Missing white female

Yesterday evening Dutch late night talkshow host Jensen had an entire show dedicated to the disappearance of Nathalee Holloway. All the key figures were in the show one way or another: Peter R. de Vries, who is the crime reporter who lead the investigation, Patrick, the guy who lured Joran van der Sloot into the trap, Beth Holloway, Nathalee's mother, Bram Moscovitz, her lawyer, and Joran van der Sloot himself through a phone in.

It made me wonder why we're so interested in this story, not just over here in the Netherlands, but also in Aruba (where she was killed) and in the United States (where she was from). I read about something called the 'missing white female syndrom', which means that press and public pay an enormous amount of attention to certain crime stories, because it sort of appeals to them as if it were a movie script. Nathalee fits into this description perfectly. She was a young girl, with a whole life in front of her, who suddenly went missing. There's a guy involved who can easily be pointed at as the killer, and there's the mother in tears.

Don't get me wrong, I feel really sorry for Nathalee and her family, and I wish Joran van der Sloot will be put to jail (although I doubt it will happen). Still, I can't help but wonder why this case means so much to us all, while there are people missing every day, without ever showing up in the press except for maybe a two sentence story somewhere on page 17. Isn't it quite painful for family of those other missing persons, to see their loved ones being blatantly ignored while others get all the screen time they wish?