May 01, 2007

WILL THEY FIND A BODY? DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH...




ORANJESTAD, Aruba -- New information has been received in the new search for missing Mountain Brook teen Natalee Holloway. So far, 20 investigators searched the Van Der Sloot property Saturday and Sunday, but what are investigators hoping to find on the Van Der Sloot's property?


Long steel rods were brought onto the property, and NBC 13 asked an expert what that is used for. Leroy Parker, a crime lab analyst for the state of Florida, explained why two years after Holloway’s disappearance, thin steel rods are being used to search the yard of main suspect Joran Van Der Sloot's home.


“They have a pointed end and they're trying to measure any disturbances in the soil. If the soil is disturbed, then the rod will go down much easier than if it hadn't been disturbed up to the point where they dug down to,” he said. Parker, on the phone from his lab in Orlando, talked about using SONAR, or ground penetrating radar, like that used on the Van Der Sloot property this weekend. “We've used that in the field in areas where we think the body has been buried and buried for some time, because it shows the disturbance or the different density in the soil and that would give us some indication if something is buried there and how large is the object that is buried,” he said.


Parker doesn't think this is all being done for a piece of clothing. He believes investigators must have a hunch there is a body buried there. He said they would look for a change in the yard's landscape.


“The body decomposes and there should be a depression in that area, so unless there is some indication that there's a change in vegetation, a depression in that area, or some concrete evidence that the body might be buried there, I can't imagine them using any probe rods,” he said.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The soil samples from the long steel rods were brought to the crime lab simulator for the analysis. The J2K will be charged with murder on May 30.