For 18 years, Beth Holloway searched for her missing daughter Natalee — until Joran van der Sloot finally admitted to killing her in 2023.
Chris Bott/Alamy Stock PhotoBeth Holloway with a photograph of her daughter, Natalee Holloway, who went missing in 2005.
In 2005, Beth Holloway got the phone call that all mothers dread. Her 18-year-old daughter Natalee Holloway had vanished during a school trip to Aruba. Though some thought it was possible that Natalee had simply overslept or was still out partying, Beth instantly feared the worst.
“I knew immediately that my daughter had been kidnapped in Aruba,” Beth told Vanity Fair in 2006. “Natalee has never been late in her life.”
That phone call launched Beth Holloway’s 18-year quest to learn what happened to her daughter. Her journey would be full of false hope and terrible lows, and would finally come to an end with a shocking murder confession in 2023.
Beth Holloway’s Life With Her Daughter Natalee Before She Disappeared
Born in 1960, Beth Holloway led a fairly normal life before her daughter Natalee Holloway vanished in Aruba. As Vanity Fair reports, Beth was raised in Arkansas and later met and married Natalee’s father, Dave Holloway. The two moved to Jackson, Mississippi together, but divorced in 1993. Beth raised their children, Natalee and Matt, largely on her own.
In 2000, Beth married George “Jug” Twitty and moved to Mountain Brook, Alabama. There, Natalee grew up and attended Mountain Brook High School.
FacebookNatalee Holloway as a child. She was 18 years old when she disappeared.
Natalee excelled in school, where she participated in student government, joined the dance team, and got straight As. She even earned a full scholarship to attend the University of Alabama. And as graduation neared, Natalee asked her parents’ permission to attend a school trip to Aruba.
Though Dave Holloway had his reservations about the “extravagant” vacation, Beth thought that it was a good idea.
“I was excited. The Mountain Brook students had been there the previous two years,” Beth Holloway explained to NBC News in 2008. “Even my step-son — the year 2003. And there were going to be over 150 plus classmates. So, we felt like, you know, there’s safety in numbers.”
On May 26, 2005, Beth Holloway dropped her daughter off at a friend’s house before their flight to Aruba. Beth and Natalee said their goodbyes, and then Beth drove off. It was the last time she’d ever see her daughter.
Beth HollowayBeth Holloway and Natalee Holloway before Natalee’s 2005 disappearance.
A few hours later, Natalee and over 120 of her classmates arrived in Aruba with seven adult chaperones. They spent the next several days lying on the beach, going to clubs, and (legally) drinking in the island’s bars.
But as the group gathered in the lobby of their Holiday Inn on May 30th, the day they were set to fly home, Natalee was nowhere to be found. One of the adults on the trip called Beth to let her know. The teenagers had been out late the night before, and it was possible that Natalee had overslept. But Beth immediately sensed that something terrible had happened.
“I knew instantly when I received that call that just from Natalee’s history and character and just her record, I — I knew instantly that she’d either been kidnapped or murdered,” Beth Holloway recalled. “There was no hesitation.”
The Desperate Search For Natalee Holloway
Beth Holloway soon called 911 to report that her daughter had been “kidnapped or murdered in Aruba” and raced down an interstate at 120 miles per hour to get home. When a state trooper pulled her over, Beth told him what had happened — and he put her in touch with the FBI.
FBINews of Natalee Holloway’s disappearance spread fast after the 18-year-old vanished in Aruba.
Unable to sit around and wait for news, Beth flew to Aruba with her husband, Jug Twitty, and some family friends. And she launched a search for Natalee Holloway that would ultimately endure for 18 years.
As Beth Holloway told NBC News, her search started at the Holiday Inn where Natalee had been staying. By speaking to one of the adult chaperones who’d stayed behind, Beth learned that Natalee’s passport and luggage were still in her room. She was still unaccounted for, but some of her fellow students had remembered seeing her talking to a tall Dutch teenager.
What’s more, Beth’s step-nephew — who’d also been on the trip — remembered the Dutchman as well. He was able to identify him in video footage of the casino where Natalee and her friends had started their night before going to a bar called Carlos ‘n Charlie’s. But when Beth asked a hotel employee about the Dutchman, she got a chilling response.
“She knew exactly who he was: Joran van der Sloot,” Beth Holloway recalled to Vanity Fair. “And then she said — these were her exact words — ‘He tends to prey upon young female tourists.'”
Before long, Beth and her friends were able to track Joran down. At first, the 17-year-old Dutch national denied knowing who Natalee was, but he eventually admitted that he had left Carlos ‘n Charlie’s with Natalee and two of his friends, a pair of brothers named Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, before dropping Natalee off at her hotel around 2 a.m.
(The Kalpoe brothers were arrested numerous times in connection with the Holloway case, but they were never charged with anything.)
ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP via Getty ImagesJoran van der Sloot initially denied his involvement in Natalee Holloway’s disappearance — but his story would change numerous times over the years.
“It made me sick,” Beth Holloway told NBC News. “We knew that the boys had totally fabricated this story about what they did with Natalee… within 72 hours, I viewed the video footage of the interior of the Holiday Inn lobby of how the tourists can enter the lobby. And Natalee never entered the lobby.”
