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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash forensic tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. It's a case that captured America's attention almost two decades ago. 18-year-old Natalie Holloway went on a high school graduation trip to Aruba with a group of friends, but never returned home.
Although a promising suspect was arrested just days after Natalie's disappearance, her case remained unsolved for years, until this week. On October 18th, the man who has been long considered the prime suspect in the case has finally confessed to everything. So, does this mean that the story ends here? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 199, a special episode on the Natalie Holloway story. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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It's been 20 years since American teenager Natalie Holloway disappeared during a high school graduation trip to Aruba. For many people, like myself, her story haunted us. We wondered what happened to her, who took her, and most chilling, why? Why murder someone like Natalie Holloway, a girl who seemingly had her entire life ahead of her?
A girl who went on a high school graduation trip with some friends but never returned home. What about her story in particular has made it so hard for many of us to forget? In light of recent updates to this case that have unfolded practically just hours before I'm writing this, I've decided to do something different on the show this week. It's something that I've done only twice on the show before in the last three years.
I did it for the Idaho college murders and I've done it for the arrest of the person accused of being a Long Island serial killer. Now I'm doing it for the Natalie Holloway case.
Just like the other two special episodes I've done in the past, I was questioning myself for two reasons. One, would I have enough time to put it all together before Monday, the day that this is coming out? And number two, is this really the end of Natalie's story? An ending almost two decades in the making and the ending we've all waited years for.
As someone who listens to Forensic Tales, you know I like to cover solved cases. Or maybe unsolved cases where we have a lot more information. And maybe this case really isn't any different. We know a lot of the facts, and most of us know the story. But as of a few hours ago, well, now a couple days ago, by the time this is coming out to you, we most likely know who. Who murdered Natalie Holloway?
In this episode, I'm going to revisit the timeline of events, what we've uncovered over the years, and what's still a mystery, what forensic evidence exists in the case, and everything we know about the man who has recently confessed to murdering Natalie. I'm talking about the murder of Natalie Holloway and Joran van der Sloot's confession.
Right after I pressed save on the episode initially scheduled to come out today, I heard the news. The person believed to be responsible for murdering Natalie allegedly confessed. It was hard for me to miss because every true crime news outlet and account that I follow online reported on it. Now, my first thought was, how have I not covered this case on my show? Like so many of you probably, I've followed this case pretty much since day one.
Even though it's been almost 20 years now since it happened, I remember it like it was yesterday. When Natalie disappeared in 2005, I was a sophomore in high school. So when it happened, I saw so many similarities between her and me. She was a teenager. So was I. She grew up in a typical American household. So did I. She was just a regular high school student. So was I. She had hopes and dreams of going to college. So did I.
and she was a member of her school's dance and drill team, and so was I. So it was almost impossible for me not to pay attention to her story. Now, all of these years later, I wonder why I haven't covered her story on the show yet, but I am today. Now, it's not necessarily your typical episode this week, but I do want to start by talking about her last known whereabouts and some important dates along the way.
Eventually, we'll talk about her accused killer, his confession, and what forensic evidence exists in the case.
Now, one last thing before we eventually dive in. There is so much information about this case. And if I were to go into every little detail, it would take me multiple episodes just to cover everything. So for the sake of this particular episode, I'm really going to focus on Vander Sloot, the guy who confessed to everything. All right, let's get into it.
Natalie graduated from Mountain Brook High School in Birmingham, Alabama in 2005. By all accounts, she was a standout student. She was a member of the National Honor Society and excelled on her school's dance team. By the summer of 2005, she planned to attend college at the University of Alabama on a full scholarship. An absolute dream for Natalie because she would still be close to her family in Alabama.
In May 2005, Natalie and 124 fellow graduates of Mountain Brook High School boarded a plane headed to Aruba, an island in the Caribbean Sea. Although the trip was considered an unofficial trip and didn't have any official connections to the high school, the students were supervised by seven chaperones, something that probably made Natalie's parents feel a little bit better about their teenage daughter visiting a foreign country on her own.
