Getty Was Natalee Holloway's body ever found? Natalee on left, and her mom on right.
Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old tourist from Alabama on a class trip celebrating her high school graduation, vanished in Aruba in 2005. Her body has never been found.
Over the years, though, the prime suspect, Joran van der Sloot, has given a series of conflicting statements about what happened to Natalee.
Van der Sloot has never been charged in connection with Holloway’s death. However, he is serving a 28-year prison sentence in the murder of Stephany Flores, who was found dead in 2010 in his hotel room. The motive for that crime: Flores, who met Van der Sloot in a casino, was researching information about Holloway on the Internet.
ABC News is featuring the case on an episode of 20/20 on November 22, 2019.
A U.S. federal indictment accusing Van der Sloot of extorting Natalee’s mom says that Joran Andreas Petrus van der Sloot is a citizen of the Netherlands who was residing in Aruba. Natalee was a resident of Mountain Brook, Alabama who was seen alive on or about May 30, 2005 in the company of van der Sloot on the day of her disappearance.
Her whereabouts have been unknown since May 30, 2005, the indictment says.
Here’s what you need to know:
Van der Sloot Is Accused of Trying to Extort Natalee’s Mother by Falsely Claiming He Would Lead her to the Location of Natalee’s Remains
Beth Holloway participates in the launch of the Natalee Holloway Resource Center on June 8, 2010 in Washington, DC.
According to ABC News, the last sighting of Holloway was leaving Carlos ‘n Charlie’s in Oranjestad with van der Sloot, then 17 and a Dutch citizen, and two of van der Sloot’s friends, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. Initially, the men said that they dropped Natalee off at her hotel and caused her no harm. Authorities suspected otherwise and arrests resulted but no charges. Holloway’s mother has never stopped in her quest to get answers from van der Sloot about what really happened to her daughter.
“He’s a monster. I know that he was responsible for the demise of Natalee. And I’ll never, never not believe that,” Beth Holloway’s Natalee’s mom, told ABC. “I made a pledge that I will share everything that I have learned. So, that’s what I did.”
Aruban authorities closed the case. Natalee was never found despite deep-water searches.
Van der Sloot has given a series of shifting statements over the years about what happened to Holloway. According to ABC, Van der Sloot went to school in the Netherlands, and gave an interview to the network denying that he had harmed Holloway. According to Fox News, in 2006, he claimed that he “left Natalee alone on a beach.” In 2008, he was filmed by a Dutch crime reporter on hidden camera “describing Holloway’s death,” and the case was reopened, ABC reports.
In the 2008 tape, he says Natalee “had collapsed on the beach and that he had disposed of her body,” Fox News reports.
The statements couldn’t be corroborated. That same year, he told American television personality Greta Van Susteren that he “sold Natalee Holloway into sexual slavery,” but later denied it.
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 in court for the murder of a woman in a Peruvian hotel.
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.