Episode 197 - 18 Years In The Dark - The Natalee Holloway Case
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The opinions expressed in the following episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Minds of Madness podcast. Listener discretion is advised. 2023 was a groundbreaking year for some of the highest profile unsolved cases in true crime, including the Delphi murders, Tupac, and the Natalie Holloway case.

Despite multiple searches and investigations that drew intense media... Joran Vandersloot is talking again. Remember him? He's the chief suspect in the disappearance of Natalie Holloway. ...development in a years-old mystery. The disappearance of Natalie Holloway, the promising young student who vanished into thin air... A Dutch crime reporter says he has new information... It's been 16 years since Alabama native... The information you are going to hear in this hour, we've been waiting 18 years for.

News clips from major networks such as ABC, CBS, and Lifetime, to name a few, underscore Natalie Holloway's enduring presence as one of the most memorable unsolved cases in true crime history. A case that has captured our attention for nearly two decades. But in 2023, the haunting mystery of what really happened to Natalie in May 2005 was finally revealed.

Her disappearance during a high school trip to Aruba sparked endless speculation, often fueled by outrageous stories told by the prime suspect, Jeroen van der Sloot, who changed his account many times over. Jeroen knew more than he'd admit, taunting Natalie's parents by dangling the truth of what really happened just out of reach.

But Beth and Dave Holloway hung on desperately, searching for some kind of break in the case. Finally, after years of chasing dead ends and false hopes, a long overdue confession this past year shed new light on the case, confirming some long-held heartbreaking suspicions.

Join me now, as we re-examine the disappearance of Natalie Holloway, a case that spawned a media frenzy, a relentless personal investigation by Natalie's family, and a thousand unanswered questions. Now, finally, we have a chance to return to the case with a more complete timeline of events, with answers from the killer himself.

In the corridors of Mountain Brook High in Alabama, Natalie Holloway emerged as one of the school's brightest students. She wasn't just acing her grades, she was a National Honor Society student, recognized for her outstanding performance.

Outside the classroom, Natalie kept herself busy, participating in student government and volunteering for organizations like the American Field Service, supporting students on foreign exchanges. But by spring 2005, all of Natalie's hard work had paid off and it was time to graduate.

She landed a full scholarship from the University of Alabama, where she planned on majoring in pre-med and hopefully joining a sorority. It would be a challenging four years, filled with lectures and assignments. But first, it was time to reward herself. A five-day trip to Aruba, organized by Mountain Brook High School seniors.

The trip wasn't exactly something her parents agreed on. After Beth and Dave Holloway divorced when Natalie was just young, Beth remarried and along with her younger brother, relocated to Mountain Brook, a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. For Natalie's father, Dave, the Aruba trip didn't seem like the greatest idea.

As a popular tourist destination, Dave was worried about the potential risks, especially for a young woman like Natalie. But it wasn't as if she'd be traveling alone, because a hundred other classmates also planned on descending on the island as well.

This had been the third year Mountain Brook High School students had been on a trip like this, and Natalie herself had experienced taking international trips before as well. In the end, Natalie got the go-ahead and was booked on a spring flight to Aruba. Although Natalie arrived safely when it was time to return home on May 30th, 2005, her seat on the airplane was empty.

Nestled off the Venezuelan coast, Aruba is a small island packed with resorts, bars, sandy beaches, and quaint pastel-colored Dutch colonial architecture.

And because the island is part of the Dutch Caribbean, Aruba is considered its own country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The benefit of this for the high school graduates was that the legal drinking age was 18 years old instead of 21, like back in Alabama. That meant five days of partying in a tropical paradise with no parents and no curfews.

It didn't take long for the teens to settle into a comfortable rhythm, hitting the beach, napping before dinner, then hitting the bar at night. On the last night of partying, 17-year-old Jeroen van der Sloot started mingling with Natalie. Jeroen was an international student from Holland studying in Aruba, a pretty average guy, according to one of Natalie's friends.

As an honor student himself, Euron must have thought he knew how to approach someone like Natalie. In fact, according to one of Euron's friends, chatting up tourists was part of his M.O. Euron regularly parted with American tourists and also seemed to have a thing for blondes.

