Natalee Holloway: New Clues

Investigator Tells 48 Hours She Probably Died From Excessive Alcohol, Maybe Drugs

(CBS) 
And there’s another stunning revelation from the authorities: Though they’re convinced Holloway is dead, they tell 48 Hours that they believe she was not murdered.

"This was a highly intoxicated body of a very small person," says Dompig.

Dompig laid out the latest scenario of what happened after Natalee was last seen driving off with van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers shortly after 1 a.m. He says investigators think the group did not go to the beach but that they possibly brought Natalie back to the van der Sloots' home.

Wherever she was, police now think that while Natalee was with Joran, she died suddenly from an overdose of intoxicants.

"We feel strongly that she probably went into shock or something happened to her system with all this alcohol maybe on top of that other drugs which either she took or they gave her and that she just collapsed," says Dompig.

The crime, Dompig suspects, occurred when the body was illegally disposed of. The boys may have acted alone.

"We’re not talking about killers here," he says.

Or, as Dompig reveals for the first time, they could have had accomplices. "New people are coming in the picture. It is possible that there was a second group involved, or more people than these three boys," he says.

Dompig speculates the body was hastily buried once, and that those extra accomplices may have been needed to move it to a more hidden location.

These latest developments, the new witness, the chance of an accidental death by overdose, and the possibility of additional accomplices re-locating the body, have changed Dompig’s view of the case.

"I'm convinced that there's no thing as a crime of this proportion, which goes unseen. There's the information on there. And we just have to get it," he says.

But the challenges are daunting: So far, there has not been a shred of forensic evidence found in the van der Sloot house, the Kalpoe car, or anywhere else on the island.

"It's very rarely that you have a case that somebody just disappears and there's hardly any evidence left behind," says Shipper.

Ten months after Natalee’s disappearance, Natalee’s home town of Mountain Brook, Alabama, is still starved for answers.

Natalee’s schoolmates have had to handle a harsh lesson about the dangers of the adult world they’ve entered.

"You know, we went on senior trip. But then after that, it was basically like we were forced to not become adults, but definitely grow up a lot," says Cain.

Natalee’s parents have filed a civil suit against Joran van der Sloot and his father, but Twitty knows she may never learn the truth about what happened to her daughter.

Asked what gives her hope today, she replied, "I don't have any."

"You don’t have any?" Roberts asked.

"If somebody wants to tell me ..." she tearfully replied.

But Dompig is optimistic that answers will be found. "We are that much closer to knowing what really happened to Natalee," he says. "A crime like this cannot go unsolved."