Natalee Holloway declared legally dead

[MicaelS]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/12/justice/alabama-natalee-holloway/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

(CNN) -- An Alabama judge signed an order Thursday declaring Natalee Holloway legally dead, attorneys for her family said.

Holloway was 18 when she was last seen in the early hours of May 30, 2005, leaving a nightclub on the Caribbean island of Aruba with Joran van der Sloot and two other men. No one was charged in her disappearance, and her body has never been found.

On Wednesday, van der Sloot -- who was detained twice in connection with Holloway's disappearance but never charged -- confessed in a Lima court to murdering a 21-year-old Peruvian woman five years after Holloway went missing.

Natalee's father, Dave Holloway, filed a petition to declare his daughter dead in June, six years after she went to the Caribbean island with 100 classmates to celebrate their graduation from Mountain Brook High School in suburban Birmingham.

And if the incompetent and inept Aruban police had done their jobs, the Holloway case could have been closed a long time ago. Van der Sloot would not have had the opportunity to murder another young woman, Stephany Flores, in Peru.

Holloway's mother, Beth Holloway, Dave Holloway's ex-wife, opposed the move to declare Natalee dead.

[roguevalley]

1. what an ordeal for her family

[MarianJack]

2. My hope is for the family...

...to have as much peace as possible.

My wife and I have only 1 child. The mere notion of his death, especially by homicide, is the biggest imaginable nightmare.

PEACE!