If that were true, Euron was in his element on the last night of the Mountain Brook High School trip when Natalie's crew hit the casino. As the night wore on, Natalie, Euron, and the rest of the crowd migrated to a bar called Carlos and Charlie's with Alabama teens flooding the dance floor. When closing time came at 1 a.m., the DJ played Sweet Home Alabama as the last song.

As the teens filtered into the streets, many of them must have felt a little woozy as they fought for cabs back to the hotel.

That's why, when Natalie got into the back of a white car with Euron and two other men, no one seemed overly concerned. Other classmates just assumed she was getting a ride back to the hotel like the rest of them. But the real truth of where she went would take 18 years to emerge.

On May 30th, 2005, the morning after the Mountainbrook students last night in Aruba, several of Natalie's classmates were surprised to find her room empty. It had been five fun days on the island without incident, so Natalie's classmates assumed that morning would be no different. Years later, one of Natalie's friends would recall that moment in an interview with The Real's television network.

I was about to board my plane and I was eating breakfast, which was cheese and crackers, I'll never forget. And two of our friends came up and found me and they said, "We can't find Natalie." And they've called Beth. I remember my reaction was, "Beth is going to be pissed."

Because that's the consequence in my head for an 18-year-old is you're in trouble. That's like the worst thing that could possibly happen. And I don't know exactly what I thought, like maybe she fell asleep somewhere else or went to a new hotel. Like I wasn't scarred. I wasn't shocked. I was just like, whoa, you know, she's in trouble. Once the plane took off down the runway without Natalie on it, a sickening feeling set in.

That's when Beth got a chilling phone call from one of the chaperones from the trip. Natalie was nowhere to be found. At that moment, Beth says her gut reaction was that Natalie had either been kidnapped or murdered. Anything else was just too out of character. There was no way her daughter would intentionally miss catching her flight home.

Tragically, her intuition would prove to be right. Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited premium wireless. How did it get 30, 30, how did it get 30, how did it get 20, 20, 20, how did it get 20, 20, how did it get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail. At the time of the call, Beth was driving in her car.

Hearing the worst news a parent in another country could get about their child, Beth hit the gas and drove 120 miles an hour down the interstate as she dialed 911.

She needed to report her daughter missing in Aruba. After being pulled over by a state trooper, Beth explained the situation and was referred to the FBI. Meanwhile, Dave Holloway got a similar phone call and had a very similar reaction. Something was definitely wrong and he needed to get down to Aruba immediately. It turned out his initial gut reaction about the trip had been right.

Beth landed in Aruba first, making a beeline to the Holiday Inn, where Natalie had been staying. Armed with just a sliver of information, Euron's first name, which had been provided by Natalie's classmates, Beth was able to get her first real clue. Euron was known to hang out around the Holiday Inn, and the hotel manager had his full name, Euron Vandersloot.

Within hours of landing, Beth and a group of her supporters headed to Euron's address. There, some of the Alabama contingent, along with the Reuben police, questioned him under the watchful eye of his father, Paulus Vandersloot, a prominent lawyer.

The first version of events Euron told the group was this: He was out with brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpo when he got into the car with Natalie. But according to Euron, they'd dropped Natalie off outside her hotel around 2 in the morning, just like she'd asked them to. He also added that Natalie had stumbled getting out of the car and had hit her head.

In an interview from the Associated Press archive, recorded just weeks after Natalie's disappearance, Beth recalled this disastrous first meeting. When he approached the car, when I was seated in the backseat, seated in the backseat of a car, and he approached me and I was, I was clutching Natalie's senior portrait. And I said, I want my daughter back.

he could look at me and say in the most arrogant, condescending manner and hit his chest and, you know, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do when he's the last man and these boys are the last boys to be seen with my daughter alive?

All Beth wanted was her daughter back. After Dave arrived in Aruba himself, he had a few infuriating encounters of his own, including an interaction with a police official who told him it wasn't uncommon for foreign girls to miss their flights. The police official suggested that Natalie might have gotten swept up in the party scene, while also floating the idea that her absence could have probably been attributed to drug use.

