When Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old high school graduate from Alabama, disappeared during a trip to Aruba in 2005, it became a media storm that lasted years.
Her killer, Joran van der Sloot, did not confess until 2023, nearly two decades later. His body was never found.
The Netflix docuseries “Taken: Natalee Holloway” includes new interviews with Natalee’s mother Beth, her friends, FBI agents who worked on the case and the Aruban police chief at the time.
Here are the biggest reveals of the series.
Natalee’s friends weren’t worried when she got into a car with strangers
“When one of my friends saw Natalee with Joran in a gray Honda Civic [van der Sloot] and two Arubans were driving, we weren’t really worried,” said Madison Greer, one of Natalee’s friends. The group met van der Sloot on a night out.
Natalee was last seen alive on May 30, 2005, leaving a bar and getting into a car with van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.
Greer said the screen showed Natalee in high spirits at the time, “hanging out in the car and yelling, ‘Aruba!’ He remembered saying things like: People shouted ‘Aruba!’ he said. back And then he drove away.”
Natalee said her friends didn’t panic because the taxis on the island were ordinary unmarked cars.
Greer added: “There’s no doubt in my mind about that [Natalee] thought, ‘[The Kalpoe brothers] we are local taxi drivers and they will take me where we want to go and then [back] to the hotel.”
Van der Sloot, now 39, was a 17-year-old local at the time. Greer said he told Natalee and her friends that he was a Dutch college student.
Natalee’s mother immediately confronted van der Sloot and determined him guilty.
Beth rushed to Aruba after learning her daughter was missing. Natalee’s friends shared details about van der Sloot and described his car. Armed with this information, Beth confronted him at his home with her father.
“The only thing going through my mind was, ‘Find this guy, get Natalee, bring her home,'” Beth said.
During their confrontation, van der Sloot allegedly told Beth that he kissed Natalee on the beach before dropping her off at her hotel, that Natalee got out of the car, hit her head, and security guards helped her in.
Beth said she knew “instinctively” that van der Sloot was lying. “I don’t know what parts of this [account] These were true, but I knew he knew what happened to him. “I decided, ‘Tag, that’s you,'” he recalled.
He added: “I looked at that gray Honda and thought, ‘Could Natalee be in that trunk?’ I thought.
Why did it take the police so long to arrest van der Sloot?
Although Van der Sloot was the prime suspect, he was not arrested until 10 days after Natalee’s disappearance. The Kalpoe brothers were also arrested but were never charged in connection with Natalee’s disappearance and maintained their innocence.
Then-Aruba police chief Gerold Dompig said on screen: “We didn’t find forensic evidence, but we got a lot of publicity – there was a lot of pressure on Aruba.”
“It was frustrating watching the news and wanting something to happen,” Greer recalled. “We’re all very angry that it’s taking this long. Why don’t we arrest him?”
Before arresting van der Sloot, Aruban police arrested two security guards from the hotel, consistent with van der Sloot’s initial statement that he dropped Natalee off and that security helped him inside.
“Everyone looking from the outside was only focused on Joran, but the investigation has a certain tactic: first eliminate the noise. The security guard was the noise. But we need to investigate to rule them out,” Dompig explained.
After arresting the security guards, police obtained video footage showing van der Sloot lying about dropping Natalee off at his hotel.
“We needed to find things you could use to corner the suspect. We were hoping he would start to break down,” Dompig said.
Van der Sloot changed his story ’40 times’ when police questioned him
“Normally, underage suspects break down during interrogation. I was convinced that we were ready to get a confession. But it was very difficult to interrogate Joran,” Dompig admitted.
At the time, van der Sloot had given conflicting accounts to police about his night with Natalee. “The dominant one loved being the center of attention… I think he changed his story 40 times,” Dompig said.
It was later revealed that van der Sloot’s father, Paulus, was a lawyer in Aruba who was on his way to becoming a judge.
“This seriously complicated matters, because he had greater visitation rights… The fact that his father was a judge in training was a problem for us, because he could give his son certain advice,” Dompig said, adding that during their investigation they claimed van der Sloot’s father had told him “if there is no body, there is no crime.”
Police detained van der Sloot for several weeks, but were forced to release him on 3 September 2005 due to lack of evidence.
“The most important thing missing from this case was that we never found Natalee,” Dompig said.
