Episode 562: The Murder of Natalee Holloway
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New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. Hey, weirdos. I am Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid. This is Morbid. We haven't done this in a minute. It feels weird. I know. We like back...

backlogged all our recordings. Did a whole batch. You know, batched it up. So I could go to Diz Nasty with my mans. Woohoo! Wow. That was great. I wouldn't say anything. I don't want to. Don't offend me. I don't want to anger Disney people. Don't offend me. I'm going to give it another shot eventually. Yeah, with me. For the kiddos. With me. And I want to bring Papa. Yeah. Fucking do. Family motherfucking trip, bitch. We're going to make it great. I'm going to make shirts. I'll figure out how to like it.

I just wanted to see your response to that. What'd you say? I said, I'm going to make shirts. Oh. I was just kidding. I just wanted us not to hear that part. You said my brain blocked that part out. I said what? No, I like to wear my own outfits. Of course you do. I would never force a shirt upon somebody because I like to wear what I want to wear. Yeah, I like that about you. Thanks. Thanks. I like a lot of things about you too.

But yeah, I went to Disney and to Universal Party. I'm a theme park adult. And I met some of you guys and you were so nice. I met Alexis and Sam. And I think it was Yvonne that worked there and she gave us passes to go in the Monsters, Inc. ride. And that was really cool. And who else did I meet?

I met a lot of names and I'm sorry I didn't forget yours. It's just not coming to me right now. I'm awful with names and it has nothing to do with like not wanting to know the person. It's just I'm really bad at names. I want to remember. Oh, Shelby. I met Shelby. She was really cool. She fucking loves you too. Hey, Shelby. Everybody that I met also loves you. I feel like only Shelby likes you. Shelby really liked you. Everybody else said, ooh, glad Elena's not with you. Glad it's just us. No, everybody was like, ah.

No, you guys are always so sweet. I love meeting people. Yeah, we always have the best. Honestly, like it's I love meeting people because we always have the best interactions. You guys are so sweet. You're so kind. You guys are so fun. We always walk away and go, they were so nice. Every single time. Honestly, every person that is walking away from us probably hears us together or like us to our spouse being like, oh my God, they were so nice. That was so nice. Or that was so cool. Yeah, it happens every time.

Happens every time. But no, that's fun. And hi, all of the people that Ash met. Hi. I hope you had fun at Disney. They did. And Universal. And Universal. Wear your sunscreen.

I did. I wore SPF 50 every day. There you go. Smart. I'm pale. I'm pale. I wore my Sorella Dew Drops. Please sponsor me. Oh, there you go. Every day. Every day. I'm wearing them right now even. I love that for you. Thank you. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. You have a book coming out? I do have a book coming out. I know. I read it on the plane. You did? It's fucking awesome.

Listen to Ash. Spectacular. Page-turner. Thrilling experience. Terrifying to know you and to think, hmm. That's in your head. That's in your head. In your head.

All right, you talk. Sorry. Well, no, that was great. That's really all we need is you can pre-order The Butcher Game, thebutchergame.com. It'll take you everywhere you need to go. Barnes & Noble is doing all kinds of fun things. There's going to be, you know, by the time this comes out, it will have already happened, but there has been a Kindle deal for the first book, so you can get ready for the second book. Oh, that's cool. But it comes out September 17th, but pre-orders are awesome, and they make a difference, and...

it means that you'll get your book first. Sometimes you even get it like the day before. Sometimes that happens. Yeah, that did happen to a lot of people last time. And that's fun. And they were fucking stoked. Yeah, that's a fun thing. That's why pre-orders I know, like trust, like let's level together everybody. Sometimes a pre-order, you're like, well, the book's not out yet. I'm not...

I'll just wait. Like, you know, like, I get it. I have to really fucking love the person to pre-order. That's the thing. And I really love you, so I pre-ordered. I appreciate that. And I understand that. I totally get it. You're like, I'll just wait till September. Why would I spend the money now?

And I get that. And if you want to do that, that's totally cool. But you'll miss out on some cool shit. But I'll also appreciate that if you buy it in September when it comes out. As long as you just buy it. Just get it. But it's true. If you preorder, sometimes you do get it a day early. And that is kind of a fun perk. And I've noticed that when I've preordered things. And it is one of those moments where you're like, oh, okay. I guess I just have this before everyone else does. Being ahead of the curve is one of the best things ever. It's a fun thing.

So yeah, if you guys want to do it, it's fun. And, you know, maybe who knows if there'll be more. Who knows? I know. There's got to be more. Catch it now. The way it ends, is there more? I'm not going to tell you that. You're such a bitch. You're such a bitch. You're such a bitch. Well, with that. With that. With me name calling. Let's go.

We have a case today that I am sure many, many, many, many, if not everybody knows. We are going to be covering the Natalie Holloway case. But I wanted to cover this one because it is a case worth covering, every case is. But we are also going to have a follow-up to this. And I just wanted to tell you guys right off the bat because we are going to be sitting down with the...

the director from Peacock's Pathological, The Lies of Joran Vandersloot, for like a whole follow-up after this episode. So if you have a chance between now and when that comes out, it will most likely be the next episode. Yeah. Definitely check that out because we're going to be talking all about that. It's going to be real interesting. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It was a really, really good documentary.

But with that being said, let's get into the case. Let's do it. So Natalie Ann Holloway was born on October 21st, 1986 in Memphis, Tennessee. She was the first of two children born to David and Beth Holloway.

The family, which also includes Natalie's younger brother, Matt, they lived in Clinton, Mississippi until Dave and Beth's marriage came to an end and they decided to part ways. But after that, Natalie's father, Dave, ended up moving to Jackson, Mississippi around 1995. And despite the breakup of their marriage, Dave and Beth really made every effort to remain on good terms for their kids. That's awesome. To just make sure that they could co-parent in harmony. And by all accounts, they were very successful at that.

Good for them.

Natalie was right around 14 at that time. So you could assume that up and moving at that age would be pretty difficult. Yeah, I imagine. I think I'm not sure if she was in. I don't think she was in her freshman year yet. I think she was in eighth grade. But she acclimated relatively easy and really quickly became one successful at her new school. Like she was doing really well and also really popular. Everyone liked her. Damn.

Her friend Frances Bird told reporters, I've known Natalie since she moved here in eighth grade. Ever since she's been here, she's been the smartest of all us friends. So she was really smart. She was a really likable person, like a good friend. By the time she reached high school, she was already thinking about her future, and her goal was to pursue a career in medicine.

Her cousin Thomas said, she was everything parents look for, pretty much in every honor society you could think of, hardly ever got into trouble, pretty much everything you would want in a son or daughter. Oh, that's heartbreaking. Yeah.

Natalie's responsible attitude and commitment to her studies eventually paid off. By the time she reached her senior year in high school, she was a straight-A student at the top of her class, and she got herself a full scholarship to the University of Alabama. Holy shit. Which, like, I think that needs to be stressed. Yeah.

Yeah. All A's, straight A's is something so hard to achieve. Oh, that's no easy feat. Straight A's and a full ride to like a really... The University of Alabama is a pretty good school. Yeah. And I don't remember...

And maybe I'm not remembering it correctly because it feels like it was a long time ago at this point. I don't remember that being as, you know, focused on. No. As it probably should have been. No. And I think we'll talk about that a little bit. This story, like if you were alive and like tuning into the news when this was happening. It was all you heard about. It was everything you heard about. But yeah.

It was not very victim-focused in the way that I think it should have been. It was more the story itself, like, of the disappearance itself and less about Natalie. More about, like, the tensions between Aruba and America and the media sensation and all of that. Like, Natalie and I think I end up saying...

exactly what I'm going to say right now later, she got lost as a girl. And it was the story that everybody was... Yeah. Because I remember it very clearly when this happened. Oh, it was constant. It was like when Madeline McCann went missing. It was that. It was all you saw. Yeah, exactly. You know, it was like...

Yeah, it was all that. Every news station, every channel, all the time. Yep. It was the Amanda Knox trial. It was like all that. It was that kind of intense coverage. It's like a frenzy. Yeah. Yeah.

But she was also active in several extracurricular activities as well. The time that this girl, like the things that this girl made time for is nuts. Yeah. She was in the Mountain Brook High dance team. She went to her church's Bible club. She had a part-time job at a health food store. And she also found time to volunteer with local organizations whenever she could. Damn. Like just made time to do good things. How do you have that many minutes in a day? I don't know.

But after all the hard work that she put into her schooling and just being like an overall badass in general, Natalie asked her mom if she could attend the annual Mountain Brook High School class trip to Aruba. Every year the seniors graduated, they would go to Aruba for like a reward, a celebration, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Beth really couldn't think of a single reason to say no to Natalie. Yeah, I mean, why? Yeah, she wrote, her stepbrother George had gone two years before, and if I could swing it financially, I wanted Natalie to have the experience. Of course, I understand that. It's like, I think, I believe she was 18. Like, you know, yeah, she was 18. And it's like...

