Why Natalee Holloway's killer Joran van der Sloot has never been convicted despite admitting to murdering her
Natalee Holloway’s tragic murder on holiday in Aruba is set to be re-examined once again by a whole new generation due to a brand new documentary featuring interviews with her mother and multiple experts on the case.
Netflix have produced Taken: Natalee Holloway which examines the 2005 disappearance of the American 18-year-old.
Her missing persons case received worldwide media coverage, with the family of Amy Bradley speaking out to lend support. Unlike Amy Bradley however there was a very clear theory of who was involved from early on.
Joran van der Sloot was the prime suspect from very early on as the last person to have seen Natalee alive, and he later admitted to killing her in a legal letter.
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Despite this though, Joran van der Sloot has never been convicted over her killing due to bizarre legal oddities about the case.
Van der Sloot admitted to killing Holloway and explained how he did it as part of plea deal for trying to extort her family
The Dutch national admitted to killing the 18-year-old as part of a plea bargain. Van der Sloot was tried in the US for the first time after he attempted to extort the Holloway family, attempting to blackmail them for $250,000 in exchange for information about the location of her body.
He was caught out by their lawyer, John Q Kelly, who explained in Taken: “I knew he had no intention of giving any truthful information whatsoever, but I told Beth there might be a play to get him trapped with extortion and fraud charge.”
They were able to do this, with Van der Sloot being served a 20-year prison sentence. This is running concurrently to a 28-year murder he is serving for a separate murder in Peru, Stephany Ramírez, who he killed in 2010.
What Van der Sloot admitted to and why it hasn’t been used to convict him of the murder
Under a polygraph test taken by the FBI the now 39-year-old admitted to bludgeoning the 18-year-old to death with a cinder block on an Aruba beach, putting her body out to sea where an offshore wind carried it away. Her body has never been recovered.
Speaking in a press conference after his admission, Beth Holloway said: “It’s over. Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder. He is the killer.”
In Netflix’s documentary she admitted that, whilst it was incredibly hard to listen to, she listened to his confession to give herself a sense of closure over what happened.
Unfortunately, however, this 2023 confession took place well after the statute of limitations for Aruba, and despite Holloway being American the murder must be tried in the Caribbean nation as that’s where it took place.
Michael Whisonant, a former prosecutor who tried Van explained this jurisdiction problem in an interview with NewsNation, saying: “The crime occurred in the country of Aruba. It would be up to the authorities in Aruba to charge him with homicide. It is my understanding that the law in Aruba is that the statute of limitations is 12 years there for murder.
“That would prevent him from being charged.”
In 2023 Aruban officials requested documents from the US regarding the case however, indicating that they were interested in still trying to pursue a case against the admitted killer.
Taken: Natalee Holloway is available to watch on Netflix now
Topics: True Crime, Netflix, TV and Film, TV, Documentaries
Michael Slavin
