In May 2005, eighteen-year-old Natalee Holloway left Alabama for a senior trip to Aruba with her schoolmates. The teenager had just graduated with honors and was looking forward to going to college.
However, one day before she was supposed to return home, Natalee disappeared without a trace after leaving a popular nightclub with a Dutch student named Joran van der Sloot.
Despite extensive media coverage and the involvement of several investigative agencies, Natalee was never found.
Background
Natalee Ann Holloway was born on October 21st, 1986, in Memphis, Tennessee, to parents Beth and David Holloway. Her parents divorced in 1993, and she moved with her mother and younger brother, Matthew, to Clinton, Mississippi.
Beth remarried in 2000, and the family relocated to Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Natalee was known as a straight-A student who participated in various extracurricular activities and was a member of the student government.
She graduated from Mountain Brook High School in 2005 and earned a full scholarship to the University of Alabama. Her plan was to be a pre-med student.
However, before she packed her belongings to move to campus, she had an unofficial graduation trip to Aruba scheduled for late May. This trip was a tradition for graduating students from Mountain Brook High School, who visited Aruba in the previous two years.
The disappearance
On May 26th, 2005, the Mountain Brook High School graduates arrived in Aruba. Natalee and 124 high school students settled into the Holiday Inn hotel, where they were supposed to spend the next five days.
The students were accompanied by their teachers, who acted as chaperones for this trip. They were there to ensure everyone was okay, but chaperones couldn’t be everywhere at all times.
The students spent their days at the beach, returned to the hotel in the afternoon, attended dinner, and then visited local bars in the evenings. The partying often continued in the hotel late into the night.
The hotel staff were unhappy about the entire situation and openly expressed their dissatisfaction with the students’ behavior. Natalee’s classmates later confirmed that they were drinking and partying a bit too much.
On May 29th, 2005, the group’s last evening on Aruba, the students dispersed across Oranjestad, visiting different bars and clubs.
Natalee and her friends stopped by the hotel casino, where they met Joran van Der Sloot, who introduced himself as a 19-year-old tourist from the Netherlands. It was later revealed that he was actually 17 years old and a student at the International School of Aruba.
Natalee’s group decided to visit Carlos ’n Charlie’s, a popular nightclub that is almost always packed with both locals and tourists. Joran tagged along with them. The bar closed at 1:00 AM, and Natalee was seen entering a car with Joran and his two friends, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. Deepak was 21 years old and owned the said vehicle.
The Mountain Brook students were scheduled to return home that morning, but Natalee never showed up at the hotel. While everyone else checked out, her suitcase and passport remained in her hotel room. Her friends initially thought she might arrive late for the flight, but they all felt uneasy leaving without her.
One of the chaperones stayed behind to wait for Natalee in case she showed up. Her mother and stepfather were informed about the situation, and they were immediately worried.
They knew Natalee would never miss the return flight, and Beth, her mother, feared she had been kidnapped, or, worse, killed.
Instead of waiting to hear back from the teen, they flew straight to Aruba on a private jet, accompanied by a couple of friends from Mountain Brook.
Natalee’s mother spoke with the hotel management and explained what was happening. Natalee’s friends mentioned a Dutch tourist named Joran, and she tried to get the full name. The nighttime manager identified him as Joran van Der Sloot, a local teen who frequented the hotel casino.
Soon they learned Joran’s address, and the group went there with two police officers, hoping to find Natalee. When confronted, Joran denied knowing anyone named Natalee, but he then said Natalee wanted to see sharks, so he and his friends drove her to Arashi Beach after Carlos ’n Charlie’s closed.
Joran claimed that they dropped Natalee off at her hotel around 2:00 AM, but they did see a dark man dressed in a black shirt approach her as she walked to the entrance. The guys thought he looked like a security guard, and Joran’s friend Deepak corroborated this story.
The search for Natalee
In the initial days of the search, hundreds of volunteers scoured the island of Aruba, hoping to find any trace of the missing girl. Dutch marines joined in, covering the shoreline. Investigators examined Deepak Kalpoe’s vehicle for DNA evidence but found no traces of blood.
The security cameras in the Holiday Inn lobby didn’t show Natalee arriving after she was reportedly dropped by Joran van der Sloot. On June 5th, Aruban police made their first arrests related to the case.
Nick John and Abraham Jones, former security guards, were brought in for questioning and then detained. They were released on June 13th, with no charges filed against them.
On June 9th, 2005, Joran van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were arrested by the Aruban police, and within days, their stories began to change.
The Kalpoe brothers claimed they had dropped Natalee and Joran off at the beach near the Marriott Hotel on the night of her disappearance. According to them, Joran called less than an hour later, saying he was walking home from the beach.
In an apparent attempt to steer the investigation away from him, Joran claimed that Natalee had left with the Kalpoe brothers after he was dropped off at home.
However, investigators didn’t believe in this version of the story, and the brothers were released from jail on July 4th. Joran remained in custody as the search for Natalee continued.