You know, like I want her to see the world. She put so much hard work into her schooling and all that. And Aruba is known as a safe island. Yeah. I mean, we both had our honeymoons there. Yeah. It really is known as one of those places that people aren't like, you know, super on edge going to, you know? Yeah. So it's like what really would make her say no? Exactly. Natalie's a good kid. Right. She's shown herself to be responsible. She's shown herself to be trustworthy and that she can handle anything.

this kind of freedom. Yeah. And it's like her, her stepbrother went like, how are we going to say yes to one kid and no to the other? Like there's so many factors. Yeah.

But Dave, on the other hand, Natalie's dad, he wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea. I can understand that, too. I see both sides of it, 100%. He wrote in his 2023 memoir, I was apprehensive about Natalie taking this type of trip, and I tried to talk her out of it. I didn't like the idea of her traveling that far away with so many other students and so few chaperones. I can totally get that. Which makes perfect sense. Because I would probably be more on that end because I tend to be a helicopter parent.

Yeah. Which I don't think anybody can blame anybody either way. Absolutely. I can see both ways. I totally understand why Beth was like, she's giving me no reason to believe that, you know. Yeah. And she deserves this. If she goes to this relatively safe place with her friends, that she's going to have a fun time and come home and everything will be fine. It'll be great. And that's the thing. Like, students did this every year.

So you understand. And again, what are the odds? You just think, what are the odds? Exactly. Like, it wouldn't happen to me. It's awful. But despite her father's apprehension, he did end up giving Natalie a $500 check to cover half the cost of the trip to Aruba.

A few weeks before the trip, Beth attended two information sessions about it where the parents who wouldn't be on the trip would receive more practical details. And most importantly, they learned about the chaperones who would be in charge of the students while they were on the island. And see, they're doing their due diligence. That's the thing. Like, they're doing the thing that...

You know, like that's what they should be doing. Right, exactly. In 2007, Beth wrote, Okay. So they were really just there in case of emergency. An issue, yeah. Which you can kind of understand because these are mostly 18-year-olds. Yeah, I can totally understand that.

That would stress me out a lot. But it would stress me out. Yeah. But at the same time, I can see where she was like, she's 18. She's going to be going off to college. There's no chaperones there. I cannot imagine being in that kind of position because it really is. I don't have teenagers, so I don't know. But it's like it feels like that age would be the toughest because it's like...

They're technically, in the eyes of like many situations, adults, you know, quote unquote. Yeah. And it's like they see themselves as adults because they're being told by so many things that they're adults now. And they have to take on adult responsibility. So why can't I act like an adult? Why don't I get adult freedoms? And it's like...

You need to walk that line, and I understand that it must be hard to figure out how. I don't envy them, and I don't look forward to that time. I don't blame you. But considering, like I just said, that Natalie and most of the other students were either 18 or nearly 18, this position seemed reasonable to Beth. So on the morning of May 26, 2005, Natalie arrived at the airport with 125 of her fellow students and seven chaperones.

Like Dave Holloway, Beth's decision to let her daughter go on this trip was not made lightly or without reservations. Known for its very vibrant nightlife and countless casinos and clubs, Aruba had a particular allure for unsupervised teenagers who were looking forward to being away from their parents in a region where the drinking age is actually 18. Yeah, that's another thing here. That's another factor of all this. Beth recalled when a former Mountain Brook student came back from his class trip, he told us a chilling anecdote

at a night spot called Carlos and Charlie's. According to the student, quote, some locals had tried to get a couple of girls in his class to leave with them, but the student, quote, stepped in to help defuse a potentially dangerous situation. So she had heard about that and was very apprehensive. That would make me very nervous. Like, very nervous about it, but it was one instance, you know. And a...

technically that can happen anywhere. That can happen in their hometown. That can happen tomorrow night. So it's like, of course it's going to put you on a little high alert, but it's like, you know. You got to take it for what it is. But whether the student storyteller was being truthful or exaggerating for story's sake, the tale of this young woman in peril definitely frightened Beth. And for that reason, she made it a point to warn Natalie, be vigilant when you're around unfamiliar people, especially at bars and nightclubs.

Yeah. Like they had that conversation probably multiple times. And you do just have to hope that you've taught them well and that, you know, they're going to be humans that have to go out in the world eventually. Yeah. And that's what you've prepared them for their whole life. Yeah.

So while Natalie was away, Beth figured it would actually be a good time to take a little long weekend getaway herself. So she called a few friends and they arranged a little girls weekend at her family vacation home in Hot Springs. They were on their drive back to Mountain Brook on Monday, May 30th, when Beth's cell phone rang.

The voice on the other end was that of a young man, excuse me, a young woman who Beth didn't recognize, but she would come to know as Jodi, the tour coordinator that Beth had actually spoken to during those information sessions before Natalie left for her trip. But

Jodi explained that the group had assembled in the hotel lobby that morning, but when the chaperones did a head count, Natalie was missing. She was not among those in the head count. In fact, Jodi went on to quote, when the other Mountain Brook students met in the Holiday Inn lobby to board buses for the airport, Natalie's roommates notified chaperones that she hadn't returned to the room the previous night. No, this would...

Just hearing this is... You would lose it. This is your worst nightmare. I swear my brain is in, like, fight or flight mode for her. Like, it's just, that's your worst nightmare. Yeah, it gives you chills. Your worst nightmare. Like, ever.

You must story. Just be sitting in your seat on your way home like, no, no, this is a dream. Thinking of a hundred thousand different things that could be happening. Yeah, exactly. And everyone is worse than the last one. And just sitting there like thinking, this can't be happening. Like, there's no way. And she's so far away. That's the other thing that like, I'm sure she probably struggled with just as a parent. Oh, yeah. Is being...

an ocean away. Oh my God, yeah. You know, like an ocean between you kind of thing. Exactly. That must have already been something she was sitting with. Like, that's hard. 100%. It's like, I mean, for us, it's like a five, six hour flight. Like, that's a long time. That's a long time. Like...

When, you know, John had to fly down to, you know, to like a couple hours away when his father passed away. And he had to do it kind of unexpectedly just for a couple days. And he still is like, he's like...

being a plane ride away from you and the girls was not for me. Like he was like, not for me. I thought about it all day, every day for two days. That's when like nothing like dangerous is going on like at your homestead. Like obviously he was dealing with other stuff, but there was no like alarm bells where he had to get home to you guys for any reason. It was just if something happened, he was like the thought that I had to jump on a plane to get to you or like it was going to take a long time to drive to you.

And I feel that way too whenever I'm even like a couple hours away, like even into like New York or something like that. Yeah.

I feel too far away. Oh, I do. I totally get that. And nothing's happening. So it's like when something detrimental. When you're getting that phone call and you are hours away on a plane, the helplessness that must have been felt is something I can't even conceive of. And Beth said, she wrote instantly, I know something bad has happened. Because you're a mom. You just know. Exactly. You're her parent. A mama always knows. We always say that.

So she called her husband from the car and asked if he could arrange for immediate transportation to Aruba. And she was surprised when he hesitated. He suggested maybe Natalie had just missed her flight. But Beth was like, no. She said Natalie might be early for something, but never late. See, and she knows her daughter. She's like, I know Natalie. She would not have missed that flight. No, and honestly, I'd be like, I will overreact. Exactly. I'd rather show up there and overreact. Exactly.

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So Jug Twitty didn't object any further and started making some phone calls to see what he could do about getting a private flight to Aruba straight away. In the meantime, Beth called her son Matt, who relayed the information about Natalie missing the flight to his father, Dave, adding that Beth and Jug were booking a private plane and leaving for Aruba ASAP.

So Dave Holloway got online and found the phone number for the hotel, and he managed to reach one of the chaperones who volunteered actually to stay behind in case Natalie showed up. That's a real one. They really showed up for each other here. Unfortunately, though, the chaperone didn't have any more information than what had already been relayed. They were like, I'll stay if she's here, but that's all I really know. But they did mention that the group had received some help from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

An agent who was actually there on vacation and had made some calls to local police on their behalf. That's great. So a lot of people stepping in to help here in the beginning. In the beginning. While Beth waited to hear back from her husband about the travel going on, she placed a call to the FBI field office in Birmingham, but it was a holiday weekend, so the office was closed. Yeah.

Now not knowing what else to do, she just started going through the list of students on the trip and placed one call after the other. And after talking to a few of the kids on the trip, a picture of the previous night's events started to emerge. To celebrate their last night on the island, the students had gone out to Carlos and Charlie's, the same club that Beth had actually heard about from that previous student, where they partied until a little after midnight.

As they were leaving, a few people saw Natalie get into a dark-colored Honda with a teenager that a few of the students had actually become friendly with during the trip. Jug's nephew, Thomas, told Beth his name is Jaron or Jaron or something like that. According to Thomas, the guy was a Dutch tourist who was staying at the same hotel, and to him, he didn't seem dangerous. They never do. They never do.

After a few hours, Jug had managed to secure a private flight, and a short time later, he and Beth were on their way to Aruba. The plane touched down a little after 11 p.m. So you just imagine that. Like, imagine the stress of just going to the airport in general when you're going to do something fun and, like, exciting. Just imagine that. But this, you're like, just get me on that plane and get me there. Imagine having to get through, like, TSA security while you're dealing with this. Like, I can't even. Yeah.

