Hey, weirdos, before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends.
Wondery Plus. It's like stepping into a haunted mansion with a floorboards creek with ad -free episodes and early access to new episodes lurks around every corner.
So come join us if you dare.
Morbid is available one week early and ad -free only on Wondery Plus.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple podcast or Spotify.
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. originals all in one easy app.
Find the genres you love and discover new ones.
Explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time.
Right now I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
I never want to pause it.
I'm literally like loading the dishwasher listening to it, on the treadmill listening to it, constantly.
It's so awesome. I love being able to listen and anytime, anywhere I want to.
And there's more to imagine when you listen.
Sign up for a free 30 -day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free.
Visit audible .com slash morbid.
Smallwoodhome .com turns your favorite photos into gallery quality framed prints or wrapped canvases all handcrafted in the USA, shipped in days and priced to make your whole home smile.
It's nice to have something on the wall that's not just design -y, but it's personal.
They sell custom framed prints that are made just for you.
Pick your favorite photo and they're going to turn it into a beautifully framed piece handcrafted with care.
Every single piece is made to order, so there's no assembly lines or robots involved.
And you can choose from natural wood finishes for the frames like stained, almond, black, or white.
And if you want a little more, you can even add an acrylic front for a little polished touch. I love that option.
They're also more than just frames.
Wrapped canvas options give you even more ways to elegantly customize your space.
it's big style without the big price they are high quality prints that bring warmth and personality to your home but it's not going to break the bank and there's a fast turnaround which I absolutely love these prints are made to order in just a few days and are shipped straight to your door right now get 30 % off when you use code morbid at smallwoodhome .com that's promo code morbid to get 30 % off your first order at smallwoodhome .com give your memories the showcase that they deserve hey weirdos i am ash and i'm elena and this is morbid this is morbid we haven't done this in a minute it feels weird
i know we like back Backlogged all our recordings.
Did a whole batch. You know, batched it up.
So I could go to Diz Nasty with my mans.
Woohoo! Wow. I wouldn't say anything.
I don't want to. Don't offend me.
I don't want to anger Disney people.
Don't offend me. I'm going to give it another shot eventually.
Yeah, with me. For the kiddos.
With me. And I want to bring Papa.
Yeah. Fucking do. Family motherfucking trip, bitch. We're going to make it great.
I'm going to figure out how to like it.
i just wanted to see your response to that what did you say i said i'm gonna make shirts i was just kidding i want to i just want those not to hear that part you said my brain blocked that part out i said what no i like to wear my own outfits of course you do i would never force a shirt upon somebody because i like to wear what i want to wear yeah i like that about you thanks thanks i like a lot of things about you too but yeah it's a lot i went to disney and to universal party i'm a theme park adult and um i met some of you guys and you were so nice i met alexis and sam and i think it was a vaughn
that worked there and she gave us passes to go in the monsters and cried and that was really cool wow and who else did i meet i met a lot of names and i'm sorry i didn't forget yours it's just not coming to me right now i'm awful with names and it has nothing to do with like not wanting to know the person it's just i'm really bad at names i want to remember oh shelby i met met shelby she was really cool she fucking loves you too everybody that i met also loves you like only shelby likes you shelby really liked you everybody else said oh glad elena's not with you glad it's just on no everybody
was like i love elena and i love you yay no you guys are always so sweet i love meeting people yeah we always have the best honestly like it's i love meeting people because we always have the best interactions you guys are so sweet you're so kind you guys are We always walk away and go, they were so nice every single time.
Honestly, every person that is walking away from us probably hears us together or like us to our spouse being like, oh, my God, they were so nice.
That was so nice. Or that was so cool.
Yeah, it happens every time.
But no, that's fun.
And hi, all of the people that Ash met.
Hi. I hope you had fun at Disney.
They did and Universal.
And Universal. Where's sunscreen?
I did. I wear SPF 50 every day.
There you go. Smart.
I'm pale. I'm pale.
I wear my Sorella Dew Drops.
Please sponsor me. Oh, there you go.
But every day. Every day.
I'm wearing them right now, even.
I love that for you.
Thank you. Thank you.
How are you? I'm good.
You have a book coming out?
I do have a book coming out.
I know, I read it on the plane.
You did? It's fucking great.
Listen to Ash. Spectacular.
Page turner. Thrilling experience.
Terrifying to know you.
And to think, hmm, that's in your head.
That's in your, in your head.
In your head. All right, you talk, sorry.
Well, no, that was great.
That's, that's really all we need is you can pre -order The Butcher Game, thebutchergame .com.
It'll take you everywhere you need to go.
We, Barnes & Noble is doing all kinds of fun things.
There's going to be, you know, by the time this comes out, it will have already happened.
But there is, there has been a Kindle deal for the first book.
book. So you can get ready for the second book.
Oh, that's cool. But it comes out September 17th, but pre -orders are awesome and they make a difference.
And it means that you'll get your book first. Sometimes you even get it like the day before.
Sometimes that happens.
Yeah. That did happen to a lot of people last time.
And that's fun. And they were fucking stoked.
Yeah. That's a fun thing.
That's why pre -orders, I know, like trust, like let's level together, everybody.
Sometimes a pre -order, you're like, well, the book's not out yet.
I'm not, i'll just wait like what like you know like i get it i have to really fucking love the person to pre -order that's the thing and i really love you so i pre -ordered i appreciate that and i understand that i totally get it you're like i'll just wait till september why would i spend the money now and i get that and if you want to do that that's totally cool but you'll miss out on some cool shit but i'll also appreciate that if you buy it on in september when it comes out as long as you just buy it just get it but it's true if you pre -order sometimes you do get it a day early and that is kind
of a fun perk and I've noticed that when I've pre -ordered things and it is one of those moments where you're like oh okay I guess I just have this before everyone else does Being ahead of the curve is one of the best things ever It's a fun thing so yeah if you guys want to do it it's fun and you know maybe who knows if there'll be more who knows I know there's gotta be more Catch it now The way it ends is there more?
I'm not gonna tell you that out you're such a bitch you're such a bitch well with that with that let's get into it let's go um we have a case today that i am sure many many many many if not everybody knows we are going to be covering the natalie holloway case but i wanted to cover this uh one because it is a case worth covering every cases but we are also going to have a follow -up to this and i just wanted to tell you you guys right off the bat because we are going to be sitting down with the director from peacocks pathological the lies of joran vandersloot for like a whole follow -up after this episode
so if you have a chance between now and when that comes out it will most likely be the next episode yeah um definitely check that out because we're going to be talking all about that it's going to be real interesting yeah yeah definitely it was a really really good documentary but with that that being said, let's get into the case.
Let's do it. So Natalie Ann Holloway was born on October 21st, 1986 in Memphis, Tennessee.
She was the first of two children born to David and Beth Holloway.
The family, which also includes Natalie's younger brother, Matt, they lived in Clinton, Mississippi until Dave and Beth's marriage came to an end and they decided to part ways.
But after that, Natalie's father, Dave ended up moving to Jackson, Mississippi around 1995.
And despite the breakup of their marriage Dave and Beth really made every effort to remain on good terms for their kids.
That's awesome. To just make sure that they could co -parent in harmony and by all accounts they were very successful at that.
Good for them. Yeah exactly.
In 2000 Beth ended up remarrying to George.
His nickname is Jug Twitty.
He's an Alabama businessman and that prompted a move from Mississippi to Mountain Brook, Alabama.
Natalie was right around 14 at that time so you you could assume that up and moving at that age would be pretty difficult.
Yeah, I imagine. I think – I'm not sure if she was in – I don't think she was in her freshman year yet.
I think she was in eighth grade.
But she acclimated relatively easy and really quickly became, one, successful at her new school, like she was doing really well, and also really popular.
Everyone liked her.
Damn. Her friend, Frances Bird, told reporters, I've known Natalie since she moved here in eighth grade.
Ever since she's been here, she's been the smartest of all us friends.
So she was really smart.
She was a really likable person.
like a good friend.
Yeah. By the time she reached high school she was already thinking about her future and her goal was to pursue a career in medicine.
Her cousin Thomas said she was everything parents look for pretty much in every honor society you could think of hardly ever got into trouble pretty much everything you would want in a son or daughter.
Oh that's heartbreaking.
Yeah. Natalie's responsible attitude and commitment to her studies eventually paid off.
By the time she she reached her senior year in high school.
She was a straight A student at the top of her class and she got herself a full scholarship to the University of Alabama.
Holy shit. Which like, I think that needs to be stressed.
Like, yeah. All A's, straight A's are something so hard to achieve.
Oh, that's no easy feat.
Straight A's and a full ride to like a really, the University of Alabama is a pretty good school.
Yeah. And I don't remember, and maybe I'm not remembering it correctly because it feels like it was a long time ago at this point.
