Netflix’s new documentary “Taken: Natalee Holloway” includes previously unreleased footage of a May 2010 FBI-led sting in Aruba that captured Joran van der Sloot accepting money for a false lead about where Natalee Holloway’s remains were.
Van der Sloot wanted $250,000 to tell Natalee Holloway’s mother where her daughter’s remains were. The 3-part documentary is now streaming.
Beth Holloway’s attorney at the time, John Q. Kelly, met van der Sloot at an Aruban hotel during the operation, which involved local authorities. Kelly asked, “Are you ready to be really specific about where Natalee is,” and van der Sloot replied, “I can’t believe I’m doing it, but I’m ready.”
Kelly counted out $10,000 in cash. Once van der Sloot signed the contract, Beth wired another $15,000 from Birmingham, Alabama. The remaining $225,000 depended on him accurately identifying where Natalee’s remains could be found.
“To be completely honest, for me, the biggest deal is the 225 afterwards,” van der Sloot said. “Did you put in the contract that that would be paid within a month?”
He then took Kelly to a house and claimed Natalee was buried in its foundation, saying the property had been under construction in 2005. Investigators determined there’d been no construction there on the day she died. An FBI affidavit says van der Sloot later admitted in an email to agents that he’d lied about the location.
Natalee was 18 when she disappeared during a post-graduation trip to Aruba in May 2005. Leaving a nightclub in Oranjestad alongside van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe was the last reported sighting of the honor roll student and dancer from Birmingham. She missed her May 30 flight home.
An Alabama grand jury indicted van der Sloot on extortion and wire fraud charges in 2010. He was brought to the U.S. in June 2023 to face those charges while serving a 28-year sentence in Peru for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores.
That October, he pleaded guilty to the financial crimes and confessed to killing Natalee. His plea agreement required him to explain her death and what he’d done with her body. In an interview with his attorney, he said he struck her with a cinder block after she rejected his sexual advances on a beach, then carried her into knee-deep water and pushed her out to sea.
He received a 20-year sentence for extortion and wire fraud, running concurrently with his Peruvian sentence. He wasn’t convicted of Natalee’s murder in the U.S. Her remains have never been found.