But they went straight to the Holiday Inn where the students were staying and they were met by the remaining chaperone and that vacationing DEA agent who was still providing some assistance. After making introductions, Beth went to the front desk and asked about that Dutch teen who had been seen with her daughter. The person behind the counter knew exactly who she was talking about and immediately answered, Oh yes, Joran. He gambles in the casino. He likes to prey on young female tourists, especially the blondes.

That is the worst thing she could have possibly heard. I can't imagine something like worse. He likes to prey on, like, prey. Prey on young female tourists, especially the blondes. For anybody who doesn't know, Natalie is a blonde.

Oh, I can't. Like, I have goosebumps. Yeah, that just, that just, oh, that's heart-wrenching. The desk agent went on to describe Joran as a tall, quote, good-looking boy, like a Dutch marine. Debatable. Very debatable. And most importantly, when Beth asked where this boy was from, the agent said, oh, he lives in Aruba. Yeah. So from the moment they arrived in Aruba, Beth, Jug, and Dave Holloway, he ended up getting, making his way there too, felt an acute difference in foreignness in the way that things were being handled. Yeah.

Natalie's disappearance had been reported to the local police and everybody at the hotel and local casinos had been made aware of the situation. But as far as Natalie's family could tell, nobody seemed to be taking the matter very seriously. There were people out combing the beaches for Natalie, but they were people. They weren't police or search and rescue. They were just like volunteers. And...

Like, just people from the hotel, even. And you'd want to just be tearing the world apart as a parent. You're like, everyone snap to it. Especially law enforcement. Yeah, this is your job. Let's go. Everybody just kept telling the Holloways, quote, just wait for her. She'll come back.

But obviously they weren't feeling good about that because by then Natalie had been missing for almost 24 hours and was last seen with a local who was now, they knew, known to prey on young blonde tourists. Yeah, and they know their daughter. Exactly. It's the same thing they used to do to people like they would do all the time. Oh, they just ran away. And they still do. They just ran away. They'll come back. I bet they're just like hiding. I bet they're just doing this. And the parents are like, no, you don't know my kid.

I know my kids. Exactly. I know that they wouldn't do that. And it's like, and clearly Natalie would not take off for 24 hours and miss her flight back home. No. She's just never going home. She met Joran and she's just never fucking leaving. Exactly. Let's all get a grip. No. Like, this is a problem. This is a huge problem. It's so infuriating. I would be losing my mind if I were her.

parents. I can't even imagine how they felt. Because they're sitting there and they're like, it feels like you're treating this very blase. Yeah. And they were getting pissed off. Good. And as we all know from watching the case play out on, like the story play out on the media, this became like a very tense debate between

of how Aruban officials were handling this and how the family wanted it to be handled. Which makes it even harder. It made it ten times harder. That there's such a barrier between certain things and things are done differently in different places. So it's like you're very out of your element and you know how things work generally where you live. Yeah. Like you have a general sense of like how the situation will unfold. Right. Somewhere else you have no fucking clue. No idea. You don't know what the protocol is. And it just wasn't what they expected. And I'll get into it.

Aruba feels that they handled this like how it was supposed to be handled and they're

That's that. Interesting. They say that they have a different way of doing things. They don't even let the family in on like the closest details. They keep everything very, very close to the chest. Okay. Because they don't like when the media gets involved. Okay. Because that can fuck up an investigation. You know what? You can see the benefit in that. You can see the benefit in that totally. Yeah. But you can also see why the Holloways were pissed off. Absolutely. I can very much see...

From an outside point of view, with no, like, horse right next to me in this race, I can understand the benefit of that and I can go, okay, I get it. But I don't know that I would in that situation. I can't tell you that I would understand the benefit if it was my kid. Exactly.

But having arrived a little later than his ex-wife, Dave Holloway took some time to get caught up on everything. But going forward, his experience was more or less the same as Beth's since she had been there. When he arrived at the police station and asked to speak to somebody about his daughter, he was directed to Detective Dennis Jacobs, who after hearing the story asked, how much money do you have?

Which is a strange question. The question also seemed odd to Dave, but he ignored it and just continued asking questions about what was being done to find Natalie. To his dismay, Dave found that Detective Jacob's attitude was exactly as Beth had described the other people involved. The detective told Dave, this happens all the time. Basically suggesting that Natalie had met a boy, gone off for a few days, was having fun, and he said she'll probably show up in a few days. She's just partying hard.

Yeah, like we know her. Oh yeah, because you know my daughter. Yeah, we know her better than you, her parent. So don't worry about it. And then after that, the detective suggested that Dave and the others go have a beer at Carlos and Charlie's to relax. And they were sure that Natalie would probably show up there. Yeah, go to the place where she was last seen and go have a beer. You'll relax there. You'll relax there. Can you imagine being told to have a beer while your kid's missing? Yeah.

Just go have a beer. She'll turn up. I would be REM losing my religion at this point. Like, I would be losing it. 100%. I would become the news story. Like, that would, I can't, kudos to them. Kudos. For not scorching the entire earth.

I think they wanted to. Absolutely. I'm sure they did, but good for them for keeping their eye on the prize. Yeah. Under the circumstances, it's easy to understand Beth and Dave's panic in the moment and their confusion and frustration that more wasn't being done to find their daughter. Yes.

But I want to note that locals have a very different recollection of these first few days of the investigation. I'm just trying to tell both sides here. Yeah, you got to. According to Gerald, I think it's Dompeg, the deputy police chief in charge of the case, he said pressure from the family sidetracked the investigation from the outset. He said it caused several mistakes to be made that compromised the investigation.

And continued,

Okay. That's all quotes. Yeah. Like we've been saying this entire time, I'm sorry, but if I had an 18-year-old missing daughter under these same circumstances, I would be acting the exact same way, and I have to assume that most people would be. I can't fault them for being...

For acting any type of way, really. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, I really can't. I'm sorry. I just can't. But just want to show both sides. Yeah, you got to give both sides. And I'm sure that it's seen a different way from the people in the investigation. So it's good to point that out. Yeah. Because none of us were actually there. So it's like, you got to say these things. Exactly. It's just, you just wonder too. You're like, did you explain to them though? Like, you know what I mean? Did you explain how this works? Because you see them panicking. Right.

You do have to, like, I'm like, are you putting the same amount of, like, empathy into your work that, like, you should be? Like, that you're sitting there going, okay, these people are suffering and they are in the worst possible scenario that anyone could ever imagine, so I have to give them their due of, like...

you're going to panic and lose it and fly off the handle. But like then say, okay, so how can I make them understand that? Like we do understand that and we empathize with that. Like that's what needs to be conveyed. And to me, just, and this is just a pure opinion based off of what I've read. It sounds like they, the law enforcement approached this in a very clinical matter. That's what it kind of seems to me. And that's not comforting. It's like if it had just been touched with a little empathy, like,

We get it. It would have made all the difference. We understand that we can't imagine how you're feeling right now, but this is the way we have to do things. And if we want to find your daughter, like...

We understand that's all you want and that's all we want. It just can be conveyed in a different way, I feel like, and maybe it wasn't. And the Holloways, they didn't feel like they had acted like any type of way that was wrong. Out of the ordinary for your child's missing in a place you're unfamiliar with. They said that that wasn't the case, that they didn't come out guns blazing. They said they were always willing to work with locals and actually offered any resources that they could.

But regardless of who's right and who's wrong, I just note the difference because it becomes a very significant feature in Natalie Holloway's disappearance. And it also kind of really set up the rift between U.S. and Aruban officials that had an undeniable effect on the search for Natalie. Of course. I think...

things would have gone very differently had the heads not butted like they did. Yeah, that makes sense. But at the casino the following day, Beth and Jug poured over security camera footage of the gaming floor looking for the boy that Natalie had last been seen with. And after getting a better description from Jug's nephew Thomas, the couple finally located urine on the tape and got a printout of the still to bring to the police. Excited to finally have a solid lead, Beth and her husband rushed to the casino lobby...

And they actually almost collided with the handlers that they were with, Alberto and Claudio, who had been talking to some of their local contacts. They not only managed to find a last name for the boy seen with Natalie, but also an address for where he lived on the island. Their suspect's name? Joran Vandersloot. And you would think this would be, like, the golden ticket. A hundred percent. It...

In my opinion, it should have been. And the fact that it took so long is so mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling. And then on the same side of things, there was no evidence. That's the problem. It's like, and that must be the worst part is you know. Exactly. But you can't.

Prove it. There's no way to prove it. And you know he's just walking around just not saying it. And the way he walked around not saying it and then what he does to this. And for how long? What he did to this family and take, because he confessed like he did this. What he did to this family just taking away their daughter is one horrific, horrible, nightmarish thing. What he continued to do for the series of the next decade is horrible.

unthinkable. Yeah, he's like soulless, like truly soulless. Soulless. But anyway, it took some time and convincing, but Beth and Jug were eventually able to convince local police to accompany them to the address that they were given for Joran Vandersloot. When they reached the house, Beth waited in the car while the officer spoke to Joran's father, Paulus, who told them that his son wasn't home. Paulus placed a call to Joran, and Joran told his father he was playing poker nearby at the Wyndham Hotel.