Give her a few days, she was bound to turn up. But Natalie's family knew her too well to be reassured with such uncharacteristic suggestions of why she was MIA. When Natalie's Aunt Marcia was asked a question along those lines by CNN reporter Rick Sanchez, this is how she responded. I have to ask you this question. Is there anything...

about Natalie that would make her want to in any way go away, run away? No. Disappear? No. Nothing? No. There's nothing about Natalie where on her own free will that she's going to say, I'm not going, uh-uh.

In the harrowing week that followed, the search for Natalie widened. 700 volunteers joined the official search, scouring the island for any clues. The Aruban government even let 4,000 civil servants off work early one day to join the search. Altruism probably motivated many of them, but for others, their livelihood was entangled with the case.

Aruba had a population of only about 100,000 people and a reputation as a safe tourist destination. Now, in the glare of the media spotlight, it seemed anything but safe.

To help garner information leading to Natalie's whereabouts, Aruba put up a $20,000 reward. An additional $30,000 offer was made by Natalie's family and supporters, bringing the total to $50,000. But still, it led nowhere. There was one surprise development, however.

A week after Natalie's disappearance, two men were arrested in connection with the case, but it didn't include Euron or the Kalpo brothers. Instead, that trio of suspects had suggested that two Holiday Inn security guards might have key information instead. But to Beth, that claim never added up. She'd seen the security footage, and Natalie never stepped foot inside the lobby that night.

What seemed more probable was that the three men who took Natalie away in the car that night were the ones in some way responsible for her disappearance. And Beth never wavered from that initial impression, saying as much in the same Associated Press interview you heard earlier. I know that those, I know, I definitively know those three individuals have involvement with her disappearance. Yes, and yes, yes.

When the innocent security guards were officially vindicated, suspicion fell back on Euron and the Calpo brothers. When they were arrested, Euron changed his original dubious account of what had happened that night and was now claiming he'd left Natalie alone on the beach. It seemed like the net was closing, but a few weeks after the arrests, a judge ruled there was not enough evidence to proceed and the three men were released.

It was a devastating blow for the Holloway family. As the search for answers wore on, hope was wearing thin. Public attention seemed like an advantage at first, but it also meant Natalie's parents were buried beneath a slew of false leads. Like the time about six months after her disappearance, Dr. Phil suggested on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that Natalie had been sold into sexual slavery.

without creating false hope, we have reasonable belief and some credible evidence that Natalie Holloway is alive. We cannot prove that at this point, and we don't know where she is, but there is a huge sex slave underground in some of those countries down there. Young women have disappeared from that part of the world before, and we have reasonable evidence

cause to believe that she may well be alive. But Dr. Phil's theory didn't materialize. Around the same time, Euron was working the press circuit telling a second version of what had happened to Natalie in a 2006 interview with ABC News. Why would you lie if you had nothing to hide about Natalie Holloway? I lied because, yeah, I was scared. I had a girlfriend at the time. I didn't want my dad...

When the Holloways heard the interview, Beth appeared on Entertainment Tonight shortly after, sharing her skeptical reaction.

What did I make of the interview? You know, I think it's probably great that Yaron is coming forward and speaking because every time he gets on camera or grants an interview, he tells another lie and then more lies just evolve from that. So I think that eventually, you know, who knows? Maybe that the prosecuting attorney could get to the bottom of this just by a series of lies that Yaron tells because, I mean, he certainly has a string of them.

Beth went on to say there was one part of Euron's stories she found particularly infuriating, his tendency to avoid blame at all costs. He always places the blame on Natalie, whether it's from the initiation to the contact of

point of their meeting, whether it is any alcohol involved, the initiation of when they left the establishment, the initiation of the sexual contact. Everything is placed on Natalie. He accepts absolutely no responsibility for any of the activities or actions that occurred and you know that just has to be a sign of either guilt or some type of sociopath it would seem to me. I mean I think that when they hear these things coming from Yaron that it just really shores him up as he is

Despite a gnawing sense of despair, both of Natalie's parents held on through wave after wave of emotional torment. First came the rearrest of Euron and the Kalpoe brothers in 2007, and although new evidence had supposedly come to light justifying a second arrest, the prosecutors declined to say just what it was.