I don't remember that being as, you know, focused on.
No. As it probably should have been.
No. And I think we'll, we'll talk about that a little bit.
This story, like if, if you were alive and like tuning into the news when this was happening.
It was all you heard about.
It was everything you heard about, but it was not very victim focused in the way that I think it should have have been it was more the story itself like of the disappearance itself and less about Natalie more about like the tensions between Aruba and America yeah the media sensation and all of that like Natalie and I think I end up saying like exactly what I'm going to say right now later she got lost yeah as a girl and it was the story that everybody was yeah because I remember it very clearly when this happened oh it was it was like uh it was like when Madeline and McCann went missing.
It was that, it was all you saw.
Yeah, exactly. You know, it was like, yeah, it was all that.
Every news station, every channel, all the time.
Yep. It was the Amanda Knox trial.
It was like all that.
It was that kind of intense coverage.
It's like a frenzy.
Yeah. But she was also active in several extracurricular activities as well.
The time that this girl, like the things that this girl made time for is nuts.
Yeah. She was in the Mountain Brook High dance team she went to her church's bible club she had a part -time job at a health food store and she also found time to volunteer with local organizations whenever she could damn like just made time to do good things how do you have that many minutes in a day i don't know but after all the hard work that she put into her schooling and just being like a overall badass in general natalie asked her mom if she could attend the annual mountain brook high school class trip to Aruba every year the seniors graduated they would go to Aruba for like a reward a celebration that kind
of thing Beth really couldn't think of a single reason to say no to Natalie yeah I mean why yeah she wrote her stepbrother George had gone two years before and if I could swing it financially I wanted Natalie to have the experience of course I understand it's like I think I believe she was 18 like you know yeah she was 18 and it's like you know like I wanted to see the world she She put so much hard work into her schooling and all that.
Aruba is known as a safe island.
We both had our honeymoon there.
Yeah, it really is known as one of those places that people aren't super on edge going to.
So it's like, what really would make her say no?
Natalie's a good kid.
She's shown herself to be responsible.
She's shown herself to be trustworthy and that she can handle this kind of freedom.
Yeah, and it's like her stepbrother went, how are we going to say yes to one kid and no to the other?
there. Like, there's so many factors.
But Dave, on the other hand, Natalie's dad, he wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea.
I can understand that, too.
I see both sides of it, 100%.
He wrote in his 2023 memoir, I was apprehensive about Natalie taking this type of trip, and I tried to talk her out of it.
I didn't like the idea of her traveling that far away with so many other students and so few chaperones.
I can totally get that, because I would probably be more on that end because I tend to be a helicopter parent.
Yeah. I don't think anybody can blame anybody either way.
Absolutely. I can see both ways.
I totally understand why Beth was like, there's really, she's given me no reason to believe that, you know.
Yeah. And she goes to this, you know, relatively safe place with her friends that she's going to have a fun time and come home and everything will be fine.
It'll be great. And that's the thing, like students did this every year.
So you understand. And again, what are the odds?
You just think, what are the the odds exactly like it wouldn't happen to me it's awful but despite her father's apprehension he did end up giving natalie a 500 check to cover half the cost of the trip to aruba a few weeks before the trip excuse me beth attended two information sessions about it where the parents who wouldn't be on the trip would receive more practical details and most importantly they learned about the chaperones who would be in charge of the students while they were on the island and see they're doing their due diligence that's like they're doing the thing that you know That's
what they should be doing.
Right, exactly. In 2007, Beth wrote, the position of the chaperones was made clear.
They'd be there for emergencies such as lost passports, but they wouldn't be conducting bed checks or roll call.
So they were really just there in case of emergency.
An issue, yeah. Which you can kind of understand because these are mostly 18 -year -olds.
Yeah, I can totally understand that.
That would stress me out a lot.
But it would stress me out.
Yeah. But at the same time, I can see where she was like, Like, she's 18.
She's going to be going off to college.
Like, there's no chaperones there.
I cannot imagine being in that kind of position because it really is – I don't have teenagers, so I don't know.
But it's like it feels like that age would be the toughest because it's like they're technically, in the eyes of like many situations, adults, you know, quote, unquote.
Yeah. And it's like they see themselves as adults because they're being told by so many things that they're adults now.
out and they're being had they have to take on adult responsibility so why can't i act like an adult why don't i get adult freedoms and it's like you need to walk that line and i understand that it i it must be hard to figure out how that's i don't yeah i don't envy them and i don't i don't look forward to that i don't blame you but considering like i just said that natalie and most of the other students were either 18 or nearly 18 this position seemed reasonable to Beth.
So on the morning of May 26, 2005, Natalie arrived at the airport with 125 of her fellow students and seven chaperones.
Like Dave Holloway, Beth's decision to let her daughter go on this trip was not made lightly or without reservations.
Known for its very vibrant nightlife and countless casinos and clubs, Aruba had a particular allure for unsupervised teenagers who were looking forward to being away from their parents in a region where the drinking age is actually 18.
Yeah, that's another big thing here.
That's another factor of all this.
Beth recalled, when a former Mountain Brook student came back from his class trip, he told us a chilling incident at a night spot called Carlos and Charlie's.
According to the student, quote, some locals had tried to get a couple of girls in his class to leave with them.
But the student, quote, stepped in to help defuse a potentially dangerous situation.
So she had heard about that and was very apprehensive.
That would make me very nervous.
Like, very nervous about it.
But it was one instance, you know.
And technically that can happen anywhere.
That can happen in their hometown.
That can happen tomorrow night.
So it's like, of course, it's going to put you on a little high alert, but it's like, you know.
You got to take it for what it is.
But whether the student storyteller was being truthful or exaggerating for story's sake, the tale of this young woman in peril definitely frightened Beth.
And for that reason, she made it a point to warn Natalie, be vigilant when you're around unfamiliar people, especially at bars and nightclubs.
like they had that conversation probably multiple times and you do just have to hope that you've taught them well and that they're gonna be humans that have to go out in the world eventually and that's what you've prepared them for their whole life so while Natalie was away Beth figured it would actually be a good time to take a little long weekend getaway herself so she called a few friends and they arranged a little girls weekend at her family vacation home in Hot Springs they were on their drive back to Mountain Brook on Monday May 30th when Beth's cell phone rang.
The voice on the other end was that of a young man, excuse me, a young woman who Beth didn't recognize, but she would come to know as Jody, the tour coordinator that Beth had actually spoken to during those information sessions before Natalie left for her trip.
But Jody explained that the group had assembled in the hotel lobby that morning, but when the chaperones did a head count, Natalie was missing.
She was not among those in the head count.
In fact, Jody went on to quote, when the other Mountain Brook students students met in the Holiday Inn lobby to board buses for the airport, Natalie's roommates notified chaperones that she hadn't returned to the room the previous night.
No, this would—just hearing this is— You would lose it.
This is your worst nightmare.
I swear my brain is in, like, fight or flight mode for her.
Like, it's just—that's your worst nightmare.
Yeah, it gives you chills.
Your worst nightmare.
You must just be sitting in your seat on your way home like, no, no, this is a dream.
of a hundred thousand different things that could be happening yeah exactly and everyone is worse than the last one and just sitting there like thinking this can't be happy like there's no way and she's so far away that's the other thing that like i'm sure she probably struggled with just as a parent oh yeah is being an ocean away oh my god yeah an ocean between you kind of thing exactly that must have already been something she was sitting with like that's hard 100 it's like like I mean for us it's like a five six hour flight like that's a long that's a long time like when you know john had to
fly down to you know to like a couple hours away when his father passed away and he had to do it kind of unexpectedly just for a couple days and he still is like he's like being a plane ride away from you and the girls yeah was not for me like he was It was like not for me.
I thought about it all day, every day for two days.
That's when like nothing like dangerous is going on like at your homestead.
Like obviously he was dealing with other stuff, but there was no like alarm bells where he had to get home to you guys for any reason.
It was just if something happened, he was like the thought that I had to jump on a plane to get to you or like it was going to take a long time to drive to you.
And I feel that way too.
Whenever I'm even like a couple hours away, like even into like New York or something like that, I feel too far away.
Oh, I do. I totally get that.
And nothing's happening.
So it's like when something detrimental.
Yeah. When you're getting that phone call and you are hours away on a plane, the helplessness that must have been felt is something I can't even conceive of.
No. And Beth said, she wrote instantly, I know something bad has happened.
Because you're a mom, you just know.
Exactly. You're a parent.
A mama always knows.
We always say that.
So she called her husband from the car and asked if he could arrange for immediate transportation to Aruba.
And she was surprised when he hesitated.
He suggested maybe Natalie had just missed her flight.
But Beth was like, no. She said Natalie might be early for something, but never late.
See, and she knows her daughter.
She's like, I know Natalie.
She would not have missed that flight.