So this is like, I think this is probably like a couple days later and this motherfucker is just sitting at a poker table. And we'll find out exactly what he did to Natalie. The fact that he was able to just sit at a fucking poker table and gamble is...

It's mind-boggling. Mind-boggling. But since he said he was there, police headed to the hotel with Paulus to find the teenager. But when they got there, there was no sign of Joran. Big thing Joran loves to do is play games. Liar who plays lots and lots of games aside from poker. Yeah.

But after speaking with the casino staff, Paulus got another call from his son, and he said he was back at home and in the company of his friend, I think it's Deepak Kalpo. So Beth continued to wait in the car the second time while police interviewed Joran and Deepak, who were standing in the driveway next to a dark silver Honda. Oh, stop. If you remember, Natalie was last seen in a dark colored Honda.

So as she waited, Beth was on speakerphone with some of the kids from the trip who provided a very accurate description of both Yorin and Deepak. Now, according to Yorin, he met Natalie at the blackjack table at Carlos and Charlie's that night that she went missing. And the way he speaks about her is disgusting. So I just want to let you know that off the bat. Yeah, he is foul. He immediately spoke negatively of Natalie, saying, she came on to me huge, dancing suggestively like a slut.

And he knows full well what he did to this girl, and this is what he's saying. Well, he's mad. Oh, he's big mad. He continued claiming that he, quote, did jello shooters off of her stomach and brought her a shot of 151 proof rum. Natalie's friends claimed that when the bar closed, she said that she was going to get a ride back to the Holiday Inn with Joran and his friends. But Joran said she just wanted to go with him. So he, Natalie, and his two friends got into the car and headed toward the beach.

He told the officers that he and Natalie were making out in the back of the car, but she was, quote unquote, so drunk she kept falling asleep and waking up. Maybe you should stop trying to do anything with her then and just bring her back to the hotel. Because if you're a good person, that's what you would have done. But you're not. But clearly you're not. He claimed that when they got to the beach, they had consensual sex, which they literally couldn't have if she was so drunk that she was falling asleep and then waking up and then falling asleep again. That's not consensual sex. Nope.

And he provided us a description of the underwear that she was wearing that night. But then he decided in the middle of all that, that she was too drunk. So he did bring her back to the Holiday Inn. Oh. And that was the last time he saw her. He's such a good guy. Yeah. According to Dave Holloway, the local police were more than happy to accept Jorn's explanation. But the family and friends who arrived to look for Natalie were very skeptical that he was telling the truth.

for many reasons. Dave said, Jacobs considered the boys' statement to be consistent, that they had all said they dropped Natalie off at the hotel. However, the tapes did not show Natalie returning to the Holiday Inn that night. Exactly. That's the thing. I'm like, that's...

That's weird. That's when I would get fucking pissed. Why are you accepting that story as truth? This random kid who is known to prey on girls? On blonde tourists. Like, I'm sorry, we're just going to accept what he says? That he's a good guy and just brought her home? And you already have the footage from the holiday. Let's not be dumb. It doesn't show her returning to the hotel. So what's the hole in that story? And maybe this was one of the moments where the police...

did feel like they found a hole and were just like not saying anything because they were keeping it close to the chest. But as a family member, that would drive me fucking insane. And that's when that tactic of investigation doesn't work. Does become an issue. Right. I understand not wanting to get the media involved. But the family? You've got to keep some family members in the loop, man. Because they're going to start thinking that you're not doing anything and then they're going to go to the media to get help. And that's exactly what ends up happening. And you can't blame them.

for it. It's like, come on. Like, there's got to be... Because again, we can understand the benefit of keeping things away from the media and keeping things close to the chest. The media can fuck everything up. So it's like, we get it. Yeah. We always say that in investigations. We get keeping things close to the chest. But there's got to be a balance with the family. It's a fine line. There's got to be a balance, especially with like parents and shit like that. Like, there has to be some flow of communication so they know that you're doing your job and that this...

of investigation that you guys do is working. Right. That you're actually like moving forward with it. Exactly. And it's like it should be that way with anybody but especially the fact that they traveled all the way here to find their daughter. Let them in on some information. Let them in on it. Just come on. So,

So getting nowhere with local police, Beth and Jug finally got a hold of the FBI office in Birmingham on June 1st, and that office agreed to provide whatever assistance they could to search for Natalie. At the same time, Beth received a text message from her son that read, Mom, I called CNN. Now the whole world knows about Natalie. Wow. Because I think her brother saw that nothing was really being done. He's hearing the frustration in his mom and dad's voice and his stepdad, and he's like,

Okay, well then we have to fucking do something. Like, I get it. Oh, I get it. I 100% understand why they went to the media. I get, yeah. I know there's a lot of different opinions about that. For sure. Personally, I get it. Well, and I think you're, the only people who should be able to really have valid opinions about it are family members of victims who have gone through this stuff. Mm-hmm, agreed.

Those are really the only opinions that I would want to hear on the matter. Yeah, because you don't know what you would do. What do you think? You've been through this. Like, you know. Right. I can sit here and speculate what I would do and what I wouldn't do. And how you would feel. But I have not been through that. Exactly. So it's like...

And everybody else speculating and saying that, like, you know, they shouldn't have or they should have done this. If you haven't gone through something similar. You don't know. We don't really know. You don't know. You just don't. That's the shit that will spin your world into a whole different orbit and you can't even begin to prepare for it. No, and hopefully nobody, like, ever has to. And that's the thing. You hope that you never, ever have to know what that decision-making process is like. Exactly. Exactly.

But when the news about Natalie's disappearance broke on the major U.S. news outlets, the tips began flooding in, which, as we know, can either help or completely fuck something up. And that's where it's like, I can understand all the different sides of this because there is downsides. There are definitely downsides. People claim to have seen Natalie at various places around the island that night, with many claiming to have seen her in the company of known drug dealers. Yeah.

So it gets out of control. It gets out of control. To Beth, Jug, and Dave, the local police had already proven themselves to be of little use, so they just spent days following up on those leads themselves. Any tip they got, they tried to follow up on every single thing they got. The days began to run together as the family pursued every lead, just like...

Anything they possibly could. Increasingly convinced that Natalie had been kidnapped and trafficked to another country. That's the other thing. It can completely steer you in a different direction that you've never even thought of and that unfortunately isn't what happened. Yeah, exactly. And you spend...

You understand why they want to chase down every lead, but it sucks that people will call in and say things like that and not think of the fact that these people wasted so much time going down that road when they never had to. Yeah. It's like when they would go to the ends of the earth for their loved ones. And are. So they will chase these things down. Yeah.

And it's like, you have to be like a special kind of fucked up to be like putting in, if you're one of the people who like puts in like those fake tips and shit. I don't understand that at all. That's a special kind of shit. I don't get that.

But at that point in the investigation, few people in Aruba seemed interested in helping Beth, much less than investigating the case. However, Beth did manage to find two allies in, I think it's Julia Renfro and Angela Munzenhofer, an editor and reporter for the English language magazine Aruba Today. Mothers themselves, they were incredibly sympathetic and offered to help in any way they could, including using the magazine to rally American tourists and expatriates to help look for Natalie.

After a few radio announcements and articles, more than 100 American tourists and a handful of locals and policemen were searching the island for Natalie, doing the job the local police were seemingly reluctant to perform. The advocacy coming from the women at Aruba Today caught the eye of Jan van der Straaten, a Dutch police superintendent who had also been assigned to the case.

And Julia Renfro recalled an altercation with him during the search. She said,

The amount of people telling, like, anybody trying to help or actual family members and loved ones in this case to go to Carlos and Charlie's, the last place... And just go chill out. I don't understand... No, I don't get that. ...that mindset. I don't know if I'm just, like, a crazy American girly, but that would piss... I don't get it. I would...

I can't imagine somebody looking at me telling me to go to the last place that my loved one was. Not to like go find clues, but just to go wait for them to show up. Just go relax. They'll show back up there. Just go to ladies night. Yeah, because she'll show back up. How do you not just look at that person in the face and just go, fuck you? Yeah, I would. Fuck you. I would lose it.

personally. But it's fair to say from the moment they arrived on the island and began looking for their daughter, the Twitty and Holloway families did get on the wrong side of local law enforcement. Gerald Dompeg later said, "Jugg and his Alabama friends, they basically came out and said they would bring hell to our island if Natalie wasn't found. 'Burn it down' were the exact words."

But, again, I understand a little bit why you would have that viewpoint. Yeah, I can't. If you felt like you weren't getting helped. But then, on the same side of things, I can see why law enforcement was pissed off that they're like, you're coming to our peaceful island and saying you're going to burn it down. Yeah, like, you can see all the sides. But I gotta say, I can't fault this family for having extreme...

you know, bursts of like, well, then burn it the fuck down. You know what I mean? Like you, you would move the whole fucking solar system for your kid. You would. You just would. And if you wouldn't look, look deeply at that. Cause it's like, that's you. That's the feeling. One you're, I can't blame them for anything that comes out of their mouth at this point. Again, you're panicked. It's a thing I couldn't even imagine living through. So I really, I can't,

I can't. I would probably be yelling shit that I would regret later too. 100%. I think this is your worst of days. You're going to say shit. You're going to say crazy shit. And to judge people on the worst side.

suffering they could have imagined. It's not fair. The worst days of their entire lives. It's not fair. That's not right. But again, I stress that this is going on to highlight that the attitude surrounding the case quickly set that combative tone. Yeah. That would eventually just completely take over the story. And Natalie really got lost in all of that. Yeah. And it was because of the way the media really highlighted the tensions versus the

Yeah.

