On May 26th, 2005, 124 seniors from Mountain Brook High School in Alabama arrived on the sun-soaked island of Aruba for what was supposed to be the ultimate graduation celebration. Accompanied by just seven chaperones, this group of teens was ready for a week of fun and freedom. And by most accounts, the teens found just that, with many of them taking part in drinking, clubbing, and room swapping. As their adventure came to a close however, the seemingly normal vacation twisted into a haunting mystery.
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00:00The phone rang, and it was my son. He said, Dad, he said, Natalie has missed her flight
00:06back home.
00:07On May 26, 2005, 124 seniors from Mountain Brook High School in Alabama arrived on the
00:13sun-soaked island of Aruba for what was supposed to be the ultimate graduation celebration.
00:18Knowing her, I thought something bad's happened.
00:21Accompanied by just seven chaperones, this group of teens was ready for a week of fun
00:26and freedom. And by most accounts, the teens found just that, with many of them taking
00:30part in drinking, clubbing, and room swapping.
00:32As their adventure came to a close, however, a seemingly normal vacation twisted into a
00:37haunting mystery.
00:38Please help bring her home.
00:42On the last night of their trip, a group of students decided to head to Carlos and Charlie's,
00:46a popular bar in the city of Oranjestad. And when the bar closed at 1 a.m., 18-year-old
00:51Natalie Holloway left not with her fellow graduates, but in the company of three locals
00:55she had just met.
00:57Deepak and Satish Kalpo and Joran Vandersloot. That would be the last time any of her friends
01:02would ever see her.
01:03What did it feel like, Monday morning, when you guys were all getting ready to go and
01:08you realized that she wasn't around?
01:10We immediately knew something was wrong.
01:12This is a deep dive into the disappearance of Natalie Holloway and the bombshells that
01:16have shaken the case in the years since.
01:18Just, you know, sitting in the back, cruising over to my place.
01:27On the morning of May 30, as the group prepared to head to the airport for their departure,
01:32Natalie Holloway was nowhere to be found. Ominously, her passport and bags were found
01:36untouched in her hotel room. The alarming news quickly reached Holloway's mother, Beth
01:40Holloway Twitty, back in the States. She, along with her husband and several friends,
01:44rushed to Aruba on a private jet to search for her missing daughter.
01:48Beth and her group quickly followed Holloway's trail from the hotel to Carlos and Charlie's,
01:52and finally to Joran Vandersloot. Vandersloot said that he and the Kalpo brothers had driven
01:56Holloway to a lighthouse before dropping her back off at the hotel. Vandersloot claimed
02:01to have seen a security guard escort Holloway back into a hotel before leaving. But when
02:06Vandersloot returned to the hotel with a search party to identify this guard, the man was
02:10nowhere to be found.
02:11The following morning, even though Holloway was not officially listed as missing, more
02:15than 100 volunteers made up of tourists and locals scoured the island but were unable
02:20to find any sign of her. In the meantime, the news media stepped in, and the story of
02:24a pretty American honors student missing in paradise swept the globe. This attention brought
02:29significant pressure and scrutiny on the small Aruban police force as they scrambled for
02:33answers. Several arrests were made in the coming days.
02:36First on June 5th, based on Vandersloot's initial story, police arrest a group of former
02:40security guards from a nearby hotel. But the men are released the following week as there
02:44was no evidence connecting them to Holloway's disappearance. Then on June 9th, the Calpo
02:49brothers and Vandersloot were taken into custody, their stories growing increasingly inconsistent.
02:54The Calpo brothers now claim to have dropped Vandersloot off at a beach alone with Holloway.
02:59And Vandersloot claimed to have simply left Holloway alone at that same beach before walking
03:03home.
03:05On June 17th, a local DJ was arrested and questioned by police. And on June 22nd, Vandersloot's
03:10father, Paulus, was also arrested. Both men are released on June 26th without any charges
03:15being filed.
