Natalee Holloway’s Mom Beth Holloway Reveals Heartbreaking Moment She Knew Teen Was DeadJill Sederstrom Wed, November 11, 2026 at 11:20 PM UTC
Beth Holloway still remembers the moment she realized her daughter Natalee Holloway was likely gone forever.
Beth—who shares her story in the Netflix docuseries Taken: Natalee Holloway—was on the island of Aruba in the days after Natalee's May 2005 disappearance, still frantically searching for any sign of her, when she came across a church with a series of white crosses outside.
In that moment, Beth told People she knew her daughter “was with God.”
For More True Crime:
Sandra Birchmore Trial: Ex Cop Matthew Farwell Found Guilty of Murdering Pregnant Mistress
Karen Read Reaches $100K Settlement with Massachusetts Police in Misconduct Lawsuit
Former Britain's Got Talent Judge David Walliams Accused of Grooming, Preying on Teen Girls
It was also the same moment that she made a promise to her daughter, sparking a years-long quest for answers.
"That was my first pledge,” she said, “to find out what happened to her.”
It would take nearly 20 years.
“It gives insight into what the human spirit can accomplish,” she said. “I never laid my sword down. Never.”
What Happened to Natalee Holloway?
Natalee was celebrating her high school graduation with a senior trip to Aruba when she vanished the last night of the vacation.
When Beth learned about the disappearance from her home in Mountain Brook, Alabama, she quickly hopped on a plane to Aruba.
There, she learned from Natalee’s friends that the 18-year-old was last seen driving away from a nightclub with Joran van der Sloot and two of his friends.
Natalee Holloway and her mom, Beth Holloway.Photo:
Netflix
After finding Joran outside a hotel she demanded he, “give her back now.” But the arrogant teen only replied, “What do you want me to do?”
“He had no sympathy, no empathy,” Beth told People. “I mean, he’s just driven by his own bodily needs—food, sex, drugs—and that’s it. It’s repulsive.”
RELATED: What Happened to Natalee Holloway? Joran Van Der Sloot’s Confession in His Own Words
She knew, as she told NBC News, in that moment that Joran “knows what happened to her.”
Though he was arrested just days after the disappearance, he was eventually released due to a lack of evidence
Yet Beth kept pushing for justice.
“I 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,” she told the outlet. “And when you do those three things, you can accomplish a lot.”
Joran van der Sloot Confessed to Killing Natalee Holloway
Her mission finally ended in 2023 when Joran confessed to killing Natalee as part of a guilty plea to extortion and wire fraud charges.
He’d been caught years earlier trying to extort Beth out of $250,000 for information about her daughter’s whereabouts, then provided the grieving mom with false information, leading to the federal charges against him, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.
RELATED: Joran van der Sloot Tried to Extort Natalee Holloway’s Mom. Then the FBI Set a Trap
Joran Van der Sloot arrives for his preliminary hearing in court in the Lurigancho prison in Lima on January 6, 2011.Photo:
ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP via Getty Images
In exchange for a 20-year sentence—to be served concurrently with a existing murder sentence in Peru for killing Stephany Flores Ramirez—Joran agreed to reveal how he killed Natalee. He told authorities that when he’d tried to take their romantic encounter too far, Natalee had resisted and he kicked her in the head, then bludgeoned her to death with a cement block on the beach, according to the docuseries.
After learning the truth, Beth told NBC News it felt as though “the world has been lifted off me.”
“I spent 18 years in the dark. I just couldn’t see it. I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t hear it, and so I’d waited 18 years, and it’s horrible that that’s the news I get,” she said. “Families the answers, no matter how brutal they are.”
Beth Holloway in Netflix'sTaken: Natalee Holloway.Photo:
NetflixWhere is Beth Holloway Now?
After taking nine years off of work to pursue her daughter’s case, Beth returned to her job as a school speech pathologist in 2014.
Today, she is still working and also serves as the director of the Safe Travels Foundation.
Beth is also a grandma and enjoys spending time with her son and two grandchildren. Yet, Natalee is never far from her mind.
She’s spent the last two years working with Netherlands attorneys Royce de Vries and Annemiek van Spanje in the hopes that Joran—a Dutch native—could one day be tried for her daughter’s murder in his home country.
“I’ve been working busy behind the scenes, got the murder complaint,” she told Netflix’s Tudum. “And now we’re working on, hopefully, murder charges. So I’ve been busy, but one step at a time.”
RELATED: Could Joran van der Sloot Still Be Charged With Natalee Holloway’s Murder? (Exclusive)
Evert Boerstra, press officer for the Public Prosecution Office Amsterdam, told Oxygen the case file is “currently being reviewed” in the Netherlands.
Each day, Beth still kisses her daughter’s senior portrait, which hangs in her bedroom.
“Sometimes I tell her, ‘Were keeping up the fight,’ or ‘Doing good work today, girl,’” she told People. “I’d like that to be her legacy. We all travel so differently now because Natalee taught us how.”
Source: Crime
