SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Authorities in Aruba believe a missing American tourist is no longer alive and are seeking to continue a detention order for her traveling companion as they seek witnesses who will assist them make a suit against him, a prosecutor on the Dutch Caribbean island said Friday.
Investigators have few witnesses who saw Robyn Gardner and Gary V.
Giordano together in Aruba before he reported her missing, said Solicitor General Taco Stein. Giordano has told police she was apparently pulled aside by the ocean current as they snorkeled off the southern tip of the island on Aug. 2.
After so many days, authorities no longer consider the 35-year-old Maryland woman could be alive, so they are holding Giordano on suspicion of interest in her death. Her remains have not been recovered despite a look of more than 4 years in the sea and on the coastline in the country where she was reported missing.
"As farsighted as we don't get a body, you can doubt whether or not she is dead," Stein told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "On the other hand, with all the packaging on the case, if she were yet alive she would have made herself known."
Other factors also extend to the end she is dead, Stein told reporters later. Police have cured her passport from her property and don't think she could have left the island by air with a fake identity. They hold also found no evidence that she left Aruba by boat.
PHOTOS OF ROBYN GARDNER:
Asked why there was obviously so little active searching going on, the prosecutor said it is hard to recognize where to attend without more information, even on a comparatively small island. Aruba is approximately 75 square miles (193 square kilometers), nearly the sizing of Baltimore, Maryland.
Later Friday, several dozen police and firefighters searched an abandoned phosphate mine with cave-like entrances in an orbit near where Gardner went missing. Journalists saw a firefighter leave the mine with what appeared to be a pink shirt and sandals. But it was unclear if these were attached to the investigation.
The movement ended when it became too gloomy to stay and Stein said nothing of significance had been found.
Giordano, a 50-year-old business owner, has denied any wrongdoing through his attorney. He initially helped with the search but Stein said he now declines to resolve questions from investigators.
FBI agents searched Giordano's home in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Friday evening. Agent Phil Celestini said the FBI was executing a federal search warrant and declined to resolve questions.
Giordano and Gardner, who is from Frederick, Maryland, arrived in Aruba on July 31 and divided a way at a Marriott hotel. Investigators have surveillance tape of them at a restaurant near Baby Beach, not far from where he says she disappeared while snorkeling. But no witnesses saw them go into the urine and law have no cognition of what else they did on the island, Stein said. Investigators have distributed photos of the yoke and are hoping anyone who saw them will contact police.
Investigators particularly need details of how the couple behaved together on the island, and whether they seemed close or quarreled. "We get really little data about what they did on the island. The data we have doesn't make us insight into their relationship," Stein said.
Giordano's lawyer, Michael Lopez, has said his client lost track of Gardner while they were snorkeling and is expected to contend the request.
"We look we get a hard case, but what the label will think, I don't know," Stein said.
Under Aruban law, which is based on the Dutch legal system, the label can broaden the next detention order for a maximum of 8 years at a hearing scheduled for Monday.
After that period, prosecutors could ask a try to order Giordano held for as tenacious as 60 days while they make a case, but that would take more solid evidence. Charges would be filed at the end of the 60 days if prosecutors take the subject to court.
Aruba's system became familiar to many Americans who followed the disappearance in 2005 of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway. Authorities repeatedly detained individuals suspected of involvement but then later had to eject them for want of evidence. That example was never solved.
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Dilma Arends Geerman contributed from Oranjestad, Aruba.
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