03:16The Calpo brothers were then released from custody on July 4th, again with no charges
03:21filed. Authorities chased down leads on purported bone fragments, tested strands of blonde hair
03:25from a piece of duct tape found on the coast, and drained a pond where one witness claimed
03:30to have seen some men dumping a body. But all of these turned out to be unrelated to
03:34the case or completely unverifiable.
03:36And then on September 3rd, the last remaining suspect, Vandersloot, was released from police
03:41custody.
03:42Did you kill Natalie Holloway? No. And why should you be believed after all the lying
03:48that you've done in this situation? There's absolutely no reason to believe him.
03:54The Calpo brothers and Vandersloot would be detained again the same year, but subsequently
03:58released because of lack of evidence. Then, on December 18th, 2007, the Aruban police
04:03would officially close the case without charging anyone. But a bombshell revelation in January
04:08of 2008 would bring renewed attention to the case.
04:10Did you try to resuscitate her? Of course, I tried everything, man. I tried to shake
04:15her. I was shaking the s***. I was like, what's wrong with you, man? I almost wanted to cry.
04:19A Dutch reporter named Paul R. De Vrie claimed to have captured Vandersloot's confession
04:24on a tape via hidden recording equipment in a car. In the recording, a weed-smoking Vandersloot
04:29alleges that while he was with Holloway on the beach, she had begun convulsing and died,
04:34possibly due to an overdose. Vandersloot claimed that he had been unable to revive her and,
04:38with the help of a friend, disposed of her body in the ocean.
04:41Based on this new information, the Aruban police attempted to get yet another arrest
04:45warrant for Vandersloot, but their efforts were struck down as the confession was deemed
04:49insufficient evidence. Vandersloot himself later claimed that he had lied on the recording
04:53and still maintained that he had simply left Holloway alone on the beach.
04:57But this would be just one of many taped confessions that Vandersloot would offer up
05:01in the years following Holloway's disappearance. In fact, another, even more shocking confession
05:05would be released later that same year. This one took the form of an interview with Greta
05:10van Susteren that would air for three nights on Fox News. In this confession, Vandersloot
05:15spins an elaborate tale about having sold Holloway into sex slavery to a man he had
05:19encountered in a casino. Vandersloot claimed to have been paid $10,000 for his role in
05:23the scheme, and said that he had last seen Holloway boarding a boat with a man he had
05:27brought her to on Aruban Beach. Also included in the story was a recording of a purported
05:32phone call between Vandersloot and his father, discussing what he had done to Holloway.
05:36Definitely with everything I gave, if you really go and look into it, you're going
05:39to stumble across something that will get you more answers, I'm sure about it.
05:45But as shocking as this confession was, within hours of its completion, Vandersloot sent
05:49an email to Fox News claiming that everything he had told Van Susteren was a lie, and the
05:54story of selling Holloway into slavery was completely made up. Even that purported phone
05:58conversation between Vandersloot and his father was faked, likely with Vandersloot recording
06:02both ends of the conversation and changing the tone of his voice to imitate his father's.
06:07And because Aruban Law doesn't recognize a confession as evidence unless it's written
06:10and signed, this stunt would do nothing more than bring further pain and angst to the Holloway
06:15family.
06:16Would you even let your mind entertain the possibility that you might not find her?
06:20No, there again, that's not an option.
06:23As for Vandersloot's motive for offering a false confession on a major news station?
06:28There were people who were paying me to make up stories, and I was really good at making
06:34up stories. Finally, you start to think, okay, well, f*** you. If you want something, then
06:41I'll tell you whatever you want to hear.
06:43Though Fox News stated plainly that they did not pay Vandersloot for his appearance
06:47on the show, they did admit to licensing the media associated with the segment. In other
06:52words, they paid for the right to air Vandersloot's phone conversation with his father.
