Heads and tales: 365 Aruban nights

Without a trace: In case you were wondering, it’s been one year since Natalee Holloway, a teenager from Mountain Brook, disappeared in Aruba — and it seems that no one’s any closer to finding her than they were May 30, 2005. Certainly, that fruitless investigation has been a boon to cable news operations, including:

CNN, which manages to plug an interview with mom Beth Holloway Twitty on Nancy Grace.
ABC (which doesn’t even have a cable news outlet) plugs itself: In an exclusive interview with ABC News senior legal correspondent Chris Cuomo in February, (suspect Joran) van der Sloot described the last moments he saw Holloway alive. “She was sitting on the sand by the ocean. … I tried to convince her to go back to the hotel and she said just put me down.”
and Fox News, which has Greta Van Susteren creepily discussing her first-name chumminess with Beth while misspelling her daughter’s name: “At her home — besides taking pictures that are posted today — we interviewed Natalaee’s friends.” And, she throws in a plug for tonight’s show — don’t miss it!
Even syndicated gossip tab “Entertainment Tonight” breaks off some of that. That’s entertainment?!

Classy.
• Holloway case a mystery after a year of ‘catch and release’ [CNN]

The usual suspects: The Birmingham News spent its one-year anniversary piece talking with Holloway’s family and friends for a Sunday story. How bored is the News with this series? It barely even bothers to update its all-Natalee story index, omitting its own stories from the last two months.

Who can blame them? Holloway’s disappearance is a blip among the 834,536 people reported missing in 2005 — the entire crowd of the Alabama Theatre supposedly vanishing every single day. We’ll have an update when she’s located — or the 10-year anniversary.
• Holloway family deals with topsy-turvy world [Birmingham News]

Life after death: John Allen Muhammad was convicted today of six sniper shootings in Maryland, facing a possible life sentence without parole. Which would mean something, if he weren’t already under a death sentence in Virginia for shootings there. The trial was seen as insurance, in case the Virginia case was overturned on appeal. It was an anonymous tip that led police to presumably the first shooting of the spree — in Montgomery in 2002 — in which fingerprints found at the scene belonged to Lee Boyd Malvo, Muhammad’s convicted accomplice in the Beltway murders. Both are apparently still fair game for another trial in Alabama, someday.
• Maryland jury convicts sniper [Associated Press]

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