Can you believe that it has been almost ten years since Natalee Holloway first disappeared in Aruba? Shortly after graduation back in 2005 the teen disappeared after a night of partying with Joran van der Sloot and her remains have never been found. It has always been assumed and believed that van der Sloot was responsible for her death, especially considering the fact that five years to the day of her disappearance van der Sloot has admitted to killing another young woman, Stephany Flores. He is currently serving a 28-year sentence in a Peruvian prison in connection with that murder and recently became a father. Natalee's mother, Beth Holloway became a regular fixture on the nightly news for months in the early days of the investigation and she recently sat for an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
In her segment with Winfrey, Holloway talks about the never ending quest for answers and she also dropped a bit of a bombshell. Apparently not long before murdering Flores van der Sloot tried to extort money out of Holloway in exchange for her daughters' remains. While a sting was set up in Aruba, van der Sloot had fled to Peru, where he murdered Flores. Holloway traveled to the country shortly thereafter, needing to support the Flores family and she also ended up visiting van der Sloot in jail.
"He was trying to extort money out of me, trying to sell me Natalee's remains, which... just shocks the conscious. There was an FBI sting. It was all about to go down in Aruba. Joran had fled the country, slipped through their fingers. I went there to reach out to the Flores family and to support them. I didn't go there with this plan [that] I'm going to see Joran. I did [confront him]. I just wanted to get to Joran. I honestly don't know if I was going there to get information from him... For some reason, I needed some sense of how to begin to... find my way through this journey," explains Holloway.
Of course van der Sloot never answered any of her questions or offered up new information. That means that there still is no closure for Holloway and that seems to be something that she has accepted so that her life can go on. Did you follow the disappearance of Holloway all those years ago? Do you think that van der Sloot is reponsible? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