Even Jan van der Straaten, now in charge of the investigation, reluctantly told reporters, after four or five days, you are afraid a crime has been committed. In the four days that they'd been on the island, Natalie's family had created a sufficient amount of noise that the FBI and the U.S. State Department had gotten involved in the case, and a reward of $50,000 was now being offered for any information leading to a discovery of Natalie.

So now taking the case seriously, the Aruba's Coast Guard started searching the waters and the beaches, while uniformed police officers searched the urban center and resorts around the island. Still, no sign of Natalie. So under pressure to solve the case, or at least kind of show some evidence of real progress, on June 8th, local police arrested Nick John and Abram Jones, two hotel workers suspected of involvement in Natalie's disappearance.

There appears to have been little reason to suspect either man, but a judge ruled there was sufficient cause to hold both of them on, quote, possible murder and kidnapping charges in the disappearance.

What? The arrest was based on the fact that when they were first interviewed, all three boys, meaning Joran and his two friends there, claimed that when they dropped Natalie back at the hotel, they saw her being approached by two, quote unquote, dark security guards as they drove away. So they literally just pinned this on two random ass people. And the police were like, okay. But again, these two men who worked at the hotel were arrested because

On the word of these three boys who said they dropped Natalie back off at the hotel. But let me remind you, there's no evidence that they ever dropped Natalie back off at the hotel. They lied like liars. There's surveillance of her leaving the hotel, never coming back. Yep. What? Yep.

The arrest, you would think, in some circumstances, might have been encouraging for the family. But immediately after learning of the arrest, Beth contacted one of the lead investigators and insisted that they were arresting the wrong men. Not getting the response that she was looking for, though, Beth turned to the press and in interviews on major cable news shows, she accused the Aruban government of stonewalling the investigation in order to protect the Vandersloots, quote, because they were a prominent family, which they were.

Mm-hmm. Yorin's father was a judge on a local circuit. Yep. Based on Beth's comments, American journalists and news outlets started talking of a cover-up, which essentially forced the hands of local investigators, who did cave to Beth's demands and announced that they had arrested Yorin, Deepak, and Satish. The lead investigator said, It's like...

I don't know that you would have. No. Because she's been missing for a long time at this point, and you just arrested two random hotel employees. Yeah, it's like so... I don't think you had any evidence. Didn't seem like there was a lot of evidence there. No. No.

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In an article for Vanity Fair, Brian Burrow wrote, Dutch criminal investigators' investigations differ from American ones in small but important ways. By and large, Dutch detectives do not speak to journalists on or off the record, nor do they release information to the public before they're ready.

So that is likely the reason for the Holloway's family's frustration in the wake of Natalie's disappearance. The lead investigator later claimed that they had, in fact, been focused on Joran and his friends all along, but they didn't want to compromise their investigation by going public with that fact or making an arrest too soon. Just giving you both sides. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah? I don't know.

Despite acting sooner than expected, though, the arrests and subsequent interrogations didn't help convince authorities that Yoran and his friends were innocent. For one thing, Yoran had now changed his story and this time told investigators that the brothers had dropped him off and him and Natalie off near the local Marriott and they walked down to the beach to have sex. But he said realizing Natalie was too drunk, he left her on the beach and walked home and they never engaged in sex.

And this time he walked home and left her on the beach. Oh, okay. So now we're completely changing the story. Which I wonder if they were like, is that why? Like, I'm like, because there was no evidence of her ever being dropped off? Like, is that why your fucking story is changing? The Kalpo brothers backed up Joran's story, but one of them casually commented that, quote, something bad had happened to Natalie. And that's horrifying. And insinuated, in fact, that she had been killed. So what? What?

Like, come on, guys. What are you not saying? Yeah. It definitely wasn't a confession, but the comment was suspicious to say the least and was sufficient for a local judge to rule that the three boys could be held on suspicion of murder and capital kidnapping.

Now, the disappearance of Natalie Holloway was a tragedy deserving of attention in and of itself. But while the case should have always been focused on finding Natalie, as soon as it got to the news outlets, it quickly, like we've been saying this whole time, took on a life of its own and became a global story. In a place like Aruba, which relies really heavily on American tourism, bad press, and especially that which suggests that tourists aren't safe, is a big problem.

could have had an incredible impact on the local economy. Gerald Dompig, one of the lead investigators, said, "...the Aruban government is very image-conscious. America is basically our bread and butter."

This fact was not lost on the Holloway family, though, who frustrated with how locals were handling the case, started going to the media more and more and more, knowing that that pressure would get the locals to act. I think that if I knew that, I would probably do the same thing. You know where their weak spot is? Yeah. If you're going to hit it and make the move... That's the thing. ...to find your daughter, like...

I keep saying it's the tension between the government and the family and the media, but everybody's forgetting that it was to find their daughter. It wasn't just to be assholes. And I'm not saying they were being assholes, but some people do say that. But it's to find their fucking daughter. Yeah, that's what I can't get past. Right. I can't get past that I can only speculate how I would act and...

This seems to me like pretty close to what I would do. I think so. Again, who can say? Who can say? It's not hard to understand how Beth and the rest of Natalie's family were reacting to the situation. It's not for me, and I know it's not for you. Yeah, no, definitely not. Their daughter had mysteriously disappeared and was likely the victim of violence. Who wouldn't go to similar lengths to leverage every single resource to find them?

But in the months that followed, the increasingly bitter relationship between the families and the Dutch and Aruban authorities spread on national cable news programs and talk shows, and it became an international story with Americans on one side of the issue and Dutch and Arubans on the other side of the issue. At one point, the case actually became so prominent that Alabama Governor Bob Briley went as far as to call for a nationwide boycott on all U.S. travel to Aruba. Damn.

It's crazy. Yeah, that went hard. That went a little hard, yeah. A Reuben businessman, Charlie Crows, told Brian Burrow in 2006, they're killing Aruba. This is a wild quote. He said, that girl, Natalie, I wish she'd stay home. I hope she's found alive there because no one would care. No one. The kid is just not worth all that trouble, this heartache.

Yeah, see, that's fucked up on levels that I can't even really dig into because my brain doesn't go to those depths. If I was the mother of Natalie, if I was Beth reading that, I would go scorched earth. Like that's... Scorched fucking earth. Yeah, that is, that's really unthinkable.

For someone to let come out of their fucking face, to be quite honest. Mm-hmm. That's really fucking unthinkable. And if you are trying to garner any kind of support or sympathy there, that wasn't... That's not the way to do it. That wasn't the move. The crazy thing is... That was not the move. ...is that he had actually once been an ally to the family. And when they first arrived on the island, he acted as an intermediary between the Twitties and the Vandersloots before the police actively got involved. But because of the way that everything was...

Being, I think, intensified too by the media, Crows felt personally betrayed by Beth, Jug, and the Holloway family. And a couple other people who had been their allies at one point but who had lived in Aruba were feeling the same way. They felt, and this is their feeling, that the Holloways were slandering Aruba and the American press. Yeah.

And listen, like, I understand you have, you know, like, you have loyalty for your place. Absolutely. You know what I mean? Like, that's your place. That's your home. That's your home. That's where your business is. That's where, you know, like, and they rely on tourism. So it's like... They literally said it's like their bread and butter. I get why this was a very tricky situation and why it got out of hand very quickly. And I can understand why that would be frustrating because, you know, all of Aruba...

isn't responsible for this one piece of shit. No. No way. He's not even a Reuben. And that's the thing. So it's like, I get why that is wholly infuriating and frustrating. And again, I have never been in this position that they were in, so I can only speculate from my very outside point of view. So I can see that. But it's,

You can't be saying shit like that. You just can't. About somebody's daughter. No. Like about somebody's whole world. That's reckless. Like you can't say that. Express your anger. Say I'm angry that Aruba is being held accountable for this one piece of shit. But don't put it on the family. That would have been much more of a like, let's get on board with that.

idea. Let's not sour the whole bunch of apples because of this little prick. Like, you know, like that's, he does, he's not even one of us. Exactly. Like, fuck this guy. That's what you say. That would have been like, hell yeah. I think everybody would have been like, yeah, fuck that guy. Like he's now he's trying to ruin Aruba. Like, fuck that guy. Yeah. Go after him. Go after the real villain here. Fuck that guy because he's the one fucking with Aruba. And it's like,

So I think it just got out of hand. It got so out of hand. People shot off at the mouth real quick. Yep. And it wasn't a good look. And... Because that's not a good look. I'm sorry, no matter how mad you are, talking about someone's missing child like that is pretty reprehensible. Right, exactly. Exactly.