No. And honestly, I'd be like, I will overreact.
Exactly. I'd rather show up there and overreact.
And find her. Exactly.
you guys i tried my mochi ice cream the other day and i was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely it is a cool creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft chewy dough it's literally like a little sweet ice cream dumpling it's pillowy soft d to the e to the l -i -c -i -o -u -s and it just feels very indulgent.
I loved it. I tried the cookies and cream flavor and I still have the mango flavor to try.
I'm so excited to try the mango because if it's half as good as the cookies and cream, I'll probably just like fall on the floor and start crying.
Tears of joy. My mochi is only around 70 calories per piece.
My mochi is gluten -free and each box has six perfectly portioned mochi snacks.
And guess what? My mochi is the original mochi ice cream.
The the founder of MyMochi, invented mochi ice cream.
That makes MyMochi the mochi OG.
Feel joyfully chill this summer with every bite of MyMochi ice cream.
Look for the purple box of MyMochi ice cream at Walmart or visit MyMochi .com to find a store near you.
Hey there, my weird weirdos.
I want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called Who Took Misty Copsy?
In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsy leaves the Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, Western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her no suspects are ruled out after 33 years sarah kalin hopes to answer the question who took misty you guys are going to love this if you listen to morbid we know that you love a cold case and we always tell you a cold case is never cold so definitely give this a listen definitely look into the case listen to who took misty copsy
wherever you get your podcasts.
So Jug Twitty didn't object any further and started making some phone calls to see what he could do about getting a private flight to Aruba straight away.
In the meantime, Beth called her son Matt, who relayed the information about Natalie missing the flight to his father, Dave, adding that Beth and Jug were booking a private plane and leaving for Aruba ASAP.
So Dave Holloway got online and found the phone number for the hotel and he managed to reach one of the chaperones who volunteered actually to stay behind in case natalie showed up like people that's a real one they really showed up for each other yeah unfortunately though the chaperone didn't have any more information than what had already been relayed she was they were like i'll stay and which is if she's here but like that's all i really know but they did mention that the group had received some help from the u .s drug enforcement agency um an agent who was actually there on vacation and had
made some calls to local police on their behalf.
That's great. So a lot of people stepping in.
Yeah. In the beginning.
In the beginning. While Beth waited to hear back from her husband about the travel going on, she placed a call to the FBI field office in Birmingham, but it was a holiday weekend, so the office was closed.
Now, not knowing what else to do, she just started going through the list of students on the trip and placed one call after the other.
And after talking to a few of the kids on the trip, a picture of the previous night's events started to emerge to celebrate their last night on the island the students had gone out to carlos and charlie's the same club that beth had actually heard about from that previous student where they partied until a little after midnight as they were leaving a few people saw natalie get into a dark colored honda with a teenager that a few of the students had actually become friendly with during the trip uh jug's nephew thomas told beth his name is jaron or or Joran or something like that.
According to Thomas, the guy was a Dutch tourist who was staying at the same hotel and to him he didn't seem dangerous.
They never do. After a few hours, Jug had managed to secure a private flight and a short time later, he and Beth were on their way to Aruba.
The plane touched down a little after 11pm.
So you just imagine that, like imagine the stress of just going to the airport in general.
When you're going to do something fun and like exciting, just imagine that.
But this, you're like just get me on that plane didn't get me there imagine having to get through uh like tsa security while you're dealing with this like i can't even but they went straight to the holiday inn where the students were staying and they were met by the remaining chaperone and that vacationing dea agent who was still providing some assistance after making introductions beth went to the front desk and asked about that dutch teen who had been seen with her daughter the person behind the counter knew exactly who who she was talking about, and immediately answered, oh, yes, Joran.
He gambles in the casino. He likes to pray on young female tourists, especially the blondes.
That is the worst thing she could have possibly heard. I can't imagine something, like, worse.
He likes to pray on, like, pray.
Pray on young female tourists, especially the blondes.
For anybody who doesn't know, Natalie is a blonde.
Oh, I can't. I'd like like I have goosebumps that just that just oh that's heart -wrenching the desk agent went on to describe Joran as a tall quote good -looking boy like a Dutch marine debatable very debatable and most importantly when Beth asked where this boy was from the agent said oh he lives in Aruba yeah so from the moment they arrived in Aruba Beth jug and Dave Holloway he ended up getting making his way there too felt an acute difference in foreignness in the way that that things were being handled.
Natalie's disappearance had been reported to the local police, and everybody at the hotel and local casinos had been made aware of the situation.
But as far as Natalie's family could tell, nobody seemed to be taking the matter very seriously.
There were people out combing the beaches for Natalie, but they were people.
They weren't police or search and rescue.
They were just like volunteers.
And, like, just people from the hotel, even.
And you'd want to just be tearing the world apart as a parent.
You're like, everyone snap to it.
Especially law enforcement.
Yeah, this is your job.
Let's go. Everybody just kept telling the Holloways, quote, just wait for her.
She'll come back. But obviously they weren't feeling good about that because by then Natalie had been missing for almost 24 hours and was last seen with a local who was now, they knew, known to prey on young blonde tourists.
Yeah, and they know their daughter.
Exactly. It's the same thing they used to do to people.
Like they would do all the time.
Oh, they just ran away.
And they still do. they just ran away they'll come back I bet they're just like hiding I bet they're just doing this and the parents are like no you don't know my kid I know my kid exactly I know that they wouldn't do that and it's like and clearly Natalie would not take off for 24 hours and not notify us back home no she's just never going home she met Joran and she's just never fucking leaving like exactly let's all get a grip no like this is a problem this is a this is a huge problem it's so infuriating I would be losing my mind if I were her parents.
Absolutely. I can't even imagine how they felt.
Because they're sitting there and they're like, it feels like you're treating this very blasé.
Yeah. And they were getting pissed off.
Good. And as we all know from watching the case play out on like the story play out on the media, this became like a very tense debate between how Aruban officials were handling this and how the family wanted it to be handled.
Which makes it even harder.
It made it ten times harder.
That there's such a barrier between certain things and things are done differently in different places.
Yeah. So it's like you're very out of your element and you know how things work generally where you live.
Yeah. Like you have a general sense of like how the situation will unfold.
Right. Somewhere else you have no fucking clue.
No idea. You don't know what the protocol is.
And it just wasn't what they expected.
Yeah. And I'll get into it.
Aruba feels that they handled this like how it was supposed to be handled and that's that.
Interesting. they they say that they have a different way of of doing things they they don't even let the family in on like the closest details they keep everything very very close to the chest okay because they don't like when the media gets involved because that can fuck up you know what an investigation you can see the benefit in that you can see the benefit in that totally yeah but you can also see why the holloways were pissed off absolutely i can very much see from an outside side point of view with no like horse right right next to me in this race yeah I can understand the benefit of that and I
can go okay I get it but I don't know that I would in that situation I can't tell you that I would understand the benefit if it was my kid exactly but having arrived a little later than his ex -wife Dave Holloway took some time to get caught up on everything but going forward his experience was more or less the same as Beth's since she had been there when he arrived When he arrived at the police station and asked to speak to somebody about his daughter, he was directed to Detective Dennis Jacobs, who after hearing the story asked, how much money do you have?
Which is a strange question.
The question also seemed odd to Dave, but he ignored it and just continued asking questions about what was being done to find Natalie.
To his dismay, Dave found that Detective Jacobs' attitude was exactly as Beth had described to the other people involved.
The detective told Dave, this happens all the time.
was basically suggesting that Natalie had met a boy, gone off for a few days, was having fun, and he said, she'll probably show up in a few days.
She's just partying hard. Yeah, like we know her.
Oh, yeah, because you know my daughter.
Yeah, we know her better than you, her parent, so don't worry about it.
And then after that, the detective suggested that Dave and the others go have a beer at Carlos and Charlie's to relax, and they were sure that Natalie would probably show up there.
Yeah, go to the place where she was last seen and go have a beer.
You'll relax there.
You'll relax there.
Can you imagine? i would be being told to have a beer while your kid's missing just go have a beer she'll turn up i would be rem losing my religion at this point like i would be losing it 100 i would become the new story like this that would i can't kudos to them for not scorching the entire earth i think they wanted to absolutely i'm sure they did but good for them for keeping their eye on the prize.
Yeah. Under the circumstances, it's easy to understand Beth and Dave's panic in the moment and their confusion and frustration that Moore wasn't being done to find their daughter.
Yes. But I want to note that locals have a very different recollection of these first few days of the investigation.
I'm just trying to tell both sides here.
