Natalee Holloway: 20 years since disappearance, Joran van der Sloot’s arrest
Beth Holloway participates in the launch of the Natalee Holloway Resource Center on June 8, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
It's been 20 years since the disappearance of Alabama 18-year-old Natalee Holloway during her class trip to Aruba.
On June 9, 2005, the first arrest related to the case was that of Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch national, who was the main suspect.
Who was Natalee Holloway?
The backstory:
Holloway, 18, went missing during a high school graduation trip to Aruba with classmates.
She was last seen on May 30, 2005, leaving a bar with van der Sloot.
Holloway’s disappearance quickly became an international sensation, filling evening newscasts with live reports from the island and photos of her smiling face. Her disappearance also spawned countless books, podcasts and movies.
Joran Andreas Petrus van der Sloot (C), is escorted by Peruvian police as he arrives at the DIRINCRI (Criminal Investigation Direction) office in Lima on June 5, 2010. (Photo credit MARCEL ANTONISSE/AFP via Getty Images)
A judge eventually declared her dead.
The Holloway family has long sought answers about her disappearance, and van der Sloot has given shifting accounts over the years. At one point, he said Holloway was buried in gravel under the foundation of a house but later admitted that was untrue.
Joran van der Sloot's arrest and confession
Timeline:
Van der Sloot was identified as the main suspect and detained weeks later for questioning, along with two Surinamese brothers, but no charges were filed in the case.
But in 2010, U.S. prosecutors said van der Sloot reached out to Beth Holloway, seeking $250,000 to disclose the location of the young woman’s body. A grand jury indicted him that year on one count each of wire fraud and extortion.
In 2012, van der Sloot pleaded guilty in Peru to killing 21-year-old Stephany Flores, a business student from a prominent Peruvian family. She was killed in 2010, five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.
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In October 2023, Joran van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extorting Holloway’s mother in exchange for a 20-year sentence.
Van der Sloot married a Peruvian woman in July 2014 in a ceremony at a maximum-security prison.
In October 2023, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extorting Holloway’s mother in exchange for a 20-year sentence. The plea deal required van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalie Holloway’s disappearance, allow her parents to hear in "real time" his discussion with law enforcement, and take a polygraph test.
He admitted that he beat the young Alabama woman to death on a beach in Aruba after she refused his advances, then dumped her body into the sea.
"I smash her head in with it completely," van der Sloot said in an Oct. 3, 2023, interview with federal authorities. "Her face basically, you know, collapses in. Even though it's dark, I can see her face is collapsed in."
"I would like the chance to apologize to the Holloway family, my own family," he said, later adding, "I am no longer the person I was back then."
He wasn't charged in Holloway’s death.
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Where does the Natalee Holloway case stand now?
What's next:
In 2023, the Aruba public prosecutor’s office said it was not immediately clear whether van der Sloot could face murder charges on the island.
The investigation into Holloway’s disappearance is still open, and authorities "will follow up on any serious leads," said Ann Angela, a prosecutor’s office spokesperson.
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What they're saying:
"As far as I’m concerned, it’s over," Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother, told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Alabama in 2023. "Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder. He is the killer."
The family agreed to the plea deal because it was a way to get answers, she said.
"Questions will forever remain about the extent to which others participated in depriving us of the opportunity to return Natalee’s remains to Alabama," Dave Holloway wrote in the letter to the judge in 2023.
The Source: FOX News and the Associated Press contributed to this story. The information in this story comes from a combination of official court records, media reports, and public statements from law enforcement and the Holloway family over the past two decades. This story was reported from Los Angeles.