But the media loved that part of it because it sensationalized everything. And that's so fucked up. And that shouldn't have been the fucking focus. No, it shouldn't have been. It shouldn't have become this. And I don't think that's what anybody wanted. No, and ultimately... They wanted to find Natalie. That's the thing. Ultimately, it did nothing to find Natalie. No, it just muddied the waters. It muddied the waters completely. And it didn't help build a case against the young men who had, after months of investigation...

been believed by many people to be responsible for her disappearance. No one was focusing really on that. Like, it was mentioned, obviously, that they were arrested and yada, yada, yada. But that wasn't the prime focus of the storytelling in the media. It never felt like, because like from somebody who watched it all play out, I remember it very vividly. Yeah, you were like a teenager. Yeah, I remember that like the focus wasn't on, you knew, like you saw this Joran van der Sloot and

We were all pretty sure, like, I think that guy did it. Yeah. Like, it seems like that guy did it. And it's like, so what the fuck? Like, why aren't they finding her? What's going on? Like, what happened to her? And it wasn't so much about that. It was all this mess. Right. And it was like, but no, let's, I want to know what's happening. Like, what's happening in the investigation? Do they have anything? Like, any leads? Do they know where she is? Has anyone seen her? Like, has he talked? What's going on? Is anyone surveilling him? Like...

That's the questions everybody had, and they answered it every once in a while in the media, but the media was way more focused on the mess. And that's the problem with everything now. Everybody focuses on the mess instead of real information gathering. It's sad because the family, I think, got really vilified in this case for turning to the media, but it wasn't the family who turned this story into what it got turned to. It was the media who turned it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

The other investigate, the lead investigator and all of them involved strongly suspected that Yoran and the Kalpos had something to do with Natalie's disappearance and most likely her murder. But they didn't have any evidence whatsoever. And without that evidence of any crime having been committed, they literally had no choice but to release them.

Now with the suspects released from custody and no other leads on hand, the families return to their desperate search of the island, while local investigators, with assistance from the FBI, chase down every lead that came in, no matter how small.

In July, two months after Natalie had disappeared, a slew of new leads came from individuals who believed that they had seen her in the hours after she went missing. A man dropping off trash at a local landfill in the early hours of May 30th said he saw several young men burying a body. The fuck? Then he said they left in a light-colored Jeep.

An investigator told reporters he said he saw a face, blonde hair, and a woman's chest, and that the body was dumped and covered, but that he said he never got a good look at the men. That landfill that he claimed to have seen all of that go down at was searched several times, but no body was ever found. What the fuck? Because I'm like, what was that? I do wonder...

I don't know if I believe Jorn's confession entirely. I believe that he did what he did to kill Natalie and how he said he did it. But how he disposed of her. But I think there's a lot missing in the story of how he disposed of her. I wouldn't be shocked because he's a liar. He's a liar. And I think it is entirely possible that maybe he did bury her somewhere and had help with that, whether it be the Kalpoe brothers or somebody else, and then decided when the investigation got hot...

I don't know if they're going to find her if we buried her, so maybe we should put her out to sea. I don't know. I don't know. Because it feels like... People saw weird shit. Yeah. But, again, people make up weird shit. Yeah, and they think they see things that they didn't.

And that's the other thing. Like, this is one potentially false lead. I mean, it didn't end up finding Natalie, so it didn't pan out. But this poor family, and I'm sure you remember it, like, watching the leads pour in, they were fed so many leads that just went nowhere. And they were just, like, built up and then, like, smacked back down.

down. And I can't imagine that feeling because like you say that like built up and smacked down. That's the perfect way to describe it. But I can't imagine how that would feel if you were looking for your daughter. You think maybe you're getting something. And really at this point, you're like, it's just hope to find her body. Yeah. So we can just bring her home. We just want to bring her home. That's all. Like it's so important to stress that these people never got to bring their daughter home. No, they never saw her again.

She left for a celebratory trip and they never got to see her again. They never saw her again. They still, to this day, have no idea truly what happened to her body. And where she is. And where she is. They never got to really say goodbye. Obviously, they have his confession and what they can infer and take from it. And take from that, which is horrific. But even they know he's lying. He's a liar. How many times throughout this, he's a liar. It must be so hard to take that for granted.

for true like a full 100 truth but it's awful the false lead about the dump though like i just said was one of many disappointments that the family faced in the early period other leads about natalie having having been dumped in a lake or left in various other locations proved to be untrue at the same time though the strongest lead in the case several blonde hairs found on a large piece of duct tape that had been discovered by a park ranger that gave them a lot of hope that also fell apart

The tape had been handed over to the FBI for testing, but a few weeks later, the crime lab in Quantico announced that the results were negative. Aw.

And that must have been a huge one. But also, it's like, what was that? What was that, exactly? It's a thing. I'm like, what's going on here? This was always the biggest and most frustrating aspect of the Natalie Holloway case. Investigators had three very strong suspects who they pretty much knew in their bones had killed Natalie, at least one of them. But with no evidence of a crime, they couldn't do anything. And in the absence of new leads or tips, the family turned their attention back to the press.

And in the year or two that followed, because remember, this spanned years. Oh, yeah. The Natalie Holloway case just seemed to unfold entirely on nightly news programs with no real progress being made. Honestly, it felt like it was never going to even inch forward. No. At times you were like, what's going on here? And it's crazy that only recently did we get anything. It was a huge break.

break. So in late August, when it became clear that authorities had literally nothing on Vandersloot, Beth went to the Vandersloot's home, actually, intent on speaking with Jorn's parents. In a meeting that lasted nearly an hour and a half, she learned that Jorn was a senior at the Dutch International School in Aruba.

He was actually a good student and a really popular athlete on the school's football and tennis teams, which, knowing what we know about him now, it's wild that he was just, like, someone's teammate and, like, somebody's good student. Yep. That's so chilling to think about. Like, just playing alongside this guy. Right? The Vandersloots spent the first half of the meeting praising their son and denying that he would have anything to do with Natalie's disappearance, which...

You can understand why they would think that their son wouldn't have anything to do with this and hope that they wouldn't. But at a certain point, his mother, Anita, did mention that though he had been an easy child in like his early childhood years, Joran had become more difficult when he reached his teen years. And very recently, she said that he had been seeing a psychiatrist. Yeah.

Beth said she was saying that they were beginning to have trouble with Joran for a defiant attitude. The father acknowledged they could not control him. He would sneak out, go gambling in the pre-dawn hours. They had no control over him. That's not good. So sensing that the couple was still holding back a little bit, Beth decided to push a little bit harder. She said, I told Paulus Vandersloot that he was responsible for Aruba being trapped in hell. Until he came forward, I told him, his country would continue to be trapped in perpetual hell.

According to Beth, Paulus started at that point sweating profusely to the point that his sweat was like pooling on the table and Anita had to go to the kitchen to get him a towel. So at that point, it became pretty clear to Beth that they knew something or at the very least suspected that their son was capable of having committed this crime. It definitely does. But unfortunately, the meeting ultimately came to nothing. Yeah.

A few weeks later, Beth attempted to get information from Deepak Kalpo, showing up at his workplace and demanding some kind of answer, but unfortunately that was also unsuccessful. A few months later, in February 2006, as the press desperately sought new interviewees and information on the Holloway case, Yorin himself decided to capitalize on the moment, and he agreed to do interviews with actually several major news outlets.

In an interview with Chris Cuomo on ABC's Primetime, he claimed he had met Natalie at the casino and planned to have sex with her after they left the bar. He told Cuomo, we were planning on going to my house because she said she wanted to go to my house. My intention was to take her to the house to have sex with her. So it's so clear what his motive was here. He is solely focused on sleeping with Natalie. Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Wow. What a beacon of honor. It's like you already claimed that you did have sex with her. Then you said you started to and you decided not to. Then you said, no, you never did. And then you said, no, I didn't actually. And there's a reason why. And it's like, why are you allowed to say these hundred different stories? Yeah. And everyone just has to sit there and go, okay, like why? Right.

It's so frustrating. And just to talk about a missing girl like this, that one, you knew what you did to her. And you knew why you did it because she didn't want to have sex with you. Exactly. And it's like... And you sit there and be like, and say that, well, she wanted to. That's like just smearing her good name. She didn't. Awful. No, she very much didn't. Yeah, she knew what a pig you were. Mm-hmm.

But another difference in this version of events was that Joran claimed Natalie had been drinking. Previously, he had said that. But now, all of a sudden, he said he actually didn't think she was drunk. He claimed instead, she seemed like she drank a lot. But there's a difference between somebody being absolutely drunk and someone actually having had a couple drinks.

So before he, if you remember, said she was so drunk to the point where she was falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep. And in that version of events, he claimed he did sleep with her. Yeah. Which is like, wow. And now you're saying I didn't sleep with her. And actually, she wasn't even drunk. No. She actually I think she drank so much that a couple of drinks didn't do anything to her. Yeah. No, she was just tired. It's like you met this girl one time. You don't know shit all about her. And it's almost like he's trying to like prove and see that.

How much he can get away with. Yeah. Just fucking around. Mm-hmm. Like, he's just in the media saying a hundred different stories, not keeping his shit straight. 100%. And being like, but no one will do anything. Yeah. I can do this. And I think he enjoyed fucking around. I think he liked doing it. Mm-hmm.

And for the most part, he tried to use the interview to make himself seem remorseful and like an unfortunate victim in the story. I don't really know how well that worked out for him. On his first time meeting Beth, he said, all she said to me, she screamed at me was, tell me where my daughter is. I told her that I don't know.