Yeah, you got to. According to Gerald, I think it's Dompig, the deputy police chief in charge of the case, he said pressure from the family sidetracked the investigation from the the outset he said it caused several mistakes to be made that compromised the investigation and continued they brought out their big guns on the very first day and they started shooting they didn't understand the way things are done in our system they didn't want to understand they act like they came from a world where you can just crush people it was very harmful to our investigation okay that's all quotes yeah like
we've been saying this entire time i'm sorry but if i had an 18 year old missing daughter under these same circumstances i would be acting the exact same way and I have to assume that most people would be I can't I can't fault them for being for acting any type of way really yeah that's the thing like I really can't I'm sorry I just can't but just want to want to show yeah you gotta get both sides here and I'm sure that it's seen a different way from the people in the investigation so it's good to point that out because none of us were actually there so it's like you gotta say these things exactly
it's just just you just wonder too you're like did you explain to them though like did like you know i mean like did did you explain how this works panicking like you do have to like i'm like are you putting the same amount of like empathy into your work that like you should be like that that you're sitting there going okay these people are suffering and they are in the worst possible scenario that anyone could ever imagine so i have to give them their due of like you're gonna panic and lose it and fly off the handle but like then say okay so how can i make them understand that we do understand that and we
empathize with that like that's what needs to be conveyed and to me just and this is just a pure opinion based off of what i've read it sounds like they the law enforcement approached this in a very clinical matter that's what it kind of seems not comforting it's like if it had just been touched with a little empathy we get it would it made all the difference.
We understand that we can't imagine how you're feeling right now, but this is the way we have to do things.
And if we want to find your daughter, like, we understand that's all you want and that's all we want.
Like it just can be conveyed in a different way, I feel like.
And maybe it wasn't.
And the Holloways, they didn't feel like they had acted like any type of way that was wrong.
Out of the ordinary for your child missing in a place you're unfamiliar with.
They said that that wasn't the case, that they didn't come out guns blazing they said they were always willing to work with locals and actually offered any resources that they could but regardless of who's right and who's wrong i just note the difference because it becomes a very significant feature in natalie's disappearance and it also kind of really set up the rift between us and aruban officials that had an undeniable effect on the search for natalie of course i think things would have gone very differently had the heads not butted like they did.
Yeah, that makes sense.
But at the casino the following day, Beth and Jug poured over security camera footage of the gaming floor looking for the boy that Natalie had last been seen with.
And after getting a better description from Jug's nephew Thomas, the couple finally located urine on the tape and got a printout of the still to bring to the police.
Excited to finally have a solid lead, Beth and her husband rushed to the casino lobby and they actually almost collided with the handlers that they were with, Alberto and Claudio, who had been talking to some of their local contacts.
They not only managed to find a last name for the boy seen with Natalie, but also an address for where he lived on the island.
Their suspect's name, Joran Vandersloot.
And you would think this would be like the golden ticket.
100%. In my opinion, it should have been.
And the fact that it took so long is so mind -boggling.
It's mind -boggling.
And then on the same side of things, there was no evidence that's the problem it's like and that must be the worst part is you know exactly you can't prove it you can't there's no way to prove it and and you know he's just walking around just not saying it oh and it's like that he walked around not saying it and then what he does for how long what he did to this family and take because he confessed like he did this what he did to this family just taking away their daughter is one horrific horrible nightmarish thing what he continued to do for the series of the next decade is unthinkable yeah he's
like soulless like truly soulless soulless but anyway it took some time and convincing but beth and jug were eventually able to convince local police to accompany them to the address that they were given for your and vander sloop when they reached the house beth waited in the car while the officer spoke to joran's father paulus who told them that his son wasn't home.
Paulus placed a call to Joran and Joran told his father he was playing poker nearby at the Wyndham Hotel.
So this is like, I think this is probably like a couple days later and this motherfucker's just sitting at a poker table.
And we'll find out exactly what he did to Natalie.
The fact that he was able to just sit at a fucking poker table and gamble is mind boggling.
Mind boggling. But since he said he was there, police headed to the hotel with Pallas to find the teenager but when they got there there was no sign of Yorin big thing Yorin loves to do is play games liar who plays lots and lots of games aside from poker but after speaking with the casino staff Pallas got another call from his son and he said he was back at home and in the company of his friend I think it's Deepak Kalpo so Beth continued to wait in the car the second time while police interviewed Yorin and Deepak who were standing in the driveway next to a dark silver silver honda oh stop if you
remember natalie was last seen in a dark colored honda so as she waited beth was on speakerphone with some of the kids from the trip who provided a very accurate description of both yoran and deepak now according to yoran he met natalie at the blackjack table at carlos and charlie's that night that she went missing and the way he speaks about her is disgusting so i just want to let you know that off the bat he is foul he immediately spoke negatively of natalie saying she came on to me huge dancing suggestively like a slut after and he knows full well what he did to this girl and this is what he's
saying he continued he's mad he is oh he's big mad he continued claiming that he quote did jello shooters off of her stomach and brought her a shot of 151 proof rum natalie's friends claimed that when the bar closed she said that she was going to get a ride back to the holiday inn with joran and his friends but joran said she just wanted to go with So he, Natalie, and his two friends got into the car and headed toward the beach. He told the officers that he and Natalie were making out in the back of the car, but she was quote -unquote so drunk she kept falling asleep and waking up.
Maybe you should stop trying to do anything with her then and just bring her back to the hotel.
tell because if you're a good person that's what you would have done but you're not but clearly you're not he claimed that when they got to the beach they had consensual sex which they literally couldn't have if she was so drunk that she was falling asleep and then waking up and then falling asleep again that's not consensual sex and he provided us a description of the underwear that she was wearing that night but then he decided in the middle of all that that she was too drunk so he did bring her back to the Holiday Inn oh and that was the last time he saw her he's such a good good guy.
Yeah. According to Dave Holloway, the local police were more than happy to accept Yoren's explanation, but the family and friends who arrived to look for Natalie were very skeptical that he was telling the truth for many reasons.
Dave said Jacobs considered the boy's statement to be consistent, that they had all said they dropped Natalie off at the hotel.
However, the tapes did not show Natalie returning to the Holiday Inn that night.
Exactly. That's the thing.
I'm like that's weird that's when I would get fucking pissed why are you accepting that story as truth?
this random kid who is known to prey on girls on blonde tourists like I'm sorry we're just gonna accept what he says that he's a good guy and just brought her home and you already have the footage from the holiday let's not be dumb it doesn't show her returning to the hotel so what's the hole in that story and maybe this was one of the moments moments where the police did feel like they found a hole and we're just like not saying anything because they were keeping it close to the chest but as a family member that would drive me fucking insane and that's when that tactic of just of investigation doesn't
work does become an issue right i understand why i'm not wanting to get the media involved but the family gotta keep some family members in the loop man like because they're gonna start thinking that you're not doing anything and then they're gonna go to the media to get help and that's exactly what and it's like and you can't blame them for it it's like come on like there's got to be because again we can understand the benefit of keeping things away from the media and keeping things close to the chest the media can fuck everything up so it's like we get it yeah we always say that in investigations
we get keeping things close to the chest but there's got to be a balance with the family it's a fine line there's got to be a balance especially with like parents and shit like that like there has to be some flow of communication so they know that you're doing your job and that this form of investigation that you guys do is is working right you're actually like moving forward with it exactly and you it's like it should be that way with anybody but especially the fact that they traveled all the way here to find their daughter let them in on some information just come on so getting nowhere with local
police beth and jug finally got ahold of the fbi office in birmingham on june 1st and that office agreed to provide whatever assistance they could to search for Natalie.
At the same time, Beth received a text message from her son that read, Mom, I called CNN.
Now the whole world knows about Natalie.
Wow. Because I think her brother saw that nothing was really being done.
He's hearing the frustration in his mom and dad's voice and his stepdad.
And he's like, OK, well, then we have to fucking do something like I get it.
Oh, I get it. I 100 percent understand why they went to the media.
I get. Yeah. I know there's a lot of different opinions about that for sure personally i get it well and i think you're the the only people who should be able to really have valid opinions about it are family members of victims who have gone through this stuff agreed uh those are the really the only opinions that i would want to hear on the matter because you don't know what do you think you've been through this like you know right i can sit here and speculate what i would do and what i wouldn't feel but i have not been through that exactly so it's like and everybody else speculating and saying that they
shouldn't have or they should have done this.
If you haven't gone through something similar.
You don't know. We don't really know.
You don't know. That's the shit that will spin your worlds into a whole different orbit and you can't even begin to prepare for it.
No and hopefully nobody ever has to.
And that's the thing.
You hope that you never ever have to know what that decision -making process is like.
Exactly. But when the news about Natalie's disappearance broke on the major US news outlets, the tips began flooding in.
Which as we we know can either help or that's completely fuck something and that's where it's like i can understand all the different sides of this because there is downsides there are definitely downslice downsides people claim to have seen natalie at various places around the island that night with many claiming to have seen her in the company of known drug dealers which so it gets out of control it gets out of control to beth jug and dave the local police had already proven themselves to be of little use, so they just spent days following up on those leads themselves.
