{"id":230339,"date":"2026-11-11T01:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T01:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/beth-holloway-recalls-the-moment-she-came-face-to-face-with-daughter-natalees-killer-in-2005-he-knows-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T01:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T01:12:13","slug":"beth-holloway-recalls-the-moment-she-came-face-to-face-with-daughter-natalees-killer-in-2005-he-knows-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/beth-holloway-recalls-the-moment-she-came-face-to-face-with-daughter-natalees-killer-in-2005-he-knows-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Beth Holloway recalls the moment she came face to face with daughter Natalee\u2019s killer in 2005: \u2018He knows\u2019 – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

For You
Settings
news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
Every morning before she leaves for work, Beth Holloway makes sure to kiss the senior portrait of her late daughter, Natalee Holloway, to give her thanks for the strength she still provides her on a daily basis.
Beth Holloway spoke with NBC News correspondent Sam Brock for a segment that aired Monday on \u201cTODAY\u201d about what her life is like now that she finally received the answers she desperately sought for nearly two decades about her daughter\u2019s disappearance and death in Aruba.
\u201cThe weight of the world has been lifted off me,\u201d she said. \u201cI spent 18 years in the dark. I just couldn\u2019t see it. I couldn\u2019t find it. I couldn\u2019t hear it, and so I\u2019d waited 18 years, and it\u2019s horrible that that\u2019s the news I get. Families need to know the answers, no matter how brutal they are.\u201d
The grandmother of two has resumed her work as a speech pathologist at an Alabama public school after taking nine years off to pursue the truth about her daughter\u2019s death.
\u201cI was determined by hope, and I was driven by love, and the love for my daughter, and to find out the answers to what happened to her, and I was acting on faith,\u201d Beth Holloway said. \u201cAnd when you do those three things, you can accomplish a lot.\u201d
Her relentless quest to find out what happened to her 18-year-old daughter during an Aruba vacation in 2005 is detailed in the new three-part Netflix docuseries \u201cTaken: Natalee Holloway.\u201d
In 2023, Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot confessed<\/a> to killing the Alabama teen on a beach in Aruba in 2005 and pushing her body out to sea when he was 17 years old.
\u201cI finally have a conclusion,\u201d Beth Holloway said about doing the documentary, in which she was featured. \u201cThere\u2019s a finale. It took me 18 years to get the answers, but justice takes a lot of work, and I felt like now\u2019s the time to tell, for the first time, a comprehensive and conclusive story of what happened to Natalee and her journey of 20 years.\u201d
Beth Holloway met van der Sloot for the first time within hours after she arrived in Aruba in 2005 when Natalee went missing. She described their first meeting to Brock.
\u201cMy initial interaction with Joran was another moment of, \u2018He knows. He knows what happened to her,\u2019\u201d Beth Holloway said.
She is hoping viewers of the docuseries can take away two things from it.
\u201cI\u2019d like for them to see the capacity of faith to carry you through the most difficult times,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to be determined by hope.\u201d
The other message she wants to deliver is people minding their safety while traveling. Natalee was seen by friends and on surveillance footage leaving a bar in Aruba late at night in a car with van der Sloot and two brothers and then was never seen again.
\u201cI want to make sure that they\u2019re also seeing why they do need to be mindful and make a plan, because that\u2019s why I spent the last 18 to 20 years pounding the podiums, because we can never have too many safety reminders,\u201d Beth Holloway said.
When he confessed in 2023 to killing Natalee Holloway, van der Sloot was already in the midst of a 28-year prison sentence in Peru after being convicted of murdering 21-year-old Peruvian woman Stephany Flores in 2010. He made the confession in 2023 as part of a proffer agreement in a separate wire fraud and extortion case in Alabama after he was extradited from Peru.
\u201cThat day was a long time coming,\u201d Beth Holloway said. \u201cThe torturous part is the not knowing, and as shocking and as torturous as it is to hear this, it is finally a relief to know that\u2019s what I had been searching for for 18 years. I had to know, no matter how brutal it was. I needed to know what happened.\u201d
Beth Holloway\u2019s attorney, John Q. Kelly, says in the Netflix documentary that van der Sloot contacted him in 2010<\/a> in a bid to extort $250,000 from the Holloway family in exchange for information about where they could find Natalee Holloway\u2019s body. Previously unseen FBI surveillance footage of van der Sloot meeting in Aruba with Kelly to arrange a $25,000 down payment is shown in the docuseries.
Once van der Sloot\u2019s information about where Natalee Holloway\u2019s body was located turned out to be bogus, prosecutors said<\/a>, Beth Holloway sued him for wire fraud and extortion in an Alabama court.
As part of the proffer agreement, his 20-year sentence for the Alabama charges was allowed to be served concurrently with his prison sentence in Peru, where he is currently incarcerated. Van der Sloot, who is now 39, is eligible for parole in Peru in 2045, but Beth Holloway told Brock she is not done pursuing justice against him for her daughter.
She said she is working with Netherlands attorneys Royce de Vries and Annemiek van Spanje to file a murder complaint against van der Sloot with Dutch prosecutors in the Netherlands. Her hope is he could be extradited to the Netherlands at the end of his sentence in Peru, face trial on charges of Natalee Holloway\u2019s murder and potentially serve a sentence in a Dutch prison.
Nearly three years after hearing van der Sloot confess to killing her daughter, Beth Holloway says she feels \u201cso much of Natalee\u201d in her family.
\u201cI\u2019m constantly calling my grandchildren Natalee and Matt, constantly the wrong names, and that\u2019s probably more common than not,\u201d she says, adding that she feels her daughter\u2019s life \u201crealigning\u201d with her children.
\u201cIt\u2019s a great sense of peace,\u201d she said.
She also says she\u2019s able to spend time with her daughter\u2019s friends, which is a \u201cblessing.\u201d
\u201cThe one silver lining though in that fight is, and what I wish everyone could realize is, you\u2019re on a healing path, and you don\u2019t even know it,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd as hard as it is, it would be more painful not to get on that path than to look back 20 years and have regrets. I live my life with no regrets, no step wasted.\u201d
She makes sure to give her daughter\u2019s photo a kiss before work to let her know she\u2019s not forgotten.
\u201cShe\u2019s thought of every single day,\u201d Beth Holloway said.
Sam Brock is an NBC News correspondent.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For YouSettings news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeEvery morning before she leaves for work, Beth Holloway makes sure to kiss the senior portrait of her late daughter, Natalee Holloway, to give her thanks for the strength she still provides her on a daily basis.Beth Holloway spoke with NBC News correspondent Sam Brock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}