Now we know what happened to Natalee Holloway

She disappeared from the island of Aruba in May 2005. Over the course of 18 years, the family of Natalee Holloway failed to discover what had happened to her. In October 2023, their main suspect, Joran van der Sloot, was forced to tell the truth about the teen's final hours.

Image: Natalee Holloway Resource Center / Facebook

Natalee Holloway's mother told the press about her daughter's death after Van der Sloot had pleaded guilty to extortion of the family. The crime he was charged with, dating back to 2010, was the promise of telling her the location of Natalee's body in exchange for $250,000.

Part of Van der Sloot's punishment for the extortion, in addition to jail time and restitution, was that he had to tell the family what he knew about Natalee Holloway's disappearance in 2005. And so he did. His words were confirmed by a successful polygraph test.

In May 2005, 18-year-old Natalee from a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, Alabama (USA) was on a trip with her local high school to celebrate graduation. She was an honors student who had gotten into college on a scholarship and planned to study medicine.

Photo: Natalee Holloway Resource Center / Facebook

As her class boarded the plane back on May 30, Natalee did not show up at the airport. In her hotel, authorities found her luggage and passport.

Several classmates would testify that there had been heavy drinking throughout the 5-day high school trip. Natalee herself also joined the party, missing breakfast twice, Vanity Fair reported. Initially, the teens assumed that she had just overslept and missed her flight.

In one of the last photos taken of the girl (via Natalee Holloway Resource Center / Facebook), she stands with her high school friends on one of Aruba's beaches.

The last sight of the American teen was in front of the nightclub Carlos 'n Charlie's in Oranjestad. It was 1:30 in the morning and she was sitting in a car with three local teenagers.

Image: Natalee Holloway Resource Center / Facebook

The three boys would soon be recognized by local nightclub staff as 17-year-old Joran van der Sloot, originally from The Netherlands, and two of his friends from Suriname, the Kalpoe brothers.

But what happened after she stepped into the car with Joran van der Sloot and his friends? The boys gave conflicting statements and there was no trace of the girl anywhere. Despite thorough searches by Aruba police and the Dutch army, Natalee was never found.

Image: Natalee Holloway Resource Center / Facebook

Over time, the missing person's case became a cold case. Though Joran van der Sloot remained the prime suspect, he never confessed to the crime. In October 2023, however, the young man finally came clean and told the family what had happened.

As Beth Holloway told the press on October 18, Natalee's death was a "hands-on vicious, unprovoked execution."

Image: ABC News

Natalee had indeed gone with Joran van der Sloot and his friends that night. Once they arrived on a beach, Joran made some advances, the family lawyer told People magazine, but Natalee turned him down. As CNN cited the convict's confession, "Van der Sloot said Holloway kneed him in the crotch after he tried 'feeling her up.'"

"Enraged, van der Sloot, then 17, smashed Natalee's head in with a cinder block," People magazine reports.

Image: Natalee Holloway Resource Center / Facebook

CNN states that Van der Sloot killed Natalee Holloway "kicking her in the face and bludgeoning her with the cinder block." It was an "instinctive act," Natalee's mother added in her press statement

After the murder, "the teenager threw her body in the water," Natalee's mother told the press outside the Alabama courthouse. From there, the girl would never be found again.

Over the years, while subject to constant scrutiny from the press, police, and family, Joran van der Sloot would make different false statements about Natalee Holloway's disappearance.

Joran and his friends began by saying that they had simply dropped Natalee off at her hotel, the Holiday Inn. However, security footage did not support that story, the Dutch outlet RTL Nieuws reports.

Later, Van der Sloot would tell an undercover reporter in a secret recording that he had brought Natalee's body out to sea in a boat with the help of a friend. When confronted with the footage, he said the story was made up.

Image: still from 'Peter R. de Vries, Misdaadverslaggever' / SBS

Van der Sloot also alleged that Natalee had fallen from a balcony under the influence of drugs and that her body was in a swamp. More outrageous still, he sold the story to Fox News that he had trafficked the girl into slavery to a man who then took her to Venezuela. Fox reportedly paid him $100,000 for it, RTL Nieuws claims, and he would later admit it was nonsense.

Image: Darice de Cuba / Unsplash

The lie that would eventually do him in was the one he told to the mother of Natalee Holloway in 2010. He offered to reveal to the desperate family what happened to their daughter in exchange for $250,000.

Image: Natalee Holloway Resource Center / Facebook

Once he received a $25,000 advance from Beth Holloway, Van der Sloot ran off to Peru. The scam would lead to charges of wire fraud and extortion in the US, and eventually, in October 2023, Joran van der Sloot would have to face a judge for it. The plea deal for this crime included an honest description of Natalee's murder and the location of her remains.

In the meantime, while fleeing the Holloway family in 2010, Joran van der Sloot killed another young woman. Stephany Flores was a Peruvian student who died by beating, choking, and smothering in a Lima hotel after she allegedly confronted Van der Sloot about the Natalee Holloway case.

It happened exactly five years after Natalee's death, on May 30, 2010, People magazine emphasizes. For that reason, some international media have dubbed Van der Sloot 'the calender killer.'

For this crime, Van der Sloot was quickly caught by Peruvian authorities and sentenced to 28 years in Peruvian prison. As People magazine observes, it put an end to the liberty of a man who had already killed two persons by age 22.

Joran van der Sloot can no longer be tried for the killing of Natalee Holloway. Aruba has a statute of limitations of 12 years for murder. However, the Alabama court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for the fraud and extortion charges, and he has to serve these concurrently with his 28 years for Stephany Flores' murder in a remote Peruvian prison.

Image: WNL / YouTube

For the Holloway family, the story is over. "This confession means we have finally reached the end of this never-ending nightmare," Natalee's mother told the press in Alabama. She added that "we finally transitioned from the victim to the victor," per WBRC News. In October 2023, Natalee Holloway would have turned 37 years old if she were still alive.

Image: photo provided by Natalee Holloway's family, via Inside Edition