Any tip they got, they tried to follow up on every single thing they got.
The days began to run together as the family pursued every lead, just like anything they possibly could, increasingly convinced that Natalie had been kidnapped and trafficked to another country.
That's the other thing.
It can completely steer you in a different direction that you've never even thought of, and that That, unfortunately, isn't what happened.
Yeah, exactly. And you spend, like, you understand why they want to chase down every lead, but it sucks that people will call in and say things like that and not think of the fact that these people wasted so much time going down that road when they never had to.
Yeah, it's like when they would go to the ends of the earth for their loved ones.
And are. So they will chase these things down.
And it's like, you have to be, like, a special kind of fucked up.
Mm -hmm. To be like putting in, if you're one of the people who like puts in like those fake tips and shit.
I don't understand that at all.
That's a special kind of shit.
I don't get that. But at that point in the investigation, few people in Aruba seemed interested in helping Beth, much less than investigating the case.
However, Beth did manage to find two allies in, uh, I think it's Julia Renfro and Angela Munzenhofer, an editor and reporter for the English language magazine Aruba Today.
day. Mothers themselves, they were incredibly sympathetic and offered to help in any way they could, including using the magazine to rally American tourists and expatriates to help look for Natalie.
After a few radio announcements and articles, more than a hundred American tourists and a handful of locals and policemen were searching the island for Natalie, doing the job the local police were seemingly reluctant to perform.
The advocacy coming from the women at at Aruba Today, caught the eye of Jan van der Straaten, a Dutch police superintendent who had also been assigned to the case.
And Julia Renfro recalled an altercation with him during the search. She said, van der Straaten walks up to me and tells me, you can't do this.
I said, yes, I can.
I'm going to find this girl.
He told me she wasn't even considered missing for 48 hours.
In fact, he told me just to go to ladies night at Carlos and Charlie's that night and that she She would probably show up there.
The amount of people telling like anybody trying to help or actual family members and loved ones in this case to go to Carlos and Charlie's the last place.
And just go chill out.
I don't understand.
No, I don't get that.
That mindset. I don't know if I'm just like a crazy American girly, but that would piss.
I don't get it. I can't imagine somebody looking at me telling me to go to the last place that my loved one was, not to like go find clues, but just just to go wait for them to show up relax they'll show back up just go to ladies night yeah because they'll she'll show back up how do you not just look at that person in the face and just go fuck you yeah i would fuck you i would lose it personally but it's fair to say from the moment they arrived on the island and began looking for their daughter the twitty and holloway families did get on the wrong side of local law enforcement gerald dom pig later
said jug and his alabama friends they basically came out and said they would bring hell to our island if natalie wasn't found burn it down were the exact words but again I understand a little bit why you would have that viewpoint yeah if you felt like you weren't getting helped but then on the same side of things I can see why law enforcement was pissed off that they're like you're coming to our peaceful island and saying you're gonna burn it down yeah like you can see all the sides but I gotta say I I can't fault this family for having extreme you know bursts of like well Well, then burn it the fuck
down, you know what I mean?
Like, you would move the whole fucking solar system for your kid.
You would. You just would.
And if you wouldn't, look deeply at that.
Because it's like, that's the feeling.
I can't blame them for anything that comes out of their mouth at this point.
Again, you're panicked.
It's a thing I couldn't even imagine living through.
So I really, I can't, I can't.
I would probably be yelling shit that I would regret later too.
100%. I think this is your worst of days.
You're going to say shit.
You're going to say crazy shit.
And to judge people on the worst suffering they could have imagined, the worst days of their entire lives.
It's not fair. That's not right.
But again, I stress that this is going on to highlight that the attitude surrounding the case quickly set that combative tone that would eventually just completely take over the story and natalie really got lost in all of that yeah and it was because of the way the media really highlighted the tensions versus natalie missing yeah you know what i mean by june 4th just four days after she'd gone missing even the local authorities actually started to reconsider their original stance that natalie you know would just show up after a few days of youthful irresponsibility.
Even Jan van der Straaten, now in charge of the investigation, reluctantly told reporters, after four or five days, you are afraid a crime has been committed.
In the four days that they'd been on the island, Natalie's family had created a sufficient amount of noise that the FBI and the U .S. State Department had gotten involved in the case, and a reward of $50 ,000 was now being offered for any information leading to a discovery of Natalie.
So now taking Taking the case seriously, the Aruba's Coast Guard started searching the waters and the beaches while uniformed police officers searched the urban center and resorts around the island.
Still, no sign of Natalie.
So under pressure to solve the case, or at least kind of show some evidence of real progress, on June 8th, local police arrested Nick John and Abram Jones, two hotel workers suspected of involvement in Natalie's disappearance.
there appears to have been little reason to suspect either man but a judge ruled there was sufficient cause to hold both of them on quote possible murder and kidnapping charges in the disappearance what the arrest was based on the fact that when they were first interviewed all three boys meaning joran and his two friends there claimed that when they dropped natalie back at the hotel they saw her being approached by two quote -unquote dark security guards as they drove So they literally just pinned this on two random ass people.
And the police were like, okay.
But again, these two men who worked at the hotel were arrested on the word of these three boys who said they dropped Natalie back off at the hotel.
But let me remind you, there's no evidence that they ever dropped Natalie back off at the hotel.
They lied like liars.
There's surveillance of her leaving the hotel, never coming back.
Yep. What? Yep. Yep.
The arrest, you would think, in some circumstances, might have been encouraging for the family, but immediately after learning of the arrest, Beth contacted one of the lead investigators and insisted that they were arresting the wrong men.
Not getting the response that she was looking for, though, Beth turned to the press, and in interviews on major cable news shows, she accused the Aruban government of stonewalling the investigation in order to protect the Vandersloots, quote, because they were a prominent family.
which they were. Yooran's father was a judge on a local circuit.
Yep. Based on Beth's comments American journalists and news outlets started talking of a cover -up which essentially forced the hands of local investigators who did cave to Beth's demands and announced that they had arrested Yooran, Deepak, and Satish.
The lead investigator said under normal circumstances we would have taken much more time to monitor them.
We would have had much more evidence had we waited.
It's like Like, I don't know that you would have. No. Because she's been missing for a long time at this point, and you just arrested two random hotel employees.
Yeah, it's like so— I don't think you had any evidence.
Didn't seem like there was a lot of evidence there.
No. gives you access to your pay as you work, up to $150 per day with a max of $750 between paydays.
Just download the Earn It app and verify your paycheck, then access up to $150 a day as you work, and leave an optional tip.
Any money you access plus tips are automatically repaid from your next paycheck.
I feel like you should have your money as you earn it, and Earn It makes that possible.
You want to go out for a little date night and spend your money.
You know, sometimes things pop up unexpectedly.
I would hate this for you, but you might have to go to the vet and drop Drop some cash there.
You need the cash when you need the cash.
Download Earnin Today, spelled E -A -R -N -I -N in the Google Play or Apple App Store.
When you download the Earnin app, type in MORBID under podcast when you sign up.
It will really help the show.
Morbid under podcast. Earnin is a financial technology company, not a bank.
Cashouts are based on your available earnings.
Standard cashouts take one to two business days with no mandatory fees.
Option to expedite your transfer for free, tips are voluntary, and don't affect the service.
See the cashout user agreement for details.
Service is not available in all states.
Summer is in full swing.
Whether you're traveling, taking kids to summer camp, or heading to the pool, we are all looking for ways to stay healthy and save money this summer.
With GoodRx, you can save up to 80 % on prescriptions for you and your family.
Pets, too. Check GoodRx before every single trip to the pharmacy for big savings on both brand and generic medications.
GoodRx is free and it's easy to use.
Just search for your prescription on the website or the app, compare prices, and get a free coupon to show your pharmacist. Use GoodRx to save at over 70 ,000 local pharmacies nationwide, including Walmart, Walgreens, CBS, Publix, Kroger, and many more.
And now you can enroll in GoodRx rewards and earn points every time that you use a coupon at the pharmacy.
Remember, GoodRx is not insurance, but it works whether you have insurance or not, and it could even beat your insurance copay price.
Today, I saved $5 on a prescription for my grandpa because I pulled up the GoodRx app and I said, look at this.
So you could save too.
Save at the pharmacy this summer with GoodRx.
Go to GoodRx .com slash morbid.
That's GoodRx .com slash morbid.
In an article for Vanity Fair, Brian Burrow wrote, Dutch criminal investigators' investigations differ from American ones in small but important ways.
By and large, Dutch detectives do not speak to journalists on or off the record, nor do they release information to the public before they're ready.
So that is likely the reason for the Holloway's family's frustration in the wake of Natalie's disappearance.
The lead investigator later claimed that they had in fact been focused on Yoran and his friends all along, but they didn't want to compromise their investigation by going public with that fact or making an arrest too soon.