Natalie was just 18 years old when she boarded that plane headed to Aruba. And as we know, she never returned home with her fellow classmates. In 2005, Aruba became a popular place for young teenagers and 20-something-year-olds to travel to. It had packed nightclubs. It had sunny beaches for miles on end. It was the perfect destination for someone like Natalie, who was looking to have a little fun with some friends.
or is looking to have their first big trip away from home without her parents. On May 26, 2005, Natalie and the other 124 students and seven chaperones checked into the Holiday Inn Resort near the island's northern end, and the first couple days of the trip seemed to go off without a hitch until May 29th, the very last day of the trip.
On the night of May 29th, 17-year-old Joran van der Sloot met up with Natalie and a few of her friends at the popular Carlos and Charlie's Bar in downtown. Van der Sloot was a Dutch national, an honor student, living in Aruba and attending the International School of Aruba, a non-profit private school. According to Natalie's friends, the two were seen drinking, dancing, and just having a good time together.
But sometime after the bar closed around 1 a.m., Natalie was seen leaving in a car with a VanderSloot and two of his friends, Deepak and Satish Kapoor. After that, Natalie's friends never saw her alive again. The next morning, May 30th, Natalie and the rest of the students were scheduled to return back to the United States. Their week-long trip was over.
But when her friends went to go check on her, Natalie wasn't in the hotel room. But her passport and bags were, so she probably never made it back from the nightclub. Her friends spent the next couple of hours looking around for her and even alerted the trip's chaperones that Natalie wasn't in her room. And she was late going to the airport. That's when one of the chaperones picked up the phone and called Natalie's mother, Beth, to tell her that her daughter was missing.
Within hours, Natalie's mom Beth, stepfather Jug, and a handful of family friends boarded a private jet headed to Aruba. When they arrived, they quickly put together the pieces of Natalie's last known whereabouts from the Holiday Inn to Carlos and Charlie's and eventually Vandersloot. Vandersloot quickly admitted leaving the bar with Natalie and the two brothers that night.
He said they drove to a lighthouse because they said she wanted to see the sharks in the water before dropping her off at the Holiday Inn where she was staying. He even took Natalie's parents to the hotel, promising to point out the security guard who allegedly helped her inside. But when they got there, no such security guard existed.
By June 1st, over 100 locals joined together to help search for Natalie. Although she wasn't officially labeled as a missing person just yet, a lot of people came together to help look for her. And by June 5th, the police made their first arrest in the case. The Aruba police arrested two former security guards who worked at a nearby hotel. But they were eventually released eight days later because there wasn't any evidence against them.
Then, just days later, they arrested Van Der Sloot and the two brothers he was with the night that Natalie disappeared. He was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and presumed murder. So here we are. Just days after Natalie disappeared, the police arrest Joran Van Der Sloot, the person who would eventually confess to the entire thing. Case closed, right? He was the last person with Natalie, and now she's gone missing, right?
Why didn't the investigation end on June 9th when he and the brothers were arrested? Well, after they were arrested, they seemed to change their story. Instead of taking her back to the Holiday Inn like they originally said, now they said they dropped her off at a beach near the hotel. They said that she told them she wanted to walk home, so they have no idea what happened to her after that.
Not a very believable story, right? Well, the judge didn't seem to believe them either. And for the next month, the three guys remained in custody. But for some reason, on July 4th, the judge ordered the release of the two brothers, but ordered Vandersloot to remain in custody for another 60 days.
When the judge was asked why the brothers were released and not VanderSloot, he denied commenting, and no reason was ever given for his decision. But at least that meant that VanderSloot was in still jail, so that's a good thing. Now, two weeks later, the first big piece of forensic evidence surfaced.
Strands of hair found stuck to a piece of duct tape on Aruba's northeast coast were sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia to be tested. The idea was that the hair might belong to Natalie and would confirm that foul play was involved because at this point, Natalie was still just considered a missing person.
But on July 28th, the FBI announced that the forensic testing on the hair revealed that it didn't belong to Natalie. It was a negative match and the forensic evidence meant nothing. They also tested a possible blood sample from the two brothers' car. But when it was tested, it was determined not to be blood at all. So, yet another dead end when it came to the forensics.
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By September of that year, Natalie had been missing for over two months. And to everyone's surprise, especially her family, Vandersloot was released from jail, the prime suspect in her disappearance. Now, how could that be? Everything seemed to suggest that he had something to do with it. So why was he being released? Well, the answer to that question remains a mystery. All the Aruba police would say is that the investigation into Natalie's disappearance continues.
