Alabama Girl Missing for Fourth Day on Aruba

Natalee Holloway disappeared on the last night of a trip to Aruba to celebrate her graduation from high school. Four days later, the Alabama teenager is still unaccounted for, despite an extensive search of the Caribbean island.

"Honestly, at the beginning, we were hopeful the girl would come back," said police Superintendent Jan van der Straaten. "Today, we are more and more thinking about the possibility of a crime."

On the island remarkable for its absence of violent crime, hundreds of residents and tourists posted flyers to help the hunt. FBI agents helped the Dutch military and Aruba police scour outlying scrubland with helicopters and all-terrain vehicles but found no trace of the 18-year-old.

Aruba radio and television stations broadcast a reward offer from Holloway's family, though they did not specify an amount. The family promised to reward anyone who brings her safely to a police station or hospital.

"Everybody has been quite supportive," the teenager's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, told The Associated Press. "I am not leaving. I am going to have Natalee with me."

Holloway came to Aruba for a five-day excursion with 124 seniors and 40 chaperons from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, Ala. She was last seen around 2 a.m. Monday, Attorney-General Caren Janssen said Thursday.

Police discount the possibility she left the island, because they found her passport in her hotel room, van der Straaten said.

Hopes were lifted briefly just before midnight Thursday when a news photographer said he had seen Holloway on the west side of the island. Police rushed to the scene but found an island girl who fit the description but had brown hair, not Holloway's long blond tresses.

Dressed in the same blue and green striped low-cut blouse and jean miniskirt that she wore at the beach earlier in the day, Holloway spent Sunday evening partying at Carlos 'N Charlie's, a popular restaurant and dance spot where tourists and locals meet in the capital, Oranjestad.

She left 10 minutes before closing at 1 a.m., said the restaurant's master of ceremonies Jose Hernandez, 38. "Nothing was out of the ordinary."

Friends saw her getting into a vehicle outside the nightclub. She did not show up to catch her flight Monday. Her stepmother, Robin Holloway, said Natalee was last seen with a local resident who claimed to be a foreign exchange student.

By Michael Norton, Associated Press Writer

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