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Beth Holloway, Natalee Holloway‘s mother, has never stopped looking for her missing daughter. It’s been almost 15 years since Natalee, then 18, vanished while on a school trip to Aruba to celebrate her high school graduation.
Along the way, Beth has been the victim of alleged extortion. She’s traveled to Aruba, met with the prime suspect Joran van der Sloot in a Peruvian prison, and exhausted every possible avenue. A judge has declared Natalee dead, but her body has never been found. Over the years Joran van der Sloot, then a Dutch teen, has given a series of shifting statements about what happened to Natalee Holloway.
He’s never been charged in connection with her death and is serving a 28-year prison sentence for the beating and smothering death of a woman in a Peruvian hotel, Stephany Flores, who saw an Internet message about Holloway after meeting van der Sloot in a casino. Natalee was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot and two of his friends.
Now, a November 22, 2019 episode of 20/20, is focusing new attention on the high-profile case.
Here’s what you need to know:
Beth Holloway Traveled to Aruba & Peru Seeking Answers After Her Daughter’s Death
GettyBeth Holloway participates in the launch of the Natalee Holloway Resource Center on June 8, 2010 in Washington, DC.
ABC News recalled how Beth drummed up media attention that put pressure on Aruban authorities. However, it never resulted in charges. To ABC, she spoke about the death of Flores, and an extortion payment she made to the suspect, saying, “Some people have said, ‘Well, you know, Beth, if you hadn’t sent him that $25,000 he probably wouldn’t have had the money to go to Peru and then kill Stephany.’ Well, hell no. I did everything I knew to do,” Beth Holloway said. “Whoever was responsible for letting Joran leave that island, Aruba – they are the ones that have to sleep at night over Stephany Flores’ death. Not me.”
The 20/20 show describes how Beth traveled to Aruba and Peru looking for answers. In Peru, she even met van der Sloot in prison and asked him directly what happened to Natalee. She told him, “Let me take her home,” and he responded, “I’ve had a lot of time here to really think. I really do want to write you. I need some time to think about what I want to say.” But those answers never came.
Beth returned to Aruba for 20/20. She revealed that the island no longer holds power over her, she keeps her daughter’s senior portrait in her room, and the pain of loss never goes away.
“Every morning I go give her a kiss on the cheek, trace my hands down the rosary beads and across and just say a prayer. Some days I’ll say, ‘What are we doin’ today, Natalee?’ and ‘Let’s do this today.’ So I feel like she’s still a team with me,” she added to 20/20. “She was always a driving force, so she’s been with me all the way.”
In recent years, Beth founded the Natalee Holloway Resource Center. “In partnership with Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway, the Natalee Holloway Resource Center (NHRC) launched on June 8, 2010,” its website says. “NHRC focuses on education and crime prevention; it is not a recovery center. In the event that a loved one does go missing, NHRC will provide families with information and resources to assist them in the critical first hours of their search process.”
The mission “is to act as a resource center in the areas of missing person(s), traveling safe programs, and educational programs for the youth.”
In 2007, Beth Holloway wrote a book.
News reports once claimed that Beth was dating John Ramsey, the father of deceased child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. Ramsey went on to get married to someone else. His lawyer said they were just friends. In 2007, Beth’s husband, and Natalee’s stepdad, George Twitty, filed for divorce.
Prosecutors Say Natalee’s Mother was the Victim of Extortion
GettyJoran Van der Sloot in court for the murder of a woman in a Peruvian hotel.
In 2010, Beth Holloway’s lawyer said that van der Sloot, using a false name, asked him for thousands of dollars to lead him to Natalee’s body. The lawyer described Joran to 20/20 as a gambler. After receiving money from the Holloways, the lawyer says that Joran claimed he threw Natalee to the ground and her head hit a rock. He claimed that his now deceased father had buried her in a home foundation. However, van der Sloot later claimed that story was a lie too.
At that point, he went to Peru. According to ABC, Stephany Flores was a college student who was the “daughter of a presidential candidate.” She was beaten to death. He was arrested in Chile after a manhunt, and was also charged with wire and extortion offenses by U.S. prosecutors.
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010, a federal grand jury indicted van der Sloot, a citizen of the Netherlands, “on charges of wire fraud and extortion for soliciting money from Natalee Holloway’s mother on promises he would reveal the location of her daughter’s remains in Aruba and the circumstances of her 2005 death.”
The information he gave was false, the release states, adding, “The two-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court charges van der Sloot with extortion for exploiting Beth Holloway’s fear that she would never find her daughter’s body or know what happened to her unless she paid him $250,000. The indictment also charges van der Sloot with wire fraud for using false promises that he would reveal the location of Natalee Holloway’s body in order to induce Beth Holloway to make wire transfers of money.”
GettyJoran van der Sloot family includes father Paul van der Sloot.
The release adds, “After van der Sloot initially contacted Kelly (Beth’s attorney) and said he would reveal the location of Natalee Holloway’s remains for $250,000, he later agreed to lead Kelly to the site of her remains for $25,000. Once identification of the remains was confirmed, Beth Holloway was to pay the remaining $225,000 to van der Sloot.”
However, the release adds, “Van der Sloot received the $25,000 from Beth Holloway and led Kelly to a specific site in Aruba. He identified the site as the location where Natalee Holloway’s remains were buried, although he knew that information was false. Van der Sloot kept the $25,000, but later confirmed by e-mail that the information he had provided was ‘worthless.'”
You can read the indictment here.
Van der Sloot is serving a 28-year prison sentence he received in 2012. Once his sentence is complete there, he faces extradition to the U.S.