It's been over nine weeks since Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared on the last night of her vacation in Aruba. Since then, her mother Beth Holloway Twitty, has stayed on the island to take part in the search effort.
Her relentless determination for answers brought her face-to-face with Deepak Kalpoe, one of the three suspects involved in the disappearance. Under the guise of developing film, Beth Holloway showed up at the internet cafe where he works.
She tells MSNBC-TV host Joe Scarborough that Deepak avoided her questions and avoided eye contact.
BETH HOLLOWAY TWITTY, MOTHER OF NATALEE HOLLOWAY: I don’t know how long I was in there. It may have been an hour. It could have been longer. We went in there to develop some pictures, just trying to give Deepak an opportunity to talk to me. We know that he has some answers. And I think one of my biggest questions that I have is that Joran committed a sexual assault against Natalee in the car and we know Deepak and Satish were there.
I just asked him, did you try to help Natalee or did you participate? He can’t even answer that. He would just either refer to it with silence or his attorney told him not to speak with me. And I just can’t imagine, given that opportunity, that he would not want to take advantage of it to clear his name, with Natalee’s mother standing right there in front of him.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, ‘SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY’ HOST: So, you went to this Internet cafe and asked him about the reports of the sexual assault or the rape in the car, and he just simply refused to answer?
HOLLOWAY: Now, I can’t refer to it as rape, but I can refer to it as sexual assault. That’s as far as I can go with it. I know that some was occurring. He would either answer me with silence, or would not look at me. I had to keep telling him over and over again, pick your head up. Look at me when I’m talking with you. I’m trying to help you. You know, look at the damage, look at what he’s doing to Aruba.
The citizens, I’m sure, are outraged at how he is just disregarding any type of respect for maintaining Aruba’s integrity. There are a lot of people that have been watching, and even from the U.S., and we all want answers and we’re giving him every opportunity to clear his name. And he can’t do it.
SCARBOROUGH: Did you, at any point in this meeting, just simply say, hey, listen, I don’t think you’re telling the truth; your story that you’ve been telling the police, or I guess I should say your stories, just don’t add up? Did you call him a liar?
HOLLOWAY: I didn’t call him a liar, but I can tell you, in that hour or hour-and-a-half I was there, I asked him repeatedly. I was very persistent. I did not stop. I kept reminding him that we’ve got a $250,000 reward for the whereabouts of Natalee. We are offering $1 million for her safe return.
We, as her family, are doing everything we can to make this worthwhile, to come forward. We’re giving him lots of choices and opportunities to come forward and do the right thing. I offered him to please come on one of the shows with me, yours tonight.
But that just shows, some huge level of guilt and involvement. He cannot even look at Natalee’s mother. He can’t even deny it.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes. I think it’s absolutely fascinating that you go in there and he can’t even make eye contact with you, that, here you are, the person that’s obviously anguished by the disappearance of your daughter and possible death of your daughter, you go try to talk to him, and you’ve got to tell him, make eye contact with me; look in my eyes.
So you sensed that he looked guilty to you? Was he obviously intimidated by your presence in there?
HOLLOWAY: I’ll tell you, he looked sick to me. He looked sick with worry.
All I saw were his eyelids the entire time, except when I would tell him he had to look at me. That’s all I saw. His head was down. He was nervous. I mean, he was just continually going back and forth to the computer, just frantically typing, just senseless typing. I could see where I was seated that it was just senseless typing. He was just that fright or flight that someone gets, but he couldn’t flight, so all he had was fright in there.
SCARBOROUGH: Now, is he following your campaign?
HOLLOWAY: Obviously, he was on duty.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes, obviously on duty, trying to stay away from your questions.
Is he aware of the campaign, the aggressive campaign that you’re going through every night on TV? Does he understand that you’re not going away, that you’re going to keep going back on TV time and time again until you get justice for your daughter?
HOLLOWAY: You know, I think he is truly aware of it. I’m encouraged by the fact that he is watching. I think he’s got a vested interest in this case, I thought it was amusing.
The one question that he did ask me, and this was probably 10 minutes before I was leaving. He told me that the media has not seen this side of you. I told him, I’d been saving it for you, Deepak.
SCARBOROUGH: What side is that?
HOLLOWAY: I think it’s just the side that, I will stop at nothing to get answers. There is nothing that I won’t do. There’s nowhere that I won’t go. I’m going to ask every question. I don’t care how painful it is. I will do it, because I’m not going to have any regrets.
There are too many people that have been supporting me and they want answers too. So, if I’m in the position to ask them, I need to take advantage of it. I had the opportunity and I did the best I could, because, it’s a tragedy for Aruba and it’s a tragedy for all of us involved. These citizens deserve better than that. They’re good people here. They do not deserve to be put through what Deepak and Satish Kalpoe and Joran Van Der Sloot and the father, Paulus, are putting them through. They’re subjecting their country to this. It’s a tragedy. It is a shame.
SCARBOROUGH: Did you ever ask him questions like, where is my daughter? Is my daughter still alive? Did you kill my daughter? Did it ever go to that level, where you were really asking just the tough, tough questions?
HOLLOWAY: Joe, I’ve got a lot more days on this island, so I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got plenty of time. I’ve got lots more pictures to be developed at the Internet cafe.
SCARBOROUGH: Here we have, again, people writing around the United States, thousands of miles away, and yet they’re taking the posters down there. Did you mention that to him? Did you mention it to anybody in the store?
HOLLOWAY: Oh, absolutely. There was a customer at the counter at the same time I was there. The man knew who I was.
I had to explain that the reward for the $1 million for a safe return and the $250,000 for her whereabouts, because, you know, the tourists that come here, they ask me, where are her posters? Why don’t you have her posters up? And, if I put them up, I can’t help it if this business owner took her poster down.
It saddened me greatly, because we are trying everything we can, as her family, to bring forth a resolution. But we’ve got to have some help. And, for the most part, they remain in these businesses on the walls and on the glass doors, and that’s where we need to get the message out. But, if I put one up and his owner, this is what Deepak told me, that his manager or boss made him take it down. So, the only thing I know to do is to go back and try again.
SCARBOROUGH: Do it again. You were with Deepak for an hour, at least an hour. You saw him avert his eyes from you. You saw him look down. You saw him type nervously. Let's go back to the first night you got to the island, You immediately figured out that Joran and Paulus Van Der Sloot were involved just by reading their body language.
After being in the presence of Deepak for an hour earlier today, are you convinced that he is involved in the disappearance of Natalee?
HOLLOWAY: Oh, absolutely. Anybody that was in there and saw him would agree 100 percent. There wouldn’t be one person that didn’t believe that he had involvement if they would have been in there and witnessed and been in his presence. There’s no one that wouldn’t believe that he has involvement.