the case of natalie holloway will be solved well not if they have

anything to do with it. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. Do you find yourself obsessing over unsolved mysteries? Do you wish there was a group of people just like you to talk motives and alibis with. If so, join the CrimeCon Cold Case Club and work alongside experts and fellow crime sleuths to help uncover new leads and theories in the cold cases they adopt. Their first cold case focuses on the mysterious disappearance of nursing student Mara Murray in 2004, and it's free to join thanks to Oxygen. Sign up now or find more info at club.crimecon.com.

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