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Sept. 13, 2005 On prime-time TV just last week--bowed, bloody, but ‘bloody well mad'--the bereaved Beth Holloway, mother of missing Alabama honour student, Natalee Holloway, promised the watching world that she would, like General Douglas MacArthur, “Retreat, regroup and return!” Miraculously rejuvenated, the mother of the vanished Natalee Holloway, the beautiful missing-from-Aruba Alabama honours student who, according to various websites, was awarded an eight-year, full-ride scholarship for a four-year premedicine degree at the University of Alabama, announces that she will now to return to the fray, reinforced by the presence of a big stick and even bigger bucks wielded by Philadelphia-based philanthropist Joe Mammana. As Joe so pithily put it to MSNBC-TV’s Rita Cosby last Thursday, “Rita, one last thing. I just want the people of Aruba to know that Natalee Holloway’s mom, Beth Twitty, and Joe Mammana are coming back to Aruba. Hell is coming with them, we did not forget Natalee Holloway.” Beware, Aruba! Keep your peepers peeled for a hard-boiled approach by a hard-nosed businessman…and Joseph E Mammana knows full well that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Joe himself broke a few laws in his impetuous youth, readily admitting, "Any of my criminal past and things like that are irrelevant," Mammana said. "Everybody makes mistakes when they're kids.” Joe, who served eight months in Montgomery County prison for striking his wife with a countertop in 1991, when he was 32, must have been a real late bloomer. To be still considered a kid at age 32 (albeit a big, strong one, if he could wield a countertop so easily) is in itself heart warming and amusing. Did he destroy the kitchen completely in his tantrum before plucking the countertop out of the wreckage as his weapon of choice? Other irrelevancies do include, “In a four-month period in 1989, he racked up nine charges in Florida. In Sarasota County, Mammana posed as a lawyer and, with another man, tried to buy a Corvette using someone else's name and credit history, according to reports in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He spent three months in state prison on charges of aggravated assault, grand theft, fraud and other offenses. While on probation in Camden County and Florida, he was charged in Montgomery County in 1991 with theft and forgery after authorities said he opened a checking account in another man's name, and in Burlington County with theft, conspiracy and burglary after police said he stole three cars from a Nissan dealership. Mammana was sentenced to 11 to 23 months. After eight months, he was released to New Jersey, where he served an additional year for the car thefts in Burlington County…” Youthful indiscretions aside, Joe is now a successful Sicilian businessman, whose varied interests include a company which produces and distributes whole and powdered egg products and which has branches in Pennsylvania (where the state legislature passed an Aruba-travel boycott), Alabama (where the state legislature passed an Aruba-travel boycott) and El Salvador. What twist of fate brought Natalee’s Beth and Beth’s Joe together? ? Serenissimus Petrus, Useless-knowledge’s seer-in-residence, suggested that Natalee was to be found in Dominica, where jobs are scarce and money must be tight. Did Natalee, in far-off Alabama, work a few trainee egg-candling shifts at the Abbeville facility, learning valuable and portable vocational skills? Did she, destitute and desperate, slip across the Caribbean Sea to San Salvador and apply for the evening shift on the quality-control line? Did she indeed do this, then she is now ideally placed to stow away in a container of product destined for Alabama or Philadelphia, where she has waiting (when they’re not in Aruba) a dauntless mother or a brave benefactor. God works his wonders in many ways and, indeed, it will be God's blessing if Aruba’s immigration laws will admit a convicted and jailed ex-kid to their island paradise. ------------ About the author: Dayo Gould is a frequent visitor to Aruba, and is a volunteer ESL teacher in a Christian school. Email: ed_asp@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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