And although Van der Sloot was being released from custody, he had to stay in contact with the police and cooperate with the investigation. Other than that, though, he was considered a free man. Now, this wouldn't be the first or the last time the Aruba police and government were highly criticized for how they handled Natalie's case. Why wasn't Van der Sloot charged sooner with Natalie's disappearance and, at this point, presumed murder?
Why weren't the two brothers who were with him also charged sooner? And why is the prime suspect being released from custody? So people speculated naturally. Was the police and government corrupt? Was it because Natalie's body hadn't been found yet? Were they waiting on some type of concrete forensic evidence to essentially prove that Vander Sloot was responsible?
What was taking them so long? Was a place like Aruba just not equipped to investigate a case of this magnitude? And the list of questions goes on. The Holloway family initially offered a $175,000 reward for her safe return, and other people chipped in another $50,000, bringing the total reward money to well over $200,000.
Months later, the amount increased to $1 million, with a $100,000 reward for information leading to the location of her remains. But for months, the money went unclaimed because no credible information was uncovered, and the location of Natalie's body remained a mystery. Instead of Van Der Sloot saying quiet while he was released from custody, he seemed to do the exact opposite.
He talked and he talked a lot. Probably the most famous interview he did was for Fox News in March of 2006. Over the course of this three night special for Fox News, VanderSloot told yet another story about what he claimed happened the night that Natalie disappeared.
He talked about everything from drinking with her at the bar to leaving her behind on the beach. He even addressed some of the stranger elements of his story, like why his shoes were missing that night. But the one thing Van Der Sloot didn't say during this Fox News interview was that he had anything to do with Natalie's disappearance. Fast forward to November 2007.
Vander Sloot and the two brothers are arrested yet again in connection to the case. Authorities in Aruba announced that they had uncovered some promising new evidence. Maybe it was the long-awaited forensic evidence they needed to secure a conviction. At last, it seemed like things were sort of moving forward.
But they weren't, because just a couple weeks later, on December 7th, all three of them were released yet again. So no new promising forensic evidence, or so it seemed. By February 2008, there was yet another bombshell involving our prime suspect. This time, it seemed to be a confession.
In February 2008, a Dutch reporter released footage from a hidden camera suggesting van der Sloot had confessed to Natalie's murder. In the footage, he's heard saying that they were on the beach together when she suddenly collapsed and he was unable to revive her. And instead of calling for help, he called a friend to come help dispose of her body from a boat.
Although van der Sloot seemed to suggest this was all an accident, it was this first real big confession. It was almost like he couldn't deny he was at least involved anymore, so he came up with that particular story and again made it seem like it was all an accident. Now right after the Dutch news aired the secret recording, the Aruban prosecutor's office tried to arrest van der Sloot again.
But a judge denied their request. Despite his taped confession, the judge wouldn't allow him to be arrested for it. Now, if you didn't think VanderSloot could look any worse than he already did, you would be wrong. Because in 2010, he tried to pull off the strangest and the sickest thing possible. He tried to extort money from the Holloway family.
On March 29th, 2010, he offered to tell the family where Natalie's body was in exchange for $25,000 up front and another $225,000 after he showed them. Now, if that's not another confession, then I don't know what is.
So after they received this email from VanderSloot, the Holloway family immediately turned it over to the FBI. And the plot to get VanderSloot was set into motion. On May 10th, $10,000 was wired into his bank account. And VanderSloot said his father had buried Natalie beneath the foundation of a house in Aruba.
Later that day, another $15,000 was wired into his same bank account. But before he told the Holloway family any more information about where Natalie really was, he fled the country. Get this. He reportedly traveled to Peru to play in a professional poker tournament. So our prime suspect gets away once again.
Trouble finally seemed to catch up to VanderSloot later that month, but it didn't have anything to do with Natalie's case. On May 20, 2010, five years after Natalie vanished, VanderSloot killed 21-year-old Stephanie Flores Ramirez inside his hotel room while visiting Lima, Peru.
Her body was found three days later, and the cops quickly zeroed in on Vander's sleut after they found out that the hotel room was registered under his name. Three days later, the police arrested him miles away in Chile. By then, he had cut and dyed his hair red, probably trying to obscure his identity. But it didn't work, and he was taken back to Peru, where he was charged with Stephanie's murder.