It had something to do with analysis of phone records and another visit to the suspect's homes, raising Beth and Dave's hopes for answers once again. But less than a month later, the charges were dismissed.

Then there were the specialists Dave and Beth had brought in, including a seasoned search and rescue operator from Texas and underwater diving crews. Some searchers connected the dots between Natalie and a fish trap stolen from a fisherman's hut the night of her disappearance.

They theorized that if her body had been disposed of at sea, a fish trap could have been used to weigh it down. A survey of the ocean floor discovered objects that looked like a fish trap and a skull. But after divers investigated, the fish trap theory turned out to be a red herring.

Not long after, the trail seemed to lead all the way to Nicaragua when Dave began receiving messages from a mysterious informant who called himself Marcos. The man told Dave he'd been involved with a group of drug runners and had been offered money to dispose of Natalie's body along the Nicaraguan coast.

It was a sketchy lead, but since Nicaragua lies to the west of Aruba and Marcos wasn't asking for any money, it seemed just barely plausible. Marcos said he'd transferred Natalie's body in two ice chests, but after one of Dave's representatives went to Nicaragua to meet with Marcos, suddenly Marcos was nowhere to be found and never made contact again.

Dave concluded it was all a cruel hoax. But even Marco's story paled in comparison to the mind games Euron would play on Natalie's parents over the next decade.

Whether or not he was capable of murder, there was little doubt Jeroen van der Sloot was highly vindictive. He hadn't exactly been a model of sympathy in 2005 when Natalie first disappeared, but in early 2008, he took things a step farther. In February of that year, a Dutch television show caught Jeroen on tape admitting to hiding Natalie's body.

Sitting in a Range Rover rigged with hidden cameras, Euron told another version of what had happened to Natalie. This time he claimed she'd died of a drug overdose. As he gave his new account, Euron said, Natalie began shaking from an apparent seizure before becoming unresponsive.

Euron insisted he would never murder a girl, but that didn't stop him from phoning a friend, piloting a boat out from the shore, and dumping her body at sea. It was a grim story, made even worse when Euron added, "I've not lost any sleep over this." Beth and Dave watched the video in horror, but it didn't lead to any real insights.

Soon after, Euron told another TV show he hadn't trusted the man he confessed to and just told him what he wanted to hear.

Regardless, it didn't meet the threshold for another arrest, and Joran remained a free man. Less than a year later, he was on the TV circuit once again. This time, on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren, he claimed he'd sold Natalie into sexual slavery for $10,000.

So what happened the day you met Natalie? Well, the day I met Natalie, I remembered what he said. And as I was leaving the casino to leave, I went by the Radisson Casino when he was there.

i spoke with him and he's like yeah so then he's when he's asked me for like okay all i want is to you know she bring me a blonde girl let me know give me a call on this number right here gave me a phone number and then he said um to meet him at the at the beach by the by the marriott if i ever got a girl and he would give me ten thousand dollars that was on the day that you met natalie that was

On the day or the day before? The day before he met Natalie. Yeah, or two days before. The he Joran was referring to in this clip is a shadowy man he claims he'd met at a casino. A man who offered to pay top dollar for blonde girls. Joran even offered a recording to implicate his father in the cover-up at one point.

But history had already proven that getting Joran on tape was no guarantee of getting the truth. The story was out for less than a day before Joran claimed it was all a lie.

After we conducted this interview in Asia, Yaron contacted us again. He told us that he had been lying during that interview and that he had not sold Natalie Holloway to a stranger. Yaron says he made the story up. You can decide for yourself what to believe and what not to believe. We know for certain that Yaron Vanesloot has lied about the night Natalie Holloway disappeared. The question now is whether he has ever told the truth.

For his next stunt, Euron told a Dutch TV station that Natalie fell from a balcony after a night of snorting coke and drinking whiskey. In that version of the story, Euron claims that he hit her body in a swamp.

It was becoming clear that Euron was a deeply unreliable witness, but still held power over the Holloway family. And in 2010, he tried to use it to turn a profit.

