The mother of murdered Alabama high school graduate Natalee Holloway has made a bold admission about the moment she came face to face with the man who killed her child — years before he confessed to slaying the teen.
When 18-year-old Natalee went missing during a trip to Aruba in 2005, her mother, Beth, frantically rushed to the island, and almost immediately confronted Natalee’s killer, Joran van der Sloot.
“I decided, ‘Tag, you’re it,’” Beth said onscreen in the new Netflix docuseries “Taken: Natalee Holloway.”
Van der Sloot, now 39, didn’t confess to killing Natalee until 2023 and despite years-long media coverage of the search, her body was never found.
When Beth confronted van der Sloot, she had no idea that her daughter was dead — however, Natalee was last seen getting into a car with him after a night out with her friends, and he was the main suspect from the start.
So, shortly after arriving in Aruba, Beth confronted van der Sloot at his home with his father, Paul. After questioning the then-17 year old Dutch killer, Beth knew in her “gut” that van der Sloot was lying about what happened to Natalee, she said.
During their confrontation, van der Sloot’s lawyer father, Paul allegedly told his son to “‘just say it,’ as if to say, ‘tell them the truth,’” Beth claimed.
She recalled, “That’s where [van der Sloot] gives the first detailed story as to what happened.”
Van der Sloot allegedly told Beth that he kissed Natalee on a beach, before dropping her off at her hotel, where she stumbled out of the car, hit her head, and security guards helped her inside.
“I don’t know what parts of that [account] are true, but I knew that he knew what happened to her,” said Beth, adding that she felt certain the story was a lie.
Before confronting van der Sloot, Beth also became alarmed when she learned that he, “had told Natalee’s friends that he was a tourist just like them — and now, we’re learning he was some Aruban local.”
Natalee was last seen on May 30, 2005, getting into a grey Honda with van der Sloot. Her friends had described the car to Beth.
When the grieving mother saw the car outside of van der Sloot’s house, she recalled, “I looked at that grey Honda, and I thought, ‘Could Natalee be in that trunk? Could she be in that van der Sloot home?’”
Beth recalled clutching her daughter’s picture and telling van der Sloot, “give her back now!”
She alleged that he replied, “what do you want me to do?” adding that he “he kept hitting his chest.”
Aruban police arrested van der Sloot ten days after Natalee disappeared.
However, when they questioned him, Gerold Dompig, the Aruban police chief at the time, said onscreen, “Normally, underaged suspects break down under interrogation…But, Joran was very difficult to interrogate.”
Van der Sloot told police conflicting accounts of his night with Natalee, Dompig explained, revealing: “He liked being the dominant one, the center of attention…he changed his story I think 40 times.”
In September of that year, the Aruban police had to let van der Sloot go, due to a lack of evidence.
However, in 2012, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to the 2010 murder of 21 year old Peruvian business student Stephany Flores Ramírez. In 2012, he was sentenced to 28 years in Peruvian prison.
“It was devastating,” Beth said onscreen. “Another young girl has lost her life, five years to the date that he murdered Natalee. I mean, it was sickening. I knew he would kill again. He’s just a time bomb.”
The FBI extradited van der Sloot to Alabama in 2023, and he confessed under a polygraph to bludgeoning Natalee to death on a beach in Aruba, and leaving her body in the ocean.
He took a plea deal to provide the information, in exchange for a concurrent sentence with sentence he’s serving in Peru.
Currently, van der Sloot is in prison in Peru.
“Taken: Natalee Holloway” is now streaming on Netflix.
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