Well, I'm sorry that the mother of the girl that you killed wanted to know where she was. Apologies. One question as to why he lied when he was first questioned, he said he was scared and he felt ashamed. He said, I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want anyone to know that I left her at the beach. I lied because, yeah, I was scared. I had a girlfriend at the time. I didn't want my dad to think bad of me. I didn't want my friends to think bad of me. Maybe. A lot of people think bad of you. We all think bad.

the worst about you beyond the worst about you you got a reputation that precedes you because somebody already told Beth that you have a reputation for preying on young tourists who are blonde yeah so so good luck with that reputation of course so I don't think that was going to absolve you

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But in the years that followed, he continued making appearances on more talk shows in the U.S. and internationally, too. For all the talking that was being done about the Natalie Holloway case, there was, again, very little information or evidence in the case. But the suspicion around Yorin continued.

The suspicion really never went away, and it's probably due to the fact that his story about the night in question just kept changing over and over and over. And at various points, he even confessed to having something to do with this and then would retract those confessions, just devastating this family. I remember that, too. I remember that happening over and over again, where it was like, oh, my God, it's happening, like, finally. And then it was like, just kidding. Actually, no. No.

Like a true, sick, evil individual. Like, that's sadistic. The series of confessions and retractions came to a head in late March of 2010 when Yorin contacted, supposedly contacted Beth's lawyer and offered to reveal the location of Natalie's body and to provide the details of her death in exchange for $250,000. Just straight up extortion. This is awful. Yeah.

The lawyer went so far as to meet Joran in Aruba, and he actually provided a payment of $10,000, followed then by a bank transfer of $15,000 to an account in the Netherlands. And in exchange, Joran gave the lawyer an address of a house where they could find the body, he said. Unfortunately, when local officials looked into the address that Joran had provided, it was determined that the house hadn't even been built when Natalie was missing.

That house didn't even fucking exist. She's the fucking worst. So the extortion was reported to Interpol, who confronted Yoren with this information in the spring of that year. And that's when he admitted he lied in an effort to extort money from the family. And it's like, so we're not looking at that as like if you're capable of that. Like what else are you capable of? Maybe we should look into you a little further. Nuts. Because if you're capable of that.

What aren't you capable of? This motherfucker is capable of absolutely anything, as we'll find out. We know he confesses to killing Natalie, like, for real. Like, says what probably happened, but...

extorted money from Beth Holloway, and then as we'll see, that's not the end of it. Because given how long the public had been fascinated with Natalie's disappearance, the story probably would have been big news, the fact that he had extorted all this money from the Holloways. But by then, Yorin was locked up in a Peruvian jail cell and was facing far more serious charges.

The war of words between Natalie's family and Aruban officials, as well as the fights with the Vandersloots and several other officials, dragged on in the public eye for years, with little to show other than bitterness. But then, on May 30th, 2010, exactly.

Exactly five years after Natalie's disappearance in Aruba, 21-year-old Stephanie Flores Ramirez, a business student, went missing in Lima, Peru. And three days later, her beaten and bloodied body was found in a Lima hotel room registered to one Joran van der Sloot. Five years to the exact day that Natalie went missing. And it's like how that can't be a coincidence. No, not at all.

On June 3rd, 2010, Yorn was arrested near Santiago, Chile, and extradited back to Peru for questioning. When police asked how it was that Stephanie wound up with a broken neck in his hotel room, he was very evasive but insisted, "'I've been framed.'" "'Oh, okay.'"

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Wow, what bad luck you have. Truly. This is where it gets really outrageous. According to him, the entire thing was a sting operation organized by the FBI in order to capture him and bring him back to the U.S. to face extortion charges. They planted a woman's dead body in your hotel room in Peru to get you back to the U.S.? This guy is beyond. What fucking sense would that even make? Zero. Zero.

The answer is zero. What? Zero cents. But according to him, according to Vandersloot, he was contacted by a man who referred to himself as Garcia and offered to cover all his travel expenses, accommodations, and the entrance fee of $10,000 for a poker tournament, but he needed to meet him in Chile. He told a Dutch reporter, Mr. Garcia arranged and paid for everything for me. Looking back, I can't believe I let myself be lured. I hardly knew that guy. It was just an FBI setup.

I love that he's like, I'm smarter than that. It's like, you're not. Like what? You're not. Then when a reporter specifically asked about why a dead woman was found in his room, he only said, what happened exactly? I will explain later. Oh, yeah. Don't worry. Everybody will just hang around while you do that. Like, don't worry. Take your time. I thought that you knew what happened. I thought it was all a setup. But why can't you explain that now? You know all of that. You're saying all of that already. This is a boy.

Who has gotten away with shit his whole life. He's a pathological liar. Gets what he wants, gets out of what he wants. Yep, what he doesn't want. Proved to the world that he could change his story 100,000 times on broadcast television and that nothing could be done about it. Yep. That he could just say shit after shit after shit. That he could lure a poor grieving family on a wild goose chase and extort them for money. Mm-hmm.

And then he gets nothing. So he thinks he's untouchable. Yeah. He'll just change his story a hundred times this one too. And then he'll go somewhere else and he'll do the same thing. Mm-hmm. He was, I guarantee you, this piece of shit was going to keep doing this in every country that he possibly could. A hundred percent. Just pop around the world doing this. But luckily he was in a Peruvian jail cell because he actually ended up confessing to murdering Stephanie. Yeah.

According to his confession, he met her while playing poker and around 5 a.m. on May 30th, they went back to his room, he says, intending to have sex. But then Stephanie realized his connection to the Natalie Holloway case. Oh. And he murdered her. He told investigators, the girl intruded into my private life. She had no right. I went to her and I hit her. We argued and she tried to escape. I grabbed her by the neck and I hit her.

That's also not your private life. That's literally... You went on several news station interviews and talked about it. That's not private anymore. That's not private. You opened that up to the entire world. The entire place of Earth knows. Yeah. But okay. Okay.

In the months that followed, though, he then flatly rejected this version of events, claiming he only signed the confession under duress. He said, During the original interrogations, I was very frightened and confused, and I wanted to leave. They were telling me all the time, if you sign these papers, you'll be extradited to the Netherlands. In my blind panic, I then signed everything, but I did not even know what was written down.

Well, then that's stupid too. Yeah, if that is the case, then you're a dumb. You read things before you sign them. But I also do not believe you. No, not for even a quarter of a millisecond. I don't believe you at all. His claims of an FBI sting operation may have

been persuasive to some Dutch readers, but it didn't explain why, if Stephanie's body had been planted in his hotel room, he was discovered to be in possession of her wallet and national ID card, or why his fingerprints were found in her vehicle. They planted all that. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, death. Yep. But when it came to those and many other facts, the Peruvian authorities were even less interested in his claims of a setup.

Good for them. Yeah, exactly. They were like, fuck right off. They were like, fuck this guy. After over a year spent waiting in a jail cell in Lima, he finally appeared before a judge in January of 2012 to face the charges of murder in the case of Stephanie Flores Ramirez.

According to the prosecutor, when Flores discovered Vandersloot's connection to the Holloway case, she hit him in the face and attempted to flee, at which point he hit her in the face with his elbow, knocking her unconscious. And while he was on the floor, he attempted to strangle Stephanie, but when that proved to be too difficult, he suffocated her with her own shirt.

He's a monster. Found out, like figured out who she was in a room with and was like, get me the fuck out of here. Rightfully so. Absolutely. She was probably terrified. Yeah. I can't imagine her last moments. It's horrible. That's awful. But this time there was no story of a setup. Yorin pleaded guilty to robbing and murdering Stephanie Flores and was sentenced to 28 years in prison and was also ordered to pay a fine of roughly $75,000 to her relatives.

At the conclusion of his sentence, he was to be deported from Peru. So rewinding a little bit in between all of that to 2011, Joran van der Sloot was sitting in the Peruvian jail cell for being suspected of killing Stephanie Flores, and the American media had really largely moved on from the Natalie Holloway story.

Given all that they'd been through, Dave and Beth Holloway reluctantly agreed it was very much time to face the very real possibility that their daughter wasn't going to be found. Yeah, I mean, what can you do, you know? What do you do? Yeah. So in June, Dave filed a petition with the Alabama court to have Natalie declared legally dead, which I can't imagine having to go to the court to do that.

Yeah, that's something nobody should ever have to do for their loved one because you don't know what happened to them. You have no idea what happened. And you don't know where they are. But you just know they're not coming back. You don't have a place to visit them, but it's horrific. The family obviously still held out hope that Natalie would be found, but they did also believe that this was probably the first step towards...

some kind of semblance of moving on yeah and just putting the seemingly endless searches heartbreak and international fights behind them so in january of 2012 actually just one day after yoren pleaded guilty to murdering stephanie flores ramirez judge alan king signed the declaration in a closed hearing and natalie holloway was officially pronounced deceased

Which... So sad. The timeline of all of this, like the fact that he murdered Stephanie on the five-year anniversary of Natalie being gone, and then that...