Just giving you both sides.
Yeah. I don't know.
Yeah. I don't know.
Despite acting sooner than expected, though, the arrests and subsequent interrogations didn't help convince authorities that Jorn and his friends were innocent.
For one thing, Jorn had now changed his story and this time told investigators that the brothers had dropped him off, him and Natalie off near the local Marriott and they walked down to the beach to have sex. But he said realizing Natalie was too drunk, he left her on the beach and walked home and they never engaged in sex. And this time he walked home and left her on the beach. Okay, so now we're completely changing the story.
Which I wonder if they were like, is that why?
I'm like, because there was no evidence of her ever being dropped off?
Like, is that why your fucking story is changing?
The Calpo brothers backed up Yoran's story, but one of them casually commented that, quote, something bad had happened to Natalie.
And that's horrifying.
And insinuated, in fact, that she had been killed.
So, what? Like, come on, guys.
What are you not saying?
Yeah. It definitely wasn't a confession, but the comment was suspicious to say the least and was sufficient for a local judge to rule that the three boys could be held on suspicion of murder and capital kidnapping.
Now, the disappearance of Natalie Holloway was a tragedy deserving of attention in and of itself.
But while the case should have always been focused on finding Natalie, as soon as it got to the news outlets, it quickly, like we've been saying this whole time, took on a life of its own and became a global story.
In a place like Aruba, which relies really heavily on American tourism, terrorism bad press and especially that which suggests that tourists aren't safe could have had an incredible impact on the local economy gerald dompig one of the lead investigators said the aruban government is very image conscious america is basically our our bread and butter this fact was not lost on the holloway family though who frustrated with how locals were handling the case started going to the media more and more and more knowing that that pressure would Would get the locals to act.
Yeah. I think that if I knew that, I would probably do the same thing.
You know where their weak spot is.
Yeah. If you're going to hit it and make the move.
That's the thing. To find your daughter.
I keep saying it's the tension between the government and the family and the media.
But everybody's forgetting that it was to find their daughter.
It wasn't just to be assholes.
And I'm not saying they were being assholes.
But some people do say that.
Yeah. But it's to find their fucking daughter.
Yeah, that's what I can't get past. Right.
I can't get past that, like, I can only speculate how I would act, and this appears—this seems to me, like, pretty close to what I would do.
I think so. Again— I wrote right here.
Who can say? Who can say?
It's not hard to understand how Beth and the rest of Natalie's family were reacting to the situation.
It's just—it's not for me, and I know it's not for you.
Yeah, no, definitely not.
Their daughter had mysteriously disappeared and was likely the victim of violence who wouldn't go to similar lengths to leverage every single resource to find them.
But in the months that followed, the increasingly bitter relationship between the families and the Dutch and Aruban authorities spread on national cable news programs and talk shows.
And it became an international story with Americans on one side of the issue and Dutch and Arubans on the other side of the issue.
At one point, the case actually became so prominent that Alabama Governor Bob Riley went as far as to call for a nationwide boycott on all U .S. travel to Aruba.
Damn. It's crazy. Yeah, that went hard. That went a little hard, yeah.
Aruban businessman Charlie Crowes told Brian Burrow in 2006, they're killing Aruba.
This is a wild quote.
He said, that girl Natalie, I wish she'd stay home.
I hope she's found alive there because no one would care.
No one. The kid is just not worth all that trouble, this heartache.
Yeah, see, that's fucked up on levels that I can't even really dig into because my brain doesn't go to those depths.
If I was the mother of Natalie, if I was Beth reading that, I would go scorched earth.
Scorched fucking earth.
Yeah, that's really unthinkable for someone to let come out of their fucking face.
to be quite honest that's really fucking unthinkable and if you are trying to garner any kind of support or sympathy there that's not the way to do it that wasn't the move the crazy thing is not the move is that he had actually once been an ally to the family and when they first arrived on the island he acted as an intermediary between the twitties and the vandersleuths before the police actively got involved but because of the way that everything was being i think intensified too by the media crows felt personally betrayed by beth jug and the hallway family and a lot a couple like other people
who had been their allies at one point but who had lived in aruba were feeling the same way they felt and this is their feeling that the holloways were slandering aruba and the american press and listen like i understand do you have you know like you have loyalty for your your place absolutely you know i mean like that's That's your place.
That's your home. That's your home.
That's where your business is.
That's where, you know, like, and they rely on tourism.
So it's like. They literally said it's like their bread and butter.
I get why this was a very tricky situation and why it got out of hand very quickly.
And I can understand why that would be frustrating because, you know, all of Aruba isn't responsible for this one piece of shit.
No. No way. He's not even Aruban.
And that's the thing.
So it's like, I get why that is wholly infuriating and frustrating.
And again, I have never been in this position that they were in.
So I can only speculate from my very outside point of view.
So I can see that. But you can't be saying shit like that.
You just can't. About somebody's daughter.
No. About somebody's whole world.
That's reckless. You can't say that.
Express your anger.
Say I'm angry that Aruba is being held accountable for this one piece of shit.
it but don't that would have been much more of a like let's get on board with that idea let's not sour the whole bunch of apples because of this little prick like you know like that's he does he's not even one of us exactly like fuck this guy that's what you say that would have been like hell yeah i think everybody would have been like yeah fuck that guy like he's now he's trying to ruin aruba like fuck that guy yeah go after him go after the real villain here fuck that guy because he's the one fucking with aruba and it's like so i think it just got out of hand it got Got so out of hand.
People shot off at the mouth real quick, and it wasn't a good look.
Because that's not a good look.
I'm sorry, no matter how mad you are, talking about someone's missing child like that is pretty reprehensible.
Right, exactly. But the media loved that part of it because it sensationalized everything.
And that's so fucked up.
And that shouldn't have been the fucking focus.
No, it shouldn't have been.
It shouldn't have become this.
And I don't think that's what anybody wanted.
No. No. And ultimately, that's the thing.
Ultimately, it did nothing to find Natalie or help muddied the waters.
It muddied the waters completely.
And it didn't help build a case against the young men who had, after months of investigation, been believed by many people to be responsible for her disappearance.
No one was focusing really on that.
Like it was mentioned, obviously, that they were arrested and yada, yada, yada.
But that wasn't the prime focus of the storytelling in the media.
It never felt like, cause like from somebody who watched it all play out.
I remember it very vividly.
You were like a teenager.
Yeah. I remember that like the focus wasn't on, you knew, like you saw this Euron VanderSloot and we were all pretty sure like, I think that guy did it.
Like it seems like that guy did it.
And it's like, so what the fuck?
Like why aren't they finding her?
What's going on? Like what happened to her?
And it wasn't so much about that.
It was all this mess.
Right. And it was like, but no, let's, I want to know what's happening.
like what's happening in the investigation like any leads do they know where she is has anyone seen her like has he talked what's going on is anyone surveilling him like that's the questions everybody had and they answered it every once in a while in the media but the media was way more focused on the mess and i think that's the problem with everything now everybody focuses on the mess instead of real information it's sad because the family i think got really vilified in this case for turning to the media but it wasn't the family who turned this story into what it got turned to it was the media and it
was your invander salute should have been the real focus yeah absolutely but the aruban authorities had arrested and held yoren and the kelpo brothers on suspicion of kidnapping and murder but the judge's ruling did require that authorities would need to show some evidence of their involvement if they were going to continue on with this the other investigate the lead investigator and all of them involved, strongly suspected that Yoran and the Kalpos had something to do with Natalie's disappearance and most likely her murder, but they didn't have any evidence whatsoever, and without that evidence
of any crime having been committed, they literally had no choice but to release them.
Now with the suspects released from custody and no other leads on hand, the families returned to their desperate search of the island, while local investigators, with assistance from the FBI, chased down every lead that came in no matter how small in july two months after natalie had disappeared a slew of new leads came from individuals who believed that they had seen her in the hours after she went missing a man dropping off trash at a local landfill in the early hours of may 30th said he saw several young men burying a body then he said they left in a light -colored jeep an investigator told
reporters he said he saw a face blonde hair and a woman's chest and that the body was dumped and covered but that he said he never got a good look at the men that landfill that he claimed to have seen all of that go down at was searched several times but nobody was ever found what the fuck i'm like what was that i do wonder if i don't know if i believe your confession entirely i i believe that he did what he did to kill natalie and how he said he did it but i think there's a a lot missing in the story of how he disposed of her i wouldn't be shocked i think he's a liar he's a liar and i think it
is entirely possible that maybe he did bury her somewhere and had help with that whether it be the calpo brothers or somebody else and then decided when the investigation got hot i don't i don't know if they're gonna find her if we buried her so maybe we should put her out to sea i don't i don't know i don't know because it feels like people saw all weird shit yeah that but again but people people think they see weird shit exactly and they think they see things that they didn't and they're and that's the other thing like this is one potentially false lead i mean it didn't end up finding natalie
so it didn't pan out yeah but there this poor family and i'm sure you remember it like watching the leads pour in they were fed so many leads that just went nowhere built up and then like smacked back down and i can't imagine imagine that feeling.