By July 2005, the Royal Netherlands Air Force sent three F-16 aircraft to search the island using infrared sensors, but they found nothing of interest to the local police. During the search, law enforcement examined a landfill and drained a small pond near the Marriott Hotel.
Joran van der Sloot was released from custody on September 3rd, and the media began pursuing him for interviews right away. His story changed again, and Joran now claimed that Natalee wanted to have intercourse with him, but he refused since he didn’t have a condom.
Shortly after, he left the girl alone on the beach and returned home because he had school the next day. According to him, he lied to the police out of shame for leaving Natalee alone after 1:00 AM.
Aruban police continued their search for Natalee in 2006, focusing on the dunes in the northwest part of the island. By then, the theory presented by the investigators was that Natalee may have died from alcohol poisoning, and that whoever she was with concealed her death.
In spring 2007, the Dutch National Police took over the investigation, working alongside their colleagues from Aruba.
Their first task was to search the van der Sloot property on the island, where they examined the electronic devices owned by the family. They then moved to the Kalpoe family home, but officers didn’t uncover any new evidence in either search.
On November 21st, 2007, Joran and the Kalpoe brothers were arrested again, but they were released by early December. On December 18th, 2007, the case was officially closed by the prosecutor due to the lack of evidence that Natalee Holloway died as a result of violence.
New versions of the events
On February 3rd, 2008, footage from a hidden camera was aired on Dutch television in which Joran tells a completely new version of the events surrounding Natalee Holloway’s disappearance.
In this account, he claimed that he was with Natalee when she suffered a seizure and began shaking uncontrollably. He attempted to revive her, but failed. In a state of panic, Joran contacted a friend who disposed of Natalee’s lifeless body on his own.
Five days later, Joran was questioned by the investigators, and he claimed everything he said in the footage was false because he was under the influence of marijuana at the time it was recorded.
On November 24th, 2008, an interview with Joran was aired on Fox News, and this time, he stated he had sold Natalee to human traffickers.
Two local police officers later discovered that the missing teenager was in Venezuela. Law enforcement blackmailed the van der Sloot family, and Joran’s father reportedly paid them to stay quiet. After the broadcast, Joran retracted his statements.
On March 29th, Joran contacted the attorney representing Beth, Natalee’s mother, and offered to reveal the location of her daughter’s remains for $250,000. The FBI was alerted immediately, and Joran received a $15,000 advance, which was filmed by the undercover agents.
He provided an address where he claimed Natalee’s remains would be found, but that information turned out to be false. As a result, Joran van der Sloot was charged with extortion and wire fraud.
Stephany Flores Ramirez
On May 30th, 2010, Stephany Flores Ramirez was reported missing in Lima, Peru.
She was a 21-year-old student from a wealthy and influential family. On June 2nd, her lifeless body was found in a hotel room registered under Joran van der Sloot’s name. An autopsy revealed that Stephany had been beaten and then strangled.
Local law enforcement was unable to locate Joran immediately as he was on the run, but Chilean authorities arrested him on June 3rd. He was swiftly extradited to Peru. During questioning, Joran claimed he had met Stephany at a casino in Lima, and the two returned together to his hotel room.
He confessed that he became angry at Stephany after she accessed his laptop without permission and discovered he was involved in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, which had occurred exactly five years earlier.
During the interview, Peruvian authorities avoided asking him questions about Natalee even though he offered to tell them where her body was. Joran van der Sloot was charged with first-degree murder and robbery. He pleaded guilty on January 11th, 2012, and was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
The final confession
While Joran was behind bars, the Holloway family continued their search for the remains of their daughter. They conducted independent searches on the island, but without success. Since it was clear she had passed away, Natalee Holloway was declared legally dead on January 12th, 2012.
On June 8th, 2023, the Peruvian authorities extradited Joran van der Sloot to the United States to stand trial for extortion and wire fraud against Beth Holloway. He pleaded guilty in October 2023 and received a 20-year sentence, which will run concurrently with the time he is currently serving in Peru.
As a part of his plea deal, Joran finally revealed what had happened on the night of May 30th, 2005, ending the nearly 20-year-old mystery.
He admitted he was with Natalee on the beach. The two were lying in the sand and kissing when he started touching her inappropriately. She told him to stop, but he ignored her.
Natalee kicked him between the legs, so he got up and struck her in the face with his foot. While she was unconscious, Joran found a cinderblock and struck her head. He then dragged Natalee’s body into the water, hoping the waves would carry her out to sea.
Joran said he hoped his confession would finally provide closure to Natalee’s family, who had never given up on finding her.
Beth and Dave Holloway listened to his confession in real time. While certain that Joran van der Sloot was the only killer, Dave believes others may have helped him dispose of Natalee’s body.
Even though Joran confessed to the murder, he may never be prosecuted in Aruba due to legal limitations. Natalee’s remains have never been found, and it remains unconfirmed if anyone else was involved in helping Joran van der Sloot commit this heinous crime.
Sources
https://www.livenowfox.com/news/natalee-holloway-case-joran-van-der-sloot
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67150843
https://people.com/where-are-natalee-holloway-parents-now-11743651
Leave a comment