But it would take nearly two decades for Beth to learn what had really happened to her daughter on the night that she vanished.
Joran Van Der Sloot’s Ever-Changing Accounts Of What Happened To Natalee Holloway
Joran van der Sloot long insisted that he’d had nothing to do with Natalee Holloway’s disappearance. But his story changed multiple times over the years. And in 2008, he appeared to confess to killing her.
Speaking to a Dutch drug dealer who’d been paid to secretly record him, van der Sloot stated that he and Holloway had been having sex when she had a seizure — and died. He claimed that he called a friend for help, who took Natalee’s body out to sea and “threw her out, like an old rag.”
For her parents, listening to this footage was agonizing.
Abaca Press/Alamy Stock PhotoBeth Holloway speaking about Natalee Holloway in 2010. Despite her suspicion that Joran van der Sloot was responsible for Natalee’s disappearance, it would take years for Beth to learn the full truth.
“I wanted to come to the TV and kill him,” Beth Holloway said. “I wanted to peel his skin off his face.” Natalee’s father Dave, who had his own agonizing experiences searching for his daughter, said, “It was a good thing… there was an ocean between us and Holland, because I would have come after him.”
But van der Sloot later claimed that he’d been lying, simply telling the dealer “what he wanted to hear.” And though he continued to tell various stories — that he’d murdered Natalee, that she’d died by accident, that he’d sold her into sexual slavery — he remained out of the authorities’ reach.
Things started to shift in March 2010, when van der Sloot reached out to Beth Holloway with an offer. For $25,000 upfront and another $225,000 later, he would reveal the location of Natalee’s body.
Working with the FBI, the Holloway family attorney met with van der Sloot in Aruba. There, he changed his story yet again. This time, van der Sloot said that he’d picked Natalee up and that she’d demanded to be let go. He threw her back down, she hit her head on a rock, and died. Van der Sloot claimed that his late father had hidden Natalee’s body in the foundation of a building.
The Holloway family attorney told van der Sloot that his intel was “worthless,” and van der Sloot left for Peru just days later.
There, on the five-year anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance, Joran van der Sloot murdered 21-year-old Stephany Flores on May 30, 2010. He beat her to death in his hotel room, purportedly because she’d mentioned Natalee Holloway or she’d seen something about Natalee on his computer.
“I didn’t want to do it,” van der Sloot claimed. “The girl intruded in my life.”
YouTubeJoran van der Sloot murdered Stephany Flores, seen here following him into his hotel room, on May 30, 2010, exactly five years after Natalee Holloway disappeared.
Van der Sloot was arrested and later found guilty of murdering Flores. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the crime. And many years later, he’d finally confess to another murder as well.
“I Have Peace”: Beth Holloway’s Life In The Wake Of Joran Van Der Sloot’s Confession
Kypros/Getty ImagesJoran van der Sloot’s 2010 mugshot.
For Beth Holloway, the years since Natalee’s disappearance in 2005 had been excruciating. Her husband filed for divorce in 2006, and her search to learn what happened to Natalee had gone nowhere.
But in 2023, Joran van der Sloot was extradited to the United States. He was set to face extortion charges related to his attempt to get money from the Holloway family. And as part of his plea deal, van der Sloot agreed to finally tell the full truth about Natalee Holloway’s disappearance.
That October, van der Sloot revealed that Natalee had wanted to return to her hotel, but he told his friends to drop them off a bit further away so that he could spend more time with her. When van der Sloot tried to initiate sex with Natalee, she fought back, kneeing him in the crotch.
“When she knees me in the crotch I get up on the beach and I kick her extremely hard in the face,” van der Sloot said, according to the court transcript. Natalee fell down, “unconscious, possibly even dead,” and then van der Sloot picked up a block of cinderblock lying nearby. He told the court that he then “[smashed] her head in with it completely.”
Then, van der Sloot said he pushed Natalee’s body into the ocean.
For Beth Holloway, the moment was bittersweet.
Beth HollowayBeth and Natalee Holloway. Beth spent 18 years trying to find out what had happened to her daughter in Aruba.
“It’s just blistering to your soul, and it hurts so deeply,” she told CBS News in 2023 after van der Sloot confessed to killing her daughter. “But… this is the moment where I’ve been searching for for 18 years. Even as hard as it is to hear, it still not as torturous as the not knowing. It was time for me to know.”
Beth added: “She fought like hell. I think she fought like hell with her killer.”
Van der Sloot was sentenced to 20 years for the financial crimes, but his plea deal allows him to serve that sentence concurrently with the sentence he’s already serving out in Peru for the murder of Flores — and for trafficking cocaine from behind bars. As of now, he’s expected to be released in 2045.
In the end, Beth Holloway spent 18 years trying to learn the truth about Natalee — the same amount of time that Natalee was alive. She believes that Natalee, who would’ve turned 37 in 2023, would probably be married with children, and would likely be working as a doctor. As painful as that is, Beth is relieved to finally know what happened to her daughter.
“I have peace,” she said. “It felt very victorious.”
After reading about Beth Holloway, the mother of Natalee Holloway, go inside the eerie 1998 disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley, who vanished while on a Caribbean cruise with her family. Or, look through these mysterious disappearances that remain unsolved to this day.