Cause like you say that like built up and Smackdown, that's the perfect way to describe it.
But I can't imagine how that would feel if you were looking for your daughter, you getting all this hope.
And really at this point you're like, it's just hope to find her body.
Yeah. So we can just bring her home.
We just want to bring her home.
That's all. Like it's so important to stress that these people never got to bring their daughter home.
No, they never saw her again.
She left for a celebratory trip and they never got to see her her again saw her again they still to this day have no idea truly what happened to her body and where she is and where she is they never got to really obviously they have like his confession and what they can you know infer and take from that which is horrific but even they know he's he's lying many times throughout this he's a liar it must be so hard to take that for for true like a full 100 truth but it's awful the false lead about the dump though like like I just said, was one of many disappointments that the family faced in the early
period. Other leads about Natalie having been dumped in a lake or left in various other locations proved to be untrue.
At the same time, though, the strongest lead in the case, several blonde hairs found on a large piece of duct tape that had been discovered by a park ranger.
That gave them a lot of hope.
That also fell apart.
The tape had been handed over to the FBI for testing, but a few weeks later, the crime lab in Quantico announced that the results were negative.
And that must have been a huge one.
What was that? What was that, exactly?
It's a thing. I'm like, what's going on here?
This was always the biggest and most frustrating aspect of the Natalie Holloway case.
Investigators had three very strong suspects who they pretty much knew in their bones had killed Natalie, at least one of them.
But with no evidence of a crime, they couldn't do anything.
And in the absence of new leads or tips, the family turned their attention back to the press.
And in the year or two that followed, because remember, this spanned years.
Oh, yeah. The Natalie Holloway case just seemed to unfold entirely on nightly news programs with no real progress being made.
Honestly, it felt like it was never going to even inch forward. No. At times you were like, what's going on here?
And it's crazy that only recently did we get anything.
It was a huge break.
So in late August when it became clear that authorities had literally nothing on Vandersloot, Beth went to the Vandersloot's home, actually, intent on speaking with Jorn's parents.
parents in a meeting that lasted nearly an hour and a half she learned that joran was a senior at the dutch international school in aruba he was actually a good student and a really popular athlete on the school's football and tennis teams which knowing what we know about him now it's wild that he was just like someone's teammate and like somebody's good student yep that's so chilling to think about like just playing alongside this guy right right?
The Vander Sluits spent the first half of the meeting praising their son and denying that he would have anything to do with Natalie's disappearance, which you can understand why they would think that their son wouldn't have anything to do with this and hope that they wouldn't.
But at a certain point, his mother Anita did mention that though he had been an easy child in his early childhood years, Joran had become more difficult when he reached his teen years.
And very recently, she said that he had been seeing a psychiatrist. Beth said she was saying that they were beginning to have trouble with Joran for a defiant attitude.
The father acknowledged they could not control him.
He would sneak out, go gambling in the pre -dawn hours.
They had no control over him.
That's not good. So sensing that the couple was still holding back a little bit, Beth decided to push a little bit harder.
She said, I told Paulus Vandersloot that he was responsible for Aruba being trapped in hell.
According to Beth, Paulus started at that point sweating profusely to the point that his sweat was like pooling on the table and Anita had to go to the kitchen to get him a towel.
So at that point, it became pretty clear to Beth that they knew something or at the very least suspected that their son was capable of having committed this crime.
It definitely does.
But unfortunately, the meeting ultimately came to nothing.
A few weeks later, Beth attempted to get information from Deepak Kalpo, showing up at his workplace and demanding some kind of answer, but unfortunately that was also unsuccessful.
A few months later, in February 2006, as the press desperately sought new interviewees and information on the Holloway case, Yorin himself decided to capitalize on the moment, and he agreed to do interviews with actually several major news outlets.
In an interview with Chris Cuomo on ABC's Primetime, he claimed he had met Natalie at the casino and planned to have sex with her after they left the bar.
He told Cuomo, we were planning on going to my house because she said she wanted to go to my house.
My intention was to take her to the house to have sex with her.
So it's so clear what his motive was here.
He is solely focused on sleeping with Natalie.
In previous accounts, though, he claimed he decided he, on some accounts, he did sleep with her other accounts he decided not to because she was too drunk but this time the story changed yet again and he claimed i didn't have a condom with me though in my wallet and i won't have sex with a girl without a condom oh wow what a what a what a beacon of honor it's like you already claimed that you did have sex with her then you said you started to and you decided not to then you said no you never did and then you said no i didn't actually and there's a reason why and it's like why are you allowed to
say these hundred different stories yeah and everyone just has to sit there and go okay like why it's it's so and just to talk about a missing girl like this that one you knew what you did to her and you knew why you did it because she didn't want to have sex with you exactly and it's like and you sit there and be like and say that well she wanted to that's like just smearing her good name she didn't awful no she very much Yeah, she knew what a pig you were.
But another difference in this version of events was that Joran claimed Natalie had been drinking.
Previously, he had said that, but now all of a sudden he said he actually didn't think she was drunk.
He claimed instead, she seemed like she drank a lot, but there's a difference between somebody being absolutely drunk and someone actually having had a couple drinks.
So before he, if you remember, said she was so drunk to the point where she was falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep.
And in that version of events, he claimed he did sleep with her.
yeah which is like wow and now you're saying i didn't sleep with her and actually she wasn't even drunk no she actually i think she drank so much that a couple of drinks didn't do anything yeah no she was just tired it's like you met this girl one time you don't know shit all about her and it's almost like he's trying to see like prove and see how much he can get away with yeah just fucking around like he's just in the media saying a hundred different different stories not keeping his shit straight when i'm being like but no one will do anything you know i can do this and i think he enjoyed fucking
i think he liked doing it and for the most part he tried to use the interview to make himself seem remorseful and like an unfortunate victim in the story i don't really know how well that worked out for him on his first time meeting beth he said all she said to me she screamed at me was tell me where my daughter is i told her that i don't know well i'm sorry that the mother of the girl girl that you killed wanted to know where she was.
Apologies. One question as to why he lied when he was first questioned.
He said he was scared and he felt ashamed.
He said, I didn't want anyone to know.
I didn't want anyone to know that I left her at the beach. I lied because, yeah, I was scared.
I had a girlfriend at the time.
I didn't want my dad to think bad of me.
I didn't want my friends to think bad of me.
Maybe. A lot of people think bad of you.
We all think the worst about you, beyond the worst about you.
You've got a reputation that precedes you because somebody already told Beth that you have a reputation for preying on young Taurus who are blonde.
Yeah, so good luck with that reputation of Taurus.
So I don't think that was going to absolve you.
In 1920, a broke immigrant in Boston became one of America's richest, most infamous men practically overnight.
He swindled the modern equivalent of a quarter billion dollars and etched his name into history as the mastermind behind one of the most notorious scams ever, the Ponzi scheme.
Hosted by Maya Lau and featuring award -winning comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco.
This is Easy Money, The Charles Ponzi Story, an Apple original podcast produced by Atwill Media.
Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.
But in the years that followed, he continued making appearances on more talk shows in the U .S. and internationally, too.
For all the talking that was being done about the Natalie Holloway case, there was, again, very little information or evidence in the case.
But the The suspicion around Yorin continued.
The suspicion really never went away and it's probably due to the fact that his story about the knight in question just kept changing over and over and over.
And at various points he even confessed to having something to do with this and then would retract those confessions, just devastating this family.
I remember that too.
I remember that happening over and over again where it was like, oh my God, it's happening.
Like finally, and then it was like, just kidding.
Actually, no. Like a true, sick, evil individual.
Like, that's sadistic.
The series of confessions and retractions came to a head in late March of 2010 when Yorin contacted, supposedly contacted Beth's lawyer and offered to reveal the location of Natalie's body and to provide the details of her death in exchange for $250 ,000.
Just straight -up extortion.
This is awful. Yeah.
The lawyer went so far as to meet Yorin in Aruba and he actually provided a payment of $10 ,000, followed then by a bank transfer of $15 ,000 to an account in the Netherlands.
And in exchange, Jorn gave the lawyer an address of a house where they could find the body, he said.
Unfortunately, when local officials looked into the address that Jorn had provided, it was determined that the house hadn't even been built when Natalie was missing.
That house didn't even fucking exist. She's the fucking worst. So the extortion was reported to Interpol, who confronted Joran with this information in the spring of that year, and that's when he admitted he lied in an effort to extort money from the family.
And it's like, so we're not looking at that as, like, if you're capable of that?