In March 2010, Euron reached out to Beth's lawyer with an offer. He promised to reveal the location of Natalie's remains and set a price at a quarter million. By this point, Beth was so desperate for answers, she accepted the deal.

In her words, she didn't want to have any regrets and agreed to pay $25,000 up front and the rest of the money would follow once the information he provided was confirmed to be accurate. Beth's lawyer, John Q. Kelly, tried verifying the information first in a private meeting without exchanging any funds, which upset Euron.

John would later recall his exchanges with Euron in an interview with NBC's Today, calling him an ominous presence. You were in the room with VanderSloot twice, as I understand it, during that alleged extortion plot. What was that like? What was he like?

Big guy, kind of an ominous presence, all business about money. That's all he cares about. That's all he wants to talk about. And just cold and heartless and has absolutely no sympathy, no empathy, no feelings whatsoever for Beth or family or what they've been through. He just wanted the money. He just wants money.

Despite their botched first meeting, it seemed throwing a mere extra $100 brought Euron back to the table. John flew back to Aruba to make the down payment, but also set up a sting operation with the FBI and Aruban officials.

Wearing a wire, John agreed to meet Euron at a hotel and handed over $10,000 while Beth wire-transferred the remaining $15,000. The two-part exchange was deliberate. The in-person transaction established extortion while the wire transfer counted as wire fraud. But the money only brought them yet another version of the story.

In this account, Euron said he and Natalie struggled before he threw her on the ground and she hit her head on a rock. He claimed that from there, he gave her body to his father to get rid of. After getting into a car with John, Euron pointed out a house where Natalie's remains would be found buried under the foundation. But there was just one problem with that story.

At the time of Natalie's disappearance, the house hadn't even been built yet. It was all a lie, and Yuran soon admitted as much. By then, Yuran had already pocketed a cool $25,100 and fled to Peru. The Holloways were outraged. Despite clear evidence of extortion, authorities had moved so slowly, Yuran had plenty of time to make a getaway.

The FBI argued the case was not sufficiently developed to bring any charges at the time, blaming the slowdown on the complexity of international law. Unfortunately, that timing would have tragic consequences. Exactly five years after Natalie's disappearance, Yura unopenedly committed murder.

The murder of Stephanie Ramirez Flores is downright eerie in the way it parallels with Natalie's story. Not only did it happen on the same date, May 30th, the story began in the exact same way, with Yoran cruising at a casino. In 2010, Stephanie was 21 years old, studying business administration at the University of Lima.

She worked in her family's event promotion business, where other members of her family described her as a very trusting person. Stephanie was also an avid poker player, a combination of characteristics that turned out to be disastrous.

Having fled Aruba, Joran found himself in Lima, at the same casino as Stephanie on May 30th, 2010. Stephanie was playing at a poker table when Joran joined her. The two must have hit it off because a while later, Stephanie suggested they switch to online poker and head back to Joran's hotel room.

Maybe it would have ended that way if Stephanie hadn't seen a message pop up on Euron's computer. According to Euron, it read, "I'm going to kill you, you little mongoloid." The message was from an unknown sender, but the threat was clearly related to Euron's past. Cryptic as it was, it led to Stephanie discovering Euron's link to Natalie.

Stephanie was less than impressed, and by Joran's account, she lashed out. His response? He had tacked her with a hard elbow to the face, knocking her unconscious. Bleeding profusely, some of Stephanie's blood got on Joran's shirt, so he decided to take it off and use it to smother her.

Three hours and twenty minutes after they'd entered the room, Euron slung on a backpack over his shoulder and left the building, with a warning to hotel staff not to bother his girl. On his way out of the room, Euron stole Stephanie's gambling winnings and a few of her other things from her SUV. From there, history began to repeat itself.

Stephanie's parents were initially alarmed because not coming home on time was out of character for her. Like Beth, they also watched surveillance footage to find the last moments their daughter was seen alive. But when they googled Joran Vandersloot's name, their stomachs dropped.

There was one crucial difference this time. With no ambiguity over where or how Stephanie disappeared, as well as ample forensic evidence, Yoron's guilt was undeniable. Again, Yoron was on the run, but only made it as far as Chile before being apprehended. He was then returned to Peru to face charges.

