Missing Md. woman's companion in Aruba detained
Six years after the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, another American has vanished on the Caribbean island of Aruba.
CBS News Correspondent Whit Johnson reports 35-year old Robyn Gardner, from Frederick, Md., was staying in the same resort town as Holloway when her travel companion, 50-year-old Gary Giordano, reported her missing last Tuesday.
Pictures: Md. woman missing in Aruba
The two reportedly met online, but Richard Forester, who says he's Gardner's boyfriend, said Gardner told him she was going on vacation with her family. Forester said he became concerned when she stopped communicating through Facebook.
Forester said, "The last message I got from her was through Facebook on Tuesday."
Giordano told investigators that he and Gardner had gone snorkeling off the western tip of the island and that she never made it back to shore. Despite an extensive search of the water and coastline, Gardner has yet to be found.
Friends are skeptical of Giordano's story.
Forester said, "She's quite beautiful and somewhat vain, and I can't imagine that she was snorkeling at six o'clock at night just for the fact that she would get her hair messed up."
Police detained Giordano when he attempted to leave Aruba after reportedly promising investigators to remain on the island.
He also told investigators that travel insurance had been purchased with Gardner's mother listed as the beneficiary.
A Facebook page has been set up to help find Gardner, and the family has enlisted the aid of the Natalee Holloway Resource Center to help navigate the Aruban legal system.
Beth Holloway told CBS News, "You are pretty much at the mercy of the foreign destination's law enforcement to decide when to give you the information, if to give you information. It's very frustrating. It's very frightening."
But more than a week after her disappearance, all the family can do is hope that Robyn Gardner doesn't become the next Natalee Holloway.
Natalee Holloway, from Alabama, disappeared during a high school class trip to the island in 2005. Her remains were never found, and the main person of interest in the case, Joran van der Sloot, is in prison in Peru on charges of killing 21-year-old Stephany Flores last May. Van der Sloot is a Dutch national who lived on Aruba at the time Natalee Holloway disappeared.
Criminal profiler Pat Brown said on "The Early Show" Wednesday that Gardner's relationship to Giordano is of interest at this point.
"We really don't know what this man was to Robyn, whether he was a friend, whether he was a lover. We just don't know," she said. "We also don't know what kind of man he is. I have heard some rumors that he had some criminal background, but I don't know if that is true. What is obvious is), if she indeed did not drown accidentally, she did not know this man well enough to be on vacation with him and anywhere near water."
Brown said Aruban authorities are suspicious of Giordano because his story "didn't quite add up" and he allegedly promised to stay, but then tried to board a plane.
Brown said one of the biggest obstacles in this case is the water factor.
She explained, "How do you prove somebody didn't drown accidentally? So unless they find her, hopefully alive -- but if they find her in the water, there may be no proof that anything happened, but she drowned, and well, the best thing would be if something did happen to her, they'd find her someplace else on the island, which could prove that he might have been involved, but this is a very difficult situation. You don't want to go on a vacation with somebody you do not know well enough anyplace near water."
Co-anchor Chris Wragge asked Brown how difficult it's going to be for Gardner's family to get information from Aruban authorities.
She replied, "I think we're bashing the Aruban authorities a little bit too much. This happens with any police department, the same thing would be true in the United States. When something goes down, the authorities don't necessarily bring in the family and tell them every single detail. I've heard the Aruban authorities are out with helicopters, looking for her, detained (Giordano). ... So actually, I think the Aruban authorities are doing what they can and look at this, Robyn is not from Aruba, nor is this man, so there's not any politics going on like the Joran van der Sloot case. ... They're going to want to do the best job they can, I think, to keep their image up at this point. So I think the family is in good hands at the moment. It's just really, really sad that if this is a water death it may be difficult to prove what exactly happened to her."