She also was declared dead one day after he was convicted. Just like all of that timeline is so it's it's bizarre. Like it's scary. The timeline. Yeah. Dave Holloway said, though, we've been dealing with her death for the last six and a half years. We've still got a long way to go to get justice. That justice would still be a long way off. But in time, it would finally come.

After years of negotiations between the FBI and Peruvian authorities, Joran van der Sloot was extradited to Birmingham, Alabama to stand trial for his attempted extortion of Beth back in 2010. He maintained that he was innocent of those charges. In his interview with Dutch reporters in 2010, though, he actually admitted to the extortion, saying, I wanted to get back at Natalie's family. Her parents have been making my life tough for five years. When they offered to pay for the girl's location, I thought, why not?

Why not? Why not mess with this dead girl's family who I know that I killed? They've been making my life tough.

Oh, your life is tough. Are you joking? You get away with everything. You just get to walk around on the earth. You get to do whatever the fuck you want. You get to bullshit everybody. Knowing exactly where she is. And they're living in like a pit of suffering every second of every day. But you thought, why not get some money out of this? But yeah, boo-hoo for you. On June 9th, he was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of extortion, to which he pleaded not guilty. According to the original affidavit, Van der Sloot had claimed that he killed Natalie accidentally and that his father helped him dispose of the body.

Despite his insistence that he was innocent, though, in October of 2023, Yorin agreed to a plea deal in which he would receive a 20-year sentence for each of the fraud charges to be served concurrent with his sentence for the Flores murder, on the condition that he tell the authorities what happened the night that Natalie went missing.

In his statement, which was verified by a polygraph examination, Yorin said he offered Natalie a ride back to her hotel the night that she went missing, as he had originally told authorities. But he said he wanted to spend more time with her. He said she asked to go back to her hotel, but I was just trying to get dropped off a little bit further away from her hotel so we could walk back to her hotel and I might still get a chance to be with her.

He's so disgusting. What that translates into is she said, I want to go back to my hotel. And he said, no, I want to do something else. And he decided to take that advantage. But once they were at the beach, Joran began groping Natalie. And she resisted his advances because she just wanted to go home. Yeah. She just wanted to go back to the hotel. This is a little graphic. He said, it's very graphic. He said, I started feeling her up and she tells me no. She tells me she doesn't want me to feel her up.

He said, then Natalie need him in the crotch, sending him into a blind rage, which good for her. That's what you fucking do when somebody's touching you and you don't want to be touched. Yeah, fuck that guy. He continued, when she needs me in the crotch, I get up on the beach and I kick her extremely hard in the face. She's laying down unconscious, possibly even dead, but definitely unconscious.

Still angry over the rejection, he then grabbed a large cinder block that was laying on the ground nearby and hit Natalie in the face with it several times. He told the prosecutor, this is very graphic, trigger warning, her face basically collapses in. Even though it's dark, I can still see her face is collapsed in.

He's so fucking disgusting. Just to say that so matter of a fact that her face collapsed in because she didn't want to have sex with you or she didn't want you even to touch her in that way. It's so foul.

You don't get to do whatever the fuck you want to do. You don't get to touch girls that don't want to be touched. But he thinks he can. Who the fuck are you? And he's had ample time and ample evidence around him to think that he can do whatever the fuck he wants. He can do whatever he wants, exactly. And it's so gross.

I just, I don't understand that thought process of just thinking you get to do whatever the fuck you want to do. He definitely added in that note of, I kicked her extremely hard in the face and maybe she died. And I'm like, you didn't, no. No. Like, you know that was him trying to like,

He thinks he's like macho here. Oh, yeah. For this whole thing. No. And it's like, you're disgusting. He's a demented string bean. Exactly. Once he was convinced that Natalie was dead, though, he said he then dragged her body out into the water and pushed her into the ocean, ensuring that her remains would never be found.

I don't know if I believe that. I think probably ultimately, but I don't know. It's so hard to believe anything he says. It feels like that is probably what he did because it was the simplest solution to his problem. Yeah. And it was right behind him. You're not wrong. I don't see him going through a lot of trouble. Yeah. I see him looking behind him, seeing the ocean and being like, well...

She'll never be found. It's just nuts. And she wasn't. It's so sad that she was never found. And it's like it's Aruba. There's sharks. There's all kinds of things. Unfortunately, that is the easiest method of getting rid of the fish.

That's so stupid. I didn't even think of like sharks. I was like, but when search and rescue looked like they didn't find a body. No, she's the ocean. I'm sure that was. That's awful. And he knew that. Mm hmm. He lived in Aruba. He knows the terrain. He knows the waters. He knows what's in those waters. Yeah. He knew that once she was in there and I mean, with blood and such, she's that's it. That's awful. Yeah.

Well, per the terms of the deal he made with the prosecutor, Yorin wouldn't be charged for Natalie's murder, which is awful. That's such a travesty. He would never be held legally responsible for her death. But although the statute of limitations for murder in Aruba is 12 years, it had long since passed. How is there a statute of limitations on murder? I don't get that. Yeah, I don't understand that either. That one doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense for me either. But even though the statute of limitations had long since passed, the Aruban authorities did release a statement saying that they were going to keep the investigation open and asked U.S. officials for copies of documents pertaining to Vandersloot's confession. Well, that's good. In their statement, a spokesperson for the Aruba's prosecutor's office said they would review and analyze the materials, quote, before deciding on procedural steps.

For Dave and Beth Holloway, Yoran's confession was bittersweet, I guess you could say. Beth said, But still, the hearing meant that finally, after 18 years of uncertainty, the Holloways' pursuit of justice had finally come to an end.

In her victim impact statement, Beth addressed Yoran saying, you finally admitted that, in fact, you murdered her. You terminated her dreams, her potential, her possibilities when you bludgeoned her to death in 2005. You didn't get what you wanted from Natalie, your sexual satisfaction, so you brutally killed her. You are the one in Aruba no one wants to be, the black mark on the island. Which is... That was a great...

It gives me chills all the way down to my legs. Because that's what it goes back to. It's not Aruba. It's not Aruba. It's you. And she said that. You're the problem. And that's what, yeah. She said that.

In her statement to the press following the hearing, Beth gave a statement about the confession on behalf of the family, saying, It's just blistering to your soul, and it hurts so deeply. But you know you're there in a functionality role, because this is the moment that I've been searching for for 18 years. Even as hard as it is to hear, it's still not as torturous as the not knowing. It was time for me to know. Yeah, I mean, the not knowing... Because then your mind fills in the blanks. Torturous must be a perfect way to describe it, because...

The unknown is way worse. Exactly. You know? But then you hear this. And then you're like, is it? But even that, like, even the is it, you're like, you hear this and you're like, that's what my child's last moments were? Yeah. Like, that's got to be a whole... I'm sure that opened up a whole other...

flood of grief. Absolutely. And you weren't even sure existed. Absolutely. Because now you've got these horrific details. And then you have to heal from that. First you have to... Now you have to heal from that. And I'm sure you never actually heal, but you have to work on the process of somehow coming to terms with the fact that this happened in your life and this happened to your child. Yeah.

And the fact that she's missing and that you don't know what happened and then you find out what happened and then you have to come to terms with that. Yeah. I mean, I don't wish that on anybody. On my worst enemy. No. That's an awful, awful sentence to have to endure in life. It is.

On November 1st, 2023, Joran van der Sloot was returned to Peru to finish serving his sentence for the murder of Stephanie Flores Ramirez. He's actually set to be released from Peruvian prison in 2043, when he will be 56 years old, at which point he will be deported from Peru. In the event that he's released before that projected date, he will be sent to Alabama to finish his sentence for the extortion on Beth Holloway, per that plea deal that he made with U.S. authorities. But still...

He could, if he gets out of prison at 56 years old...

That's scary. And that's wild. That's young. That's still very much capable of inflicting even more pain on even more families. Like, how is he just getting away with killing two women? And he admitted to killing Natalie, but will never be legally held responsible for that. None of that makes sense to me. And unless I don't know, it was a little confusing, like, what Aruba would do. Yeah. Because the statute of limitations is, what did I say, 15 years? Yeah.

But they said they were going to keep the case open, so I don't... So maybe they're making a special... I don't know how that works. Yeah, I'm not sure if maybe he could face charges there at some point. It's a little unclear. Why doesn't everybody just throw some charges at him? Honestly. Keep him in there. Who's going to... Hopefully he just like...

Something happens in prison. I don't want him to get out of prison. Yeah, I don't want him to get out of there either. I just don't want him to be able to exist outside of those walls. What country is going to be like, yeah, you can live here? Yeah, come on in. I remember we covered a case once where somebody did get out of prison for doing something awful. And I think they went to Florida and Florida was like, no, you can't stay here. Yeah, Florida was like, get out. Yeah.

Yeah. So I could see that happening. Yeah. I wonder like how that all works, but hopefully we never have to find out. Yeah. Seriously. And I just, I really feel for this family for all that they went through. But like I said, definitely check out that documentary that I mentioned at the top. It's on Peacock and that will most likely be our next episode as a follow up. Lots of information. Yes. He's going to be an interesting person to talk to.

Exactly. Yeah. So with that being said, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But never ever as weird as you're in VanderSloot because that's not weird, that's deranged. Fuck that.

She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reid was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.