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When 18-year-old Alabama high school graduate Natalee Holloway went missing during a trip to Aruba in 2005, it became a media firestorm that lasted years.
Her killer, Joran van der Sloot, didn’t confess until nearly two decades later, in 2023. Her body was never found.
The Netflix docuseries “Taken: Natalee Holloway” features new interviews with Natalee’s mother, Beth, her friends, FBI agents who worked on the case, and the Aruban police chief at the time.
Here are the biggest revelations from the series.
Natalee’s friends weren’t concerned when she drove off in a car with strangers
“When one of my friends saw Natalee in a gray Honda Civic with Joran [van der Sloot] and two Aruban guys driving, we were not really worried,” said Madison Greer, one of Natalee’s friends. The group met van der Sloot during a night out.
Natalee was last seen alive on May 30, 2005, leaving a bar and getting into a car with van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.
Greer recalled onscreen that Natalee was in high spirits at the time, “hanging out of the car, and saying like, ‘Aruba!’ People said ‘Aruba!’ back. And then, she drove off.”
Natalee’s friends weren’t alarmed, because taxis on the island were unmarked ordinary cars, she explained.
Greer added, “There’s no doubt in my mind that [Natalee] thought, ‘[The Kalpoe brothers] are local taxi drivers, and they’re gonna take me where we want to go, and then [back] to the hotel.’”
Van der Sloot, now 39, was a 17-year-old local, at the time. He told Natalee and her friends that he was a college student from Holland, Greer said.
Natalee’s mother immediately confronted van der Sloot and decided he was guilty
After Beth learned that her daughter was missing, she rushed to Aruba. Natalee’s friends had shared the details about van der Sloot, and described his car. Armed with that information, Beth confronted him at his home, with his father present.
“The only thing going through my mind was, ‘Find this guy, get Natalee, bring her home,” Beth said.
During their confrontation, van der Sloot allegedly told Beth that he kissed Natalee on a beach, before dropping her off at her hotel, where she stumbled out of the car, hit her head, and security guards helped her inside.
Beth knew in her “gut” that van der Sloot was lying, she said. “I don’t know what parts of that [account] are true, but I knew that he knew what happened to her. I decided, ‘Tag, you’re it,’” she recalled.
She added, “I looked at that gray Honda and I thought, ‘Could Natalee be in that trunk?”
Why police took so long to arrest van der Sloot
Although van der Sloot was the primary suspect, he wasn’t arrested until 10 days after Natalee’s disappearance. The Kalpoe brothers were also arrested, but they were never charged in connection with Natalee’s disappearance, and maintain their innocence.
Gerold Dompig, the Aruban police chief at the time, said onscreen, “We couldn’t find forensic evidence, but we had so much publicity – so much pressure on Aruba.”
“It was frustrating watching the news and wanting to have something happen,” Greer recalled. “It made us all very angry that it was taking them this long. Why are we not arresting him?”
Before arresting van der Sloot, Aruban police first arrested two security guards from the hotel, to go along with van der Sloot’s initial account that he dropped Natalee off, and security helped her inside.
“Everybody looking from the outside was only focused on Joran, but the investigation has a certain tactic that you first eliminated the noise. The security guard was noise. But to exclude them, we have to investigate,” Dompig explained.
After police arrested security guards, they obtained video footage that showed that van der Sloot was lying about dropping Natalee off at her hotel.
“We needed to find that stuff which you can use to corner the suspect. We hoped that he would start to break down,” said Dompig.
Van der Sloot changed his story ’40 times’ when police questioned him
“Normally, underaged suspects break down under interrogation. I was convinced that we were ready to try to get a confession. But Joran was very difficult to interrogate,” Dompig admitted.
At the time, van der Sloot told police conflicting accounts of his night with Natalee. “He liked being the dominant one, the center of attention…he changed his story I think 40 times,” said Dompig.
Then, it was revealed that van der Sloot’s father, Paulus, was an attorney who was on the path to becoming a judge in Aruba.
“That complicated matters seriously, because he had more visiting rights…His father being a judge in training was a problem for us, because he could give his son certain advice,” said Dompig, adding that during their investigation, they found that van der Sloot’s father allegedly told him, “if there’s no body, there’s no crime.”
The police had van der Sloot in custody for several weeks, but they had to release him on Sept. 3, 2005, due to a lack of evidence.
“The main thing that was lacking in this case was that we never found Natalee,” Dompig said.