Local people felt belittled by media coverage
“Having someone go missing is almost a slap in the face, we take care of our people,” Aruban journalist Dilma Arends Geerman said.
Charles Croes, the Aruban businessman who helped Beth search for Natalee, explained that Aruba has a sense of “being kind to visitors” because its economy is “almost entirely” dependent on tourism.
Geerman said it was “disappointing” that the American media came and “the impression was created that Aruba did nothing.”
How did Beth’s lawyer catch van der Sloot for extortion and wire fraud?
In 2010, Beth’s attorney, John Q. Kelly, received an email from van der Sloot in which he allegedly told her, “I’ll take you to Natalee. I want to get $250,000 in return.”
“I thought it was complete nonsense. I knew he had no intention of giving accurate information, but I told Beth it might be a ruse to trap her on extortion and fraud charges,” Kelly explained, noting that American authorities have no jurisdiction in Aruba but could extradite van der Sloot to the United States.
When Kelly flew to Aruba in 2010, met with van der Sloot and gave him some of the money, Van der Sloot told him that Natalee’s body was in the cement foundation of a house under construction in 2005.
“I acted like I believed it,” Kelly explained. “Theoretically, Joran got twenty-five thousand dollars, had a good laugh, and went on his merry way. It didn’t bother me at all because I knew how it would turn out.”
Kelly, along with FBI investigators, discovered that van der Sloot’s story was untrue because the house was not under construction at the time.
However, before charges could be brought against him for extortion and wire fraud, van der Sloot was found guilty of murdering another young woman and sentenced to prison in Peru.
Natalee’s friends were angry when Van der Sloot was found guilty of murder in Peru.
In 2012, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Peruvian business student Stephany Flores Ramírez. He was sentenced to 28 years in a Peruvian prison in 2012.
“I remember being angry. This could have been prevented,” Greer said.
“It was devastating,” Beth said. “Five years after he killed Natalee, another young girl lost her life. I mean, it was sickening. I knew he would kill again. He’s just a ticking time bomb.”
Dompig was “shocked” to hear that van der Sloot had killed Ramírez.
“Unfortunately, the fact that we couldn’t find forensic evidence and Natalee got away with the case made her more dangerous. I think she could have committed murder again if she hadn’t been in prison.”
Van der Sloot claimed to have killed a rabbit
In 2023, FBI agents extradited van der Sloot to Birmingham, Alabama. Retired FBI agent Alexandra Montilla explained: “We cannot charge him with murdering Natalee, but we will charge you with extortion charges and take you to Natalee’s backyard.”
Montilla, who was on the plane with van der Sloot at the time as they flew from Peru to Alabama, recalled that he was “charismatic, easy to talk to… people are attracted to him. He comes off as a very educated man.”
During the flight, van der Sloot, who got married and had a daughter during his time in prison, allegedly told Montilla that he was allowed to have a rabbit, but when the animal scratched his daughter, he “grabbed the rabbit and ripped off its head as if it was nothing.”
Montilla claimed that van der Sloot “carried on with other conversations” after announcing this.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of criminals, and as a woman I thought, ‘this is probably one of the most dangerous,’” Montilla noted.
FBI interviewer determined van der Sloot was honest because he had been to Aruba
While being extradited to Alabama, Van der Sloot admitted under a polygraph to bludgeoning Natalee to death on a beach in Aruba. He claimed that he walked three meters into the ocean and dumped her body there.
Scott, a former FBI agent, explained that van der Sloot agreed to a plea deal to provide information in exchange for the government recommending to the court that “the sentence be concurrent with the sentence he is serving in Peru.”
Retired FBI agent Michael Leverock, Van der Sloot’s polygraph examiner, recalled: “The part of the story that everyone has a problem with is that being about 10 feet into the water doesn’t sound right. In general, you can’t just put someone in the ocean. They’re going to wash out.”
However, Leverock recalled that he had recently made his own trip to Aruba and said that he learned that there was “offshore wind” in the relevant part of the island, which means “if something happens.” [to a person] there, they won’t come back.”
Beth said hearing van der Sloot’s confession was “hard to hear, terrible to hear, but I had to hear it. Not knowing is the most torture part.”
Currently, van der Sloot is serving his sentence in Peru.
“Received: Natalee Holloway” is now streaming on Netflix.