For years, Joran van der Sloot spun conflicting accounts of Natalee Holloway’s disappearance, leaving her family searching for answers. Newly released footage from an FBI sting shows another side of his conduct: an attempt to profit from the grief of Holloway’s mother, Beth.
The footage appears in the Netflix docuseries Taken: Natalee Holloway, directed by Dani Sloane and Matthew Galkin. It records a 2010 meeting in which van der Sloot sought money in exchange for information about Holloway’s death and the location of her remains.
Sloane said van der Sloot’s casual manner during the meeting was striking. In the recording, he chatted with Beth’s attorney, John Q. Kelly, about the heat and getting a soda while discussing a payment for information he claimed to have. Watching the exchange, Sloane said, was haunting.
Holloway, 18, vanished on May 30, 2005, during a graduation trip to Aruba with classmates. She was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot, who attended an international school on the island, where he had grown up.
Van der Sloot was long suspected in her disappearance but was never charged with her murder at the time. A judge declared Holloway dead in 2012. Her body was not found.
Nearly five years after she disappeared, van der Sloot contacted Kelly, who represented Beth, and offered to reveal what happened to Holloway and where her remains were for $250,000. By then, he had given numerous versions of events, the documentary says.
Sloane said van der Sloot had repeatedly appeared on television and changed details in his accounts. The filmmakers estimated that he had told a remarkable number of different stories, she said, adding that his lies helped him avoid law enforcement and consequences.
Kelly and van der Sloot arranged to meet at an Aruban hotel in May 2010. The plan was for Kelly to pay a $25,000 deposit in exchange for information, beginning with $10,000 in cash. Beth, believing this might finally reveal what had happened to her daughter, stood by at an Alabama bank and later wired another $15,000 to van der Sloot’s account.
Before the meeting, Kelly contacted the FBI. The bureau and Aruban police secretly recorded the exchange as they sought to build a case against van der Sloot. In the footage, he asks Kelly whether the agreement says the remaining $225,000 will be paid within a month. Kelly confirms it, and van der Sloot signs.
Kelly later explained that van der Sloot was never going to receive the balance. If he disclosed Holloway’s location, he would face arrest; if he did not, he could be arrested for extortion or fraud, Kelly said.
Van der Sloot then took Kelly to a nearby house and claimed Holloway had been buried in its foundation during construction. Investigators found the account was false. Before U.S. authorities could bring charges, however, van der Sloot left Aruba for Peru.
On May 30, 2010, five years after Holloway disappeared, van der Sloot killed 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramírez in his hotel room in Lima. According to the docuseries, he later told investigators that he attacked her after she found information about Holloway on his laptop. He beat and strangled her.
Van der Sloot married Leidy Figueroa, a Peruvian woman, in July 2014, and they later had a daughter. Retired FBI special agent Alexandra Montilla recalled that he once spoke to her about a pet rabbit he shared with his daughter. After the animal scratched the child, Montilla said, van der Sloot told her he had grabbed it and torn its head off.
Montilla described him as one of the most dangerous people she had encountered. Sloane said the exchange had stayed with the former agent, noting that it was especially memorable given her experience with offenders.
In June 2023, van der Sloot was temporarily transferred from Peru to the United States to face federal extortion and wire fraud charges related to his scheme against Beth. He pleaded guilty to both charges in Alabama on Oct. 18, 2023, and received a 20-year sentence to run at the same time as his Peruvian sentence. If released from prison in Peru before completing the U.S. term, he would serve the remaining time in the United States.
As part of his plea agreement, van der Sloot also confessed to killing Holloway. He said he struck her in the head with a cinder block after she rejected his sexual advances, then disposed of her body in the ocean. Beth said she believed his account.
Sloane said the case was exceptionally difficult to solve because investigators had little forensic evidence and Holloway’s remains were never recovered. Much depended on getting a reliable account from van der Sloot, who had spent years changing his story, she said.
Beth spent nearly two decades seeking answers and now supports families of missing people. Though she has learned how her daughter died, Sloane said, the loss remains part of her daily life. In the docuseries, Beth says she believes Natalee would be proud and that van der Sloot chose the wrong person to cross.
