Since her daughter Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba in 2005 while on a graduation trip, Beth Holloway has had the unanswered question of what truly happened to her daughter haunt her over twenty years later. Today, Joran van der Sloot, the guy who has been suspected in the disappearance of the 18-year-old from virtually the very beginning – but has never been prosecuted in connection with the case – appeared in front of her mother in an Alabama courtroom and pled guilty to extortion and wire fraud in a federal case that is tied to the abduction.
The most shocking information, however, came from Beth herself. In a victim impact statement, she revealed that van der Sloot, who is now 36 years old, had finally acknowledged to murdering her daughter. Beth’s daughter was last seen leaving an Aruban pub with van der Sloot on May 30, 2005. As part of the plea agreement, van der Sloot admitted to killing her daughter.
Beth said that van der Sloot, who is scheduled to return to a Peruvian jail to finish serving a murder term for the 2010 assassination of another student, Stephany Flores Ramrez, had disclosed to law enforcement authorities that Natalee had rejected his sexual attempts after leaving the island bar. Beth stated that van der Sloot made this revelation. Her attorney, John Q. Kelly, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview that Natalee van der Sloot, who was 17 at the time, used a cinder block to attack her when she was angry. According to reporters who were there, Natalee’s mother alleged in a subsequent statement outside the courtroom that the girl dumped her corpse into the ocean after she had finished dismembering her daughter.
Beth was quoted as saying, “This confession means we have finally reached the end of this never ending nightmare,” by a WBRC News reporter. “This confession means we have finally reached the end of this never ending nightmare.”
Kelly described the murder of Natalee as a “hands-on vicious, unprovoked execution” that seemed to be a “instinctive act” for a guy who had already murdered two people by the time he was 22.
Van der Sloot was taken into custody on many occasions, but he was never prosecuted in relation to the disappearance of the 18-year-old. In 2012, Natalee’s loss was officially confirmed by the courts, although her corpse has never been located.
Even though van der Sloot is said to have confessed to murdering Natalee, he will not be prosecuted with her murder since the statute of limitations for murder in Aruba is 12 years.
After entering a guilty plea to one act of extortion and one count of wire fraud early on Wednesday morning, Van der Sloot was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the various financial offenses.
PEOPLE was told by a person close to the inquiry that the fraud accusations against him should have led to his jail a lot sooner — before a second lady was ever slain.
Since the commencement of the investigation into Natalee’s disappearance, Beth had been looking for answers to the mystery surrounding her daughter’s whereabouts, and she had made many trips to Aruba in this pursuit.
According to the indictment from 2010 that was acquired by PEOPLE, Van der Sloot made contact with Kelly about five years after the disappearance of Natalee and offered to provide Beth with some answers in return for monetary compensation.
According to the indictment, by the 10th of May in 2010, Beth had paid van der Sloot approximately $25,000 – $10,000 in cash and another $15,000 wired to his account – in exchange for the “specific location” of Natalee’s remains and the “specific details concerning the manner in which her remains were disposed of initially and how her remains came to be in the specified location, if moved at any time.” They reached a consensus that Van der Sloot would receive an additional $225,000 “upon positive identification of the remains.”
The indictment states that at a later time, Van der Sloot sent an email to Beth and her colleagues in which he said that the information he had supplied was “worthless.”
Beth reportedly said in court today, “I paid my daughter’s killer money,” according to AL.com. “I can’t believe that. I don’t believe there is a single person on the planet who can really comprehend what it entails.
A source close to the inquiry tells PEOPLE that while Kelly notified law enforcement about the first transactions, law enforcement did not immediately interfere despite Kelly’s request to do so. And during the same month, van der Sloot departed the island in the Caribbean and boarded a flight to Peru.
Flores Ramrez, who was 21 years old at the time of her loss, had passed away at the end of the month. Her passing occurred precisely five years to the day that Natalee had vanished.
According to reports, Van der Sloot subsequently informed detectives that Flores Ramrez had uncovered his identity as the person of interest in Natalee’s disappearance when the two were sharing a hotel room in Lima. At the time, Van der Sloot was serving a 28-year term in a Peruvian jail for her murder in 2010. He had been there until June of this year. Natalee’s body was found in 2010. After a fight between the two, van der Sloot, who was 22 at the time, would subsequently confess to hitting, strangling, and suffocating his girlfriend to loss on May 30, 2010, according to an article published by ABC News in that year.
Peruvian authorities moved quickly to place Van der Sloot under custody, and one month later, Alabama authorities brought federal fraud charges against him.
According to a statement released by the United States federal prosecutors this summer, Peru gave van der Sloot a “temporary surrender” so that he might face trial in Alabama before going back to Peru to complete serving his term there. According to a report by AL.com, Van der Sloot’s term in the United States will run concurrently with his sentence in Peru. However, if he is freed from jail in Peru early, he will be required to spend the remaining time on his 20-year sentence in the United States.
WBRC reported that in addition to serving his term, Van der Sloot is required to provide reparations to Beth Holloway in the amount of $250,100.
PEOPLE’s request for comment was not immediately met with a response from van der Sloot’s legal representation.