06:56And following that same pattern, the next bombshell Vandersloot would offer up in this
06:59case was a straight-up money grab. In March of 2010, Vandersloot reached out to a lawyer
07:05representing Natalie Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, and offered to provide the location
07:09of Holloway's body if she would pay him $250,000. Working with the FBI, Twitty's lawyer met
07:14with Vandersloot in Aruba and gave him $10,000. A second payment of $15,000 was wired to Vandersloot's
07:20bank in the Netherlands. After receiving the money, Vandersloot pointed out the location
07:25of Holloway's body, an interaction that the FBI secretly recorded. But this information,
07:30like everything else provided by Vandersloot, turned out to be false, and no body was found
07:34at the location. A follow-up email from Vandersloot claimed again to have made it up.
07:39But in a dark twist to this already terrible story, the money Vandersloot received from
07:42Twitty would lead to another tragedy. Vandersloot used the $25,000 to fund a gambling trip to
07:48Peru. On March 30, 2010, exactly five years to the day after Natalie Holloway went missing,
07:54a 21-year-old Peruvian woman named Stephanie Flores Ramirez also vanished. She had last
07:59been seen in the company of Joran Vandersloot. Several days later, her body was discovered
08:04in Vandersloot's Lima hotel room.
08:07Vandersloot was arrested in Chile on June 3 and eventually confessed to killing Ramirez.
08:11In his account of the murder, he claimed that Ramirez had discovered his association with
08:15the Holloway case and had confronted him. He claimed to have just snapped and killed
08:19her. His defense team later claimed that the psychological trauma of having stood accused
08:23of killing Holloway for so many years was in part to blame for his killing of Ramirez.
08:27I have had five years long that people have just been blaming me for something and, yeah,
08:34I have a lot of anger built up because of that.
08:38Vandersloot pleaded guilty to Ramirez's murder and was sentenced to 28 years in prison on
08:42January 13, 2012. Ironically, the day before his sentencing, Natalie Holloway had been
08:48officially declared dead through a judgment in Alabama.
08:51In the ensuing years, the Holloway family would continue their search for answers in
08:54the case. A docuseries on the Oxygen Network featured a man who claimed to have helped
08:58Vandersloot dispose of Holloway's body, but the bone fragments found in the investigation
09:02turned out to not belong to Holloway. Likewise, another confession from Vandersloot, this
09:08one captured in a Peruvian prison, led nowhere, as like the previous confessions, it was considered
09:12inadmissible.
09:13But finally, in May of 2023, the Holloway family seemed to have received some real answers
09:18in the case.
09:19Today, I can tell you with certainty that after 18 years, Natalie's case, it's solved.
09:27After years of negotiations, the government of Peru finally agreed to a temporary surrender
09:31of Vandersloot to the U.S. so he could face charges of wire fraud and extortion in relation
09:35to the money he had received from Beth Twitty in 2010. As part of a plea deal in that case,
09:41Vandersloot gave a written account of Holloway's murder. In it, he stated that after Holloway
09:45had fought off his sexual advances on the beach, he bludgeoned her to death and then
09:49dragged her body out into the ocean.
09:51Yaron Vandersloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter's murder. He is the killer.
09:57After hearing the details of the confession, Holloway's mother said,
10:00It's just blistering to your soul, and it hurts so deeply. Even as hard as it is to
10:05hear, it's still not as torturous as the not knowing. It was time for me to know.
10:10Vandersloot received a 20-year sentence for the extortion and wire fraud charges, but
10:14it will not add any years to his time behind bars, as the sentence will be served concurrently
10:18with his Peruvian murder sentence. As to whether he will ever face charges for Holloway's death,
10:23it seems unlikely, as the statute of limitations on murder under Rubin law has already passed.
10:28Holloway's father offered his thoughts on that fact, as he said of Vandersloot,
10:32While it may not be in a court of law, I believe their judgment is still to come.
10:36We finally, today, we got justice for Natalie. I got the answer I've been searching for for
10:43the past 18 years.