9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Truly Captivating Book, October 15, 2007
This review is from: Into the Deep: The Hidden Confession of Natalee's Killer (Paperback)
This is one of the most fascinating and absorbing books I've read in a long time - and I've read a bunch. Dr. Hodges does an outstanding job, first of introducing us to a branch of forensic science that most of us are not familiar with (and he appears to be the foremost practitioner in the world today), and then of applying his training and experience to what sounds like it could be one of the saddest crimes of modern times.
Dr. Hodges is a leading profiler in the world of forensic documents/interrogations, but he has taken such investigations to a whole new level by reading deeper messages than other document analysts. In fact, Hodges also makes the case that he spots valuable forensic documents, such as emails, that go completely overlooked by other analysts. For example, the five-page email on which much of this book is based was available to the FBI and others but was apparently ignored.
This is not Hodges' first book but it is certainly an exhaustive demonstration of how his technique, known as "thoughtprint decoding," actually works - and how it can be so effective. This book proves that "the best investigator and the best source of evidence on the scene of any crime is always the perpetrator himself," who Hodges believes almost always wants to confess.
Certainly this case bears him out. As everyone with a television or a newspaper knows, the young, blond, and beautiful Natalee Holloway disappeared on the last night of a holiday stay on Aruba on the last day of May, more than two years ago - and hasn't been heard from since. No one seems to doubt that the three young men who were with that night know things they are not telling about her disappearance. But as the father one of the three prime suspects said, "No body, no crime." And that's the way it was until one of the three sent that long email to a friend in the United States, which reads like a classic "He doth protest too much!" statement straight out of Amazing Tales.
I highly recommend this book. If anything, the author is even more convincing and more thorough than he needed to be to make his case - a truly compelling case against those three young men, who have so far "skated free" but may eventually be in for a big surprise of their own.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling evidence, November 24, 2007
This review is from: Into the Deep: The Hidden Confession of Natalee's Killer (Paperback)
I am familiar w/ Dr. Hodges' previous books, esp the ones about the Jon Benet Ramsey case. I guess you could say I got 'hooked' on that his word-by-word analysis of the so-called ransom note in Colorado.
Then, when Patsy Ramsey died relatively quickly after her daughter's death, the 'hook' was truly 'set' in my mind and heart. It is no accident, I believe, that Patsy got cancer in the aftermath of that cover-up, so ably profiled by Dr. Hodges at the time.
In similar fashion, I believe the events of recent days (this review being written on 11/24/07) will confirm Dr. Hodges as a true pioneer in criminal profiling. The re-arrest of Joran Van der Sloot and the Calpo brothers is based, I believe, largely on the contents of this book. I understand Dr. Hodges is slated be the subject of an exclusive interview on "At Large w/ Geraldo Rivera" on Fox News Channel tonite, 11/24/07. The world will thus see the brilliance of Dr. Hodges' theory and method. If the new undersea search is at all successful (or even if no body is found), his methodology will prove to be absolutely crucial in finding the answers we have so long sought in the Aruba mystery.
I could write for a long time on the merits of the profile contained in this book, but let me just leave potential readers with this: I couldn't put this book down, even while wincing periodically at the brutal sexual imagery it puts forth. At times, yes, I too found some of his interpretations a bit of a 'stretch.' Yet, as time went by, I must confess that many of my objections are based on my own resistance to the deeper truths Dr. Hodges' method reveals. It's not easy 'medicine' to swallow, and it has taken some time for its veracity to sink in.
In the end, and taking this book as a whole, even my own protestations have steadily been ground to dust by the inescapable realization that Depok's e/mail clearly tips his hand w/ frightening accuracy. In the final analysis, one cannot deny that Depok's seemingly innocuous e/mail sheds brilliant light on the terror Natalie must have experienced at their hands that fateful night.
I don't believe the 3 young men now in custody are guilty of first-degree murder, but certainly they are very probably guilty of the gang rape which led accidentally to her death. I do agree w/ Dr. Hodges that they, or one of their confederates, spiked her drink w/ the date-rape drug that combined so toxically with the alcohol already in her bloodstream.
Thus rape and manslaughter are the appropriate charges which clearly justify their re-arrest and, hopefully, a complete and thorough trial. Such a trial, if the Aruban authorities don't screw it up, will lead us to the answers that have been sadly lacking in the years following Natalie's death.
Dr. Hodges' adept decoding of that long-forgotten e/mail shows us what really happened that night in the Caribbean; read this book and you will see what Deepok's mind is trying is so desperately to tell us, if we will only listen.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
in hopes that they rot, November 19, 2007
This review is from: Into the Deep: The Hidden Confession of Natalee's Killer (Paperback)
I read this and had to put it down several times - I can't being to imagine what Natalee went thru in her last moments... I understand the trauma of being "date raped" but nothing would compare to what this little girl went thru. It may be best that she rest in the arms of her Father now b/c living with those memories would be too much. I'm not going to say I understood everything that was written in this book - I think some things were a blt far reached, but then again I in NO WAY claim to understand the human mind like Hodges - but I will say I could see alot of what he was saying in here and I do understand the human need to confess "sins" be it consciously or unconsciously. I hope he's right in his findings and that the ties that bind Natalee will be broken and her family can have closure.
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