But this seemed to be just the beginning of VanderSloot's recent legal troubles. Just days later, he was also indicted in the United States for wire fraud and extortion. The indictment stemmed from the federal investigation that followed VanderSloot's attempt to get $250,000 from the Holloway family.
But the indictment didn't seem to really go anywhere because when asked why he wasn't arrested after the wire payment was made and before he had the chance to kill Stephanie, authorities said, quote, there wasn't sufficient evidence to do so, end quote. Two years later, VanderSloot pleaded guilty to Stephanie's murder in 2012.
In exchange for his guilty plea, he was sentenced to 28 years in prison in order to pay $75,000 to her family. Now, this might have been a victory for Stephanie's family, but it wasn't for the Holloways.
That's because this conviction meant that he wouldn't be extradited back to the U.S. to face those extortion charges until he served his prison sentence in Peru, which, keep in mind, his sentence was over a quarter of a century.
Then just one day after VanderSloot pled guilty in Stephanie's case, Natalie Holloway was officially declared dead on January 12, 2012, despite no one being in bars for her murder. And six years after her disappearance. Over the next 10 years, Natalie's case only made headline news a couple of times.
Most notable was the 2017 release of the Oxygen true crime docuseries, The Disappearance of Natalie Holloway, which covered the story in six episodes. But besides that, the case really didn't receive much attention, besides a couple true crime podcasts covering it over the years. The next big update in the case didn't happen until 2023, just months before this episode was scheduled to come out.
In May 2023, something unexpected happened. Peru officials announced that they would agree to release Van der Sloot to authorities in the U.S. to face those extortion and wire fraud charges in relation to that 2010 indictment. Keep in mind, Van der Sloot still hadn't been charged with Natalie's kidnapping. This was just in connection to the extortion attempt.
But finally, officials in Peru agreed to hand over Van der Sloot to the U.S. before his sentence ended. Once Van der Sloot touched down in the U.S., he went to court and pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, which again didn't include murder. He was then sent to Shelby County Jail so that he could wait for his trial. But before the chapter could close on that part of the story, there was a huge change in events.
The part that brings us to why we're covering this special episode this week. On October 18, 2023, the same day that I wrote this script, VanderSloot returned to the U.S. District Court to enter a plea deal. Not only did he plead guilty to extortion and wire fraud, but he also agreed to share information he long promised Natalie's family. What happened to her?
According to Judge Anna Masako, the federal judge overseeing the case, VanderSloot confessed to killing her and disposing of her remains during a recent interview with the FBI. Here's what an article by CNN said about the confession. Now 36 years old, VanderSloot admitted to killing Natalie with a cinder block while they sat together on the beach that night.
He said he tried to make sexual advances on her, but she refused. She even kneed him in the crotch after he tried to kiss her. So he grabbed the cinder block and struck her over the head with it, killing her. After that, he said he, quote, pushed her into the ocean, end quote. Now here's a direct quote from the judge, quote, quote.
She's of course referring to both Natalie and Stephanie's cases, two women reportedly murdered by VanderSloot over the years.
But how can we really believe a word that comes out of this man's mouth? Someone who has spent the last 18 years lying about his last interaction with Natalie Holloway. How do we know he's actually telling the truth about what happened that night? Well, I think this is as close as we're going to get to the truth.
According to WVTM 13 News, the FBI gave VanderSloot a polygraph test to confirm whether what he said during his confession was true or not, and he passed the polygraph.
Now, it's unclear whether he was given the polygraph before or after he made the confession. So I don't know if he confessed to the FBI first and then they did a polygraph test just so they could verify what he was saying was true or not, or if they did the polygraph test first. Either way, both the FBI and the federal judge overseeing the case both agree that this confession is absolutely credible.
And this is as close as we're going to get to the truth. VanderSloot's confession has finally put to rest many of the unanswered questions in the case. And hopefully, her family can move on from everything that's happened to them. Immediately following his confession, Natalie's mom, Beth, told reporters this, quote, It's over. Joran VanderSloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter's murder. He is the killer.
After 18 years, Natalie's case is solved. He gave a proffer in which he finally confessed to killing Natalie, end quote. Now, just to clarify, in a proffer, a defendant offers information they know about a crime often as part of a plea deal. And that's essentially exactly what happened here. Natalie's family might have said it's over. Natalie's case is finally closed. The prime suspect for many years finally confessed.
But there's still one answered question. Where is Natalie's body? If Vander Sloot threw her into the ocean like he said he did, where did she go after that? And will we ever find her? To me, it seems unlikely given the fact that it's been 18 long years. If in fact her body is somewhere in the ocean, we might never be able to recover her. And I've got my own question. Is Vander Sloot really telling the truth?
Is that what happened to Natalie? He doesn't exactly have a proven track record for telling the truth and being honest. So is that what really went down that night? Or maybe there's more to the story. I know the FBI said that he took and passed a polygraph about everything he said, but we all know those aren't 100% accurate, so we might not ever know.
Now, what about the forensic evidence? Why wasn't forensic science able to solve this one much sooner? Well, frankly, there wasn't too much of it to begin with. We talked about the strands of hair that were tested by the FBI and the possible bloodstain found in the car that Natalie was seen getting into. But there's a little bit more than that in the case.
One of the first places they looked for forensic evidence was the beach where Vandersloot claimed that he last saw her. They searched for unusual footprints, blood that might suggest foul play was involved. Maybe they would get lucky and a piece of Natalie's clothing might turn up. But nothing really did. Even after searching the entire beach, they found nothing connected to the case.
Besides the beach, they also searched a salt pond near Natalie's hotel for forensic evidence. Again, looking for blood or even Natalie's remains. But that was a dead end too. I think the biggest forensic evidence came years later in 2017. That was really the first time we all thought that they might have found some of Natalie's remains.
According to Oxygen.com, Dave Holloway and the family's private investigator, TJ Ward, said that the human remains were found on a beach and might be connected to the case. They were sent to forensic scientist Dr. Jason Kolwoski, a former forensic laboratory director of the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences, who founded Forensic Insight Consulting for Testing.
But they didn't find much. It was simply reported as being, quote, bone fragments. But for quite a while, there was a lot of buzz around the story because they could have belonged to Natalie. And if so, that would be the first discovery. Up until that point, not one part of her remains have ever been found. So this was really, really big for the case.
Now, according to an article published by ABC News, this doctor, this forensic scientist, said that the remains, in his opinion, were in fact human. And they came from a Caucasian person of European descent.
Even more proof that this actually could have been Natalie because, as we know, she was a Caucasian female and she did come from European descent. But there was no way of this forensic scientist to know whether the remains either belonged to a male or female. But still, you've got a Caucasian, a white person with European descent, both of which Natalie can check those boxes.
According to ABC News, the DNA they found in the remains was mitochondrial DNA, which only comes from the mother and it takes a lot longer to test than nuclear DNA. Natalie's mom, Beth, provided a reference sample to be tested against the mitochondrial DNA from the remains. Beth's sample would be exactly the same as Natalie's or any of her other children, but
So this type of mitochondrial DNA testing would be extremely accurate. When the DNA test results came back, they were heartbreaking. Three out of the four bones weren't even human after all. They came from an animal. And the fourth bone fragment, which was actually human, didn't match Natalie's DNA. It wasn't her.
So the entire incident was yet another letdown for this poor family and a massive fail when it came to the forensic evidence. So besides all of that, there really isn't much more to talk about when it comes to the forensic evidence.
Since we don't have Natalie's body, we can't perform an autopsy to say exactly how she was killed. And since we really don't even know what happened to her until 18 years later, just a couple days ago, we really weren't able to collect anything at the crime scene, which in this case was most likely the beach. So from a forensic science standpoint, there wasn't much that authorities could do to
I think they did their best with the little amount of evidence they did have in the case, but there really wasn't anything there to help push this case forward. And it's unfortunate that it took almost 20 years to even get to this point. But at least the man responsible for Natalie's murder can finally be put to justice here in the United States. So now what? What happens now?
Like I mentioned at the top of the episode, this was a case that so many of us have followed over the years. And at times, at least I know I felt like this, it felt like we would never get to this point. We would never know if someone would be held criminally responsible for Natalie's murder or not.
But now, as I sit here and record this 18 years later, we finally have a small amount of closure. But is there justice? And really, is there anything, is there any type of closure in a case like this? Is there such a thing? Natalie's family has said, this means that it's over. They can finally move on with their lives after knowing what happened to their daughter and the man responsible.
But is there justice? And again, I ask you the same question. Is there ever any closure when something like this happens? I'll let you decide on that one. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday.
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