Locals felt slighted by the media coverage
Dilma Arends Geerman, an Aruban journalist, said, “Having somebody go missing is almost a slap in the face, we take care of our people.”
Charles Croes, an Aruban businessman who helped Beth search for Natalee, explained that Aruba has a sense of “being kind to the visitors,” because its economy depends “almost entirely” on tourism.
Geerman called it “disappointing” when the American media came and, “the impression was created that Aruba was doing nothing.”
How Beth’s lawyer got van der Sloot for extortion and wire fraud
In 2010, John Q. Kelly, Beth’s attorney, got an email from van der Sloot, allegedly telling him, “I will take you to Natalee. In return, I want to receive $250,000.”
“I thought it was complete bulls–t. I knew he had no intention of giving any truthful information whatsoever, but I told Beth there might be a play to get him trapped with extortion and fraud charge,” Kelly explained, noting that American authorities had no jurisdiction in Aruba, but they could extradite van der Sloot to the United States.
When Kelly flew to Aruba and met with van der Sloot in 2010 and gave him a portion of the money, the latter told him that Natalee’s body was in the cement foundation of a house that had been under construction in 2005.
“I pretended like I believed this,” Kelly explained. “In theory, Joran took twenty-five grand, had a good laugh, and went about his merry way. It didn’t bother me at all, because I knew how it was going to play out.”
Together with FBI investigators, Kelly found that van der Sloot’s story wasn’t true, because the house hadn’t been under construction at the time.
However, before they could take action against him for extortion and wire fraud, van der Sloot was convicted of murdering another young woman, and sentenced to prison in Peru.
Natalee’s friends were angry when van der Sloot was convicted of murder in Peru
In 2012, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to the 2010 murder of 21 year old Peruvian business student Stephany Flores Ramírez. In 2012, he was sentenced to 28 years in Peruvian prison.
“I remember being angry. This could have been prevented,” said Greer.
“It was devastating,” said Beth. “Another young girl has lost her life, five years to the date that he murdered Natalee. I mean it was sickening. I knew he would kill again. He’s just a time bomb.”
Dompig was “shocked” when he heard that van der Sloot had killed Ramírez.
“Sadly, the fact that we couldn’t find forensic evidence and he got away with the Natalee case made him more dangerous. I think if he was not in prison, he would kill again.”
Van der Sloot alleged that he killed a rabbit
In 2023, FBI agents extradited van der Sloot to Birmingham, Alabama. Retired FBI agent Alexandra Montilla explained, “We cannot indict him on charges of murdering Natalee, but we’ll get you on the extortion charges, and we’ll get you in Natalee’s backyard.”
Montilla, who was on the plane with van der Sloot as he was flown from Peru to Alabama at the time, recalled that he was “charismatic, easy to talk to…people are drawn to him. He comes off as a very educated man.”
During the flight, van der Sloot, who had married and had a daughter during his time in prison, allegedly told Montilla that he was allowed to have a bunny, but when the animal scratched his daughter, he, “grabbed the bunny rabbit and ripped his head off like it was nothing,” she said.
After allegedly revealing that, van der Sloot, “carried on with other conversations,” Montilla claimed.
Montilla noted, “I’ve dealt with a lot of criminals, and as a female, I thought, ‘this is probably one of the most dangerous ones.’”
The FBI interviewer decided van der Sloot was being truthful because he’d been to Aruba
While van der Sloot was extradited to Alabama, he confessed under a polygraph to bludgeoning Natalee to death on a beach in Aruba. He claimed that he waded three yards into the ocean, and disposed of her body there.
Scott, a former FBI agent, explained that van der Sloot agreed to a plea deal to provide the information, in exchange for the government recommending to the court “that the sentence would be concurrent with the sentence he is serving in Peru.”
Michael Leverock, the retired FBI agent who was van der Sloot’s polygraph examiner, recalled, “The one part of the story that everyone had a problem with is that 3 yards out into the water, it just doesn’t sound right. Generally, you can’t just put somebody in the ocean. They’re gonna wash up.”
However, Leverock recalled that he had recently taken his own trip to Aruba, and he learned that the relevant area of the island has, “an offshore wind,” which means, “if something happens [to a person] out there, they’re not coming back in.”
Beth said that listening to van der Sloot’s confession was, “hard to hear, horrible to hear, but I had to hear it. The not knowing is the most torturous part.”
Currently, van der Sloot is serving his sentence in Peru.
“Taken: Natalee Holloway” is now streaming on Netflix.