Ironically, Euron's lawyer would defend his actions as a severe emotional reaction to extreme psychological trauma resulting from Natalie's case. I did not want to do it. The girl intruded into my private life, Euron protested.

She had no right. But that didn't convince the Peruvian court, and Yoron was handed down a 28-year sentence for murder in 2012. 2012 also marked another grim milestone. Natalie was legally declared dead.

There simply wasn't any evidence to conclude otherwise. The decision provided a small degree of closure and helped to close a few administrative loopholes. For instance, Dave Holloway had still been paying for his daughter's medical insurance and wanted to transfer her college fund to her younger brother. Here's a part of Dave's statement outside the courtroom:

The declaration of death didn't take the pain and uncertainty away. And as the years wore on, Natalie's story never quite left the public's consciousness. Countless books, movies, documentaries, and dramatizations of her case were made.

Over the years, Natalie's case also stirred up some criticism as to why a pretty young white woman received years worth of attention, while other similar cases slipped from the headlines within days or sometimes never made the headlines at all. ABC's Deborah Roberts pointed out that very fact during an episode of 2020 dedicated to Natalie's case.

The Natalie Holloway story just dominated. It was a sensation. It was also one in a string of stories that were grabbing headlines about missing, attractive young women. Women who all happened to be white. But those were issues for media critics, not grieving parents.

For Dave and Beth, the twists and turns in the case continued to dominate their lives. Like Euron getting married in 2014 while serving his time in a maximum security prison.

Lady Figueroa sold concessions in the prison, which is how they met. And because the Peruvian system allowed conjugal visits, by the time of the marriage ceremony, she was already seven months pregnant with his child. Yaron's family didn't attend the ceremony, although his mother did mail him a tailored suit and shoes.

Euron's lawyer would later admit Euron had had several girlfriends in prison, with infatuated women sending him pictures in the mail. In fact, Euron would later divorce his wife in favor of a younger woman, a woman accused of smuggling him drugs.

On top of that, Euron coughed up another false confession to Natalie's murder in 2016, though a link to the National Enquirer meant the Holloways quickly dismissed it as another money-making scheme. Then there was a near-repeat of the Nicaragua informant incident, with a man named Gabriel claiming to have been involved with the disposal of Natalie's body.

He even helped turn up some human bones, but DNA testing showed they didn't belong to Natalie. It wasn't until 2023, 18 years after Natalie's disappearance, that the Holloways finally got the break they were looking for.

Although Euron had landed in a Peruvian jail, the charges for his extortion and wire fraud attempt against Beth Holloway hadn't gone away. In June 2023, Euron was finally extradited to the U.S. to face the courts.

The actual extortion attempt took place in 2010, but this was a case of better late than never because it created an unexpected opening. Euron made a proffer agreement.

A proffer is related to a plea deal and means that the accused voluntarily provides incriminating information in exchange for a break from the prosecution. And Euron offered up a bombshell, a full confession on where and how he murdered Natalie Holloway. The truth, if that's really what it was, was sordid and sad.

It makes for grim listening, but after almost two decades of suspense, perhaps it's best simply to hear Euron's confession. Earlier in this recording, Euron explains that he'd gotten the Kalpoe brothers to drop him and Natalie off at the beach instead of her hotel.

Euron's plan was to make sexual advances on Natalie in a secluded area, but as he explains, Natalie wasn't interested in taking it that far.

I find a space before we get to the Marriott Hotel where I lay her down, we lay down together in the sand and we start kissing each other. I get her to kiss me again, we start kissing each other and I start feeling her up again and she tells me no. She doesn't want me to feel her up. I insist, I keep feeling her up either way.

She kneeds me, she ends up kneeing me in the crotch. When she kneeds me in the crotch, I get up on the beach and I kick her extremely hard in the face. - Jeroen refused to take no for an answer and push the violence to a lethal degree. - Yeah, she's laying down unconscious, possibly even dead, but definitely unconscious.

And I see right next to her, there's a huge cinder block laying on the beach. When you say cinder block, looking at the walls of this place, is it like those? Exact same cinder blocks. I see a huge cinder block laying on the beach. I take this and I smash her head in with it completely. Her face basically collapses in.

Even though it's dark, I can see her face is collapsed in. Afterwards, I don't exactly know what, you know, I'm scared. I don't know what to do. And I decide to take her and to put her into the ocean. So I grab her and I half pool and half walk with her into the ocean.

I push her off, I walk up to about my knees into the ocean and I push her off into the sea.

That was it. After so many years of heartache and uncertainty, the Holloways finally had their answer. Euron murdered Natalie with a cinder block after she refused his advances. To some extent, the reveal was strategic. After the proffer, Euron received a 20-year sentence for wire fraud and extortion.

However, he'll serve his time for those crimes concurrently, with his sentence for the murder of Stephanie Flores. His sentence for that crime is 28 years, which he'll serve in a Peruvian prison. That means from Yaron's point of view, his US-based criminal troubles won't add to his woes. But it doesn't exactly mean he'll be walking away from murder charges.

Since the murder occurred on Aruban soil, U.S. law wouldn't have had jurisdiction over that crime anyway. And because the statute of limitations for a murder charge is 12 years in Aruba, the opportunity to charge Yoron has now passed.

Whether an exception will be made for an especially high-profile case remains to be seen. At this point, Aruban authorities have only said that the question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. But whatever the legal issues are, the emotional outcome for Beth and Dave Holloway was another question entirely. The emotional torture Euron put Natalie's family through should have been considered a crime in itself.

On October 3rd, 2023, Natalie's parents sat in a room in an Alabama jail to watch the confession you just heard played out in real time. As difficult as that must have been for them, and despite Euron's numerous deceptions over the years, something about the proffer finally hit differently. Maybe it was the fact it wasn't made from the talk show circuit and couldn't be withdrawn.

Or maybe it was the simplicity of the story. An attempted rape gone wrong seemed more plausible. There was also a polygraph test to back it up this time, which showed no evidence Euron was telling anything but the truth. Here's Beth's statement at a press conference where she sums up her feelings on the case.

Well, today I can tell you with certainty that after 18 years, Natalie's case is solved. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. It's over. Jeroen van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter's murder. He is the killer. Beth called the experience blistering to her soul, but overall, not as torturous as not knowing.

It is shocking and it is horrific to hear a killer describing the brutal things that he did to my daughter, Matt's sister. It's shocking and it is very disturbing. But it's things that parents have to know the truth. They have to hear the answers as to what happened in order to put this to rest and for it to be over.

At the very least, Natalie's parents are no longer haunted by uncertainty. 18 years after first confronting Euron, Beth announced, "His hold over me is gone." Natalie was very bright, very smart, dedicated young lady. She was on her way to college.

She was headed to medical school after that, and I have no doubt she would have made it all the way. So we love her. We miss her very much. And we wake up every morning with thoughts of Natalie. But now we wake up knowing that we have reached justice for Natalie.

Natalie's parents now have the closest thing to closure they'll likely get, with some questions still probably lingering. For one, Natalie's remains have never been found. Given the extensive search of the island, it seems likely her body was washed out to sea. But not all observers accept this theory. But if Dave and Beth Holloway can, that's probably what matters most.

Then there are the unanswerable questions about criminal psychology. How did a murderer like Joran manage to get away with it all when he was only 17? How could he continue to commit remorseless crimes after escaping punishment so narrowly the first time? As spectators from the sidelines, we'll never likely get an answer that makes any sense.

But for better or worse, Natalie's case has continued to capture the attention of the public. Which, perhaps, provides at least one more answer. In the pages of the Mountain Brook High's 2005 Senior Yearbook, Natalie chose the poignant lyrics from Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird as her quote, "'If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?'

The answer, Natalie, is an unequivocal yes. You are and will forever be remembered. And now I'd like to introduce the podcast, What Was That Like? Have you

Have you ever wondered what it's like to witness a murder? Forrest grabbed the knife and then just stabbed Johnny. Or how it feels to be shot? I was immediately hit by a barrage of bullets. These are the stories you'll hear on the podcast called What Was That Like? True first-hand stories, including 911 calls. Search for What Was That Like on any podcast app or at whatwasthatlike.com.

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