Like, what else are you capable of?
Maybe we should look into you a little further?
Nuts. Because if you're capable of that, what aren't you capable of?
This motherfucker is capable of absolutely anything, as we'll find out.
we know he confesses to killing Natalie like for real like says what probably happened extorted money from Beth Holloway and then as we'll see that's not the end of it because given how long the public had been fascinated with Natalie's disappearance the story probably would have been been big news the fact that he had extorted all this money from the Holloways but by then Yoran was locked up in a Peruvian jail cell and was facing far more serious charges the war of of words between natalie's family and aruban officials as well as the fights with the vander sleuths and several other officials
dragged on in the public eye for years with little to show other than bitterness but then on may 30th 2010 exactly exactly five years after natalie's disappearance in aruba 21 year old stephanie flores ramirez a business student went missing in lima peru and three days later her beaten and bloodied body was found in a lima hotel room registered to one Joran Vandersloot.
Five years to the exact day that Natalie went missing.
And it's like how, that can't be a coincidence.
No, not at all. On June 3rd, 2010, Joran was arrested near Santiago, Chile and extradited back to Peru for questioning.
When police asked how it was that Stephanie wound up with a broken neck in his hotel room, he was very evasive but insisted, I've been framed.
claimed oh okay okay yeah that makes sense wow what bad luck you have truly this is where it gets really outrageous according to him the entire thing was a sting operation organized by the fbi in order to capture him and bring him back to the u .s to face extortion charges they planted a woman's dead body in your hotel room in peru to get you back to the u .s this guy is beyond.
What fucking sense would that even make?
Zero. The answer is zero.
What? Zero sense. But according to him, according to van der Sloot, he was contacted by a man who referred to himself as Garcia and offered to cover all his travel expenses, accommodations, and the entrance fee of $10 ,000 for a poker tournament, but he needed to meet him in Chile.
He told a Dutch reporter, Mr. Garcia arranged and paid for everything for me.
Looking back, I can't believe leave I let myself be lured.
I hardly knew that guy.
It was just an FBI setup.
I love that he's like, I'm smarter than that.
It's like, you're not.
Like what? You're not.
Then when a reporter specifically asked about why a dead woman was found in his room, he only said, what happened exactly?
I will explain later.
Oh yeah, don't worry.
Everybody will just hang around while you do that.
Like, don't worry. Take your time.
I thought that you knew what happened.
I thought He thought it was all a setup.
But why can't you explain that now?
You know all of that.
You're saying all of that already.
This is a boy who has gotten away with shit his whole life.
He's a pathological liar.
Gets what he wants.
Gets out of what he wants.
Yep. What he doesn't want.
Proved to the world that he could change his story 100 ,000 times on broadcast television.
And that nothing could be done about it.
Yep. That he could just say shit after shit after shit.
that he could lure a poor grieving family on a wild goose chase and extort them for money.
And then he gets nothing.
So he thinks he's untouchable.
Yeah. He'll just change his story a hundred times this one too.
And then he'll go somewhere else and he'll do the same thing.
I guarantee you this piece of shit was going to keep doing this in every country that he possibly could.
A hundred percent. Just pop around the world doing this.
But luckily, he was in a Peruvian jail cell because he actually ended up confessing to murdering Stephanie.
According to his confession, he met her while playing poker and around 5 a .m. on May 30th, they went back to his room, he says, intending to have sex. But then Stephanie realized his connection to the Natalie Holloway case and he murdered her.
He told investigators, the girl intruded into my private life.
She had no right. I went to her and I hit her.
We argued and she tried to escape.
I grabbed her by the neck and I hit her.
That's also not your private life.
That's literally...
You went on several news station interviews and talked about it.
That's not private anymore.
That's not private.
You opened that up to the entire world.
The entire place of Earth knows.
Yeah. But okay. In the months that followed, though, he then flatly rejected this version of events, claiming he only signed the confession under duress.
He said, During the original interrogations, I was very frightened and confused, and I wanted to leave. they were telling me all the time if you sign these papers you'll be extradited to the netherlands in my blind panic i then signed everything but i did not even know what was written down well then that's stupid too yeah if that if that is the case then you're a dumb you read things before you sign them but i also i don't believe that no not for not for even a quarter of a millisecond i don't believe you at all his claims of an fbi sting operation may have been persuasive to some Dutch readers,
but it didn't explain why if Stephanie's body had been planted in his hotel room, he was discovered to be in possession of her wallet and national ID card, or why his fingerprints were found in her vehicle.
They planted all that.
Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
Deaf. Yep. But when it came to those and many other facts, the Peruvian authorities were even less interested in his claims of a setup.
After over a year - Good for them.
Yeah, exactly. They were like, fuck right off.
They were like, fuck this guy.
After over a year spent waiting in a jail cell in Lima he finally appeared before a judge in January of 2012 to face the charges of murder in the case of Stephanie Flores Ramirez.
According to the prosecutor when Flores discovered Van Der Sloot's connection to the Holloway case she hit him in the face and attempted to flee at which point he hit her in the face with his elbow knocking her unconscious and while he was on the floor he attempted to strangle Stephanie but when that proved to be too difficult he suffocated her with her own shirt.
He's a monster. Found out, like figured out who she was in a room with and was like, get me the fuck out of here, rightfully so.
Absolutely. She was probably terrified.
Yeah. I can't imagine her last moments.
It's horrible. That's awful.
But this time there was no story of a setup.
Yorin pleaded guilty to robbing and murdering Stephanie Flores and was sentenced to 28 years in prison and was also ordered to pay a fine of roughly $75 ,000 to her relatives.
plaintiffs. At the conclusion of his sentence, he was to be deported from Peru.
So rewinding a little bit in between all of that to 2011, Joran van der Sloot was sitting in the Peruvian jail cell for being suspected of killing Stephanie Flores, and the American media had really largely moved on from the Natalie Holloway story.
Given all that they'd been through, Dave and Beth Holloway reluctantly agreed it was very much time to face the very real possibility that their daughter wasn't going to be found.
Yeah. I mean, what do, what can you do?
You know, what do you do?
Yeah. So in June, Dave filed a petition with the Alabama court to have Natalie declared legally dead, which I can't imagine having to go to the court to do that.
Yeah. Because you don't, nobody should ever have to do for their loved one because like, you don't know what happened to them.
You have no idea what happened.
You don't know where they are and you don't have, you just know they're not coming back.
You don't have a place to visit at them but no like it's horrific yeah the family obviously still held out hope that natalie would be found but they did also believe that this was probably the first step towards some kind of semblance of moving on yeah and just putting the seemingly endless searches heartbreak and international fights behind them so in january of 2012 actually just one day after yoren pleaded guilty to murdering stephanie flores ramirez judge alan king signed the declaration and a closed hearing and natalie holloway was officially pronounced deceased which so sad the timeline
of all of this like the fact that he murdered stephanie on the five -year anniversary of natalie being gone and then that she also was declared dead one day after he was convicted just like all of that timeline is so it's it's bizarre like it's scary the timeline yeah dave holloway said though we've been dealing with her death for the last six and a half years we've still got a long way to go to get justice that justice would still be a long way off but in time it would finally come after years of negotiations between the fbi and peruven authorities jordan van der sloot was extradited to birmingham
alabama to stand trial for his attempted extortion of beth back in 2010 he maintained that he was innocent of those charges in his interview with dutch reporters in 2010 though he actually admitted to the extortion saying i wanted to get back at natalie's family her parents have been making my life tough for five years when they offered to pay for the girl's location i thought why not why not why not mess with this dead girl's family who i know that i killed they've been making my life tough oh your life is tough are you you get away with everything you just get to walk around you get to do whatever
the fuck you want you get to bullshit everybody everybody knowing exactly where she is and they're living in like a pit of suffering every second of every day.
But you thought, why not get some money out of this?
Yeah, boo -hoo for you.
On June 9th, he was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of extortion, to which he pleaded not guilty.
According to the original affidavit, VanderSloot had claimed that he killed Natalie accidentally and that his father helped him dispose of the body.
Despite his insistence that he was innocent, though, in October of 2023, Yorin agreed to a plea deal in which he would receive a 20 -year sentence for each of the fraud charges to be served concurrent with his sentence for the Flores murder on the condition that he tell the authorities what happened the night that Natalie went missing.
In his statement, which was verified by a polygraph examination, Joran said he offered Natalie a ride back to her hotel the night that she went missing as he had originally told authorities, but he said he wanted to spend more time with her.
He said she asked to go back to to her hotel but I was just trying to get dropped off a little bit further away from her hotel so we could uh walk back to her hotel and I might still get a chance to be with her he's so disgusted what that translates into is she said I want to go back to my hotel and he said no I want to do something else and decided to take that advantage but once they were at the beach Joran began groping Natalie and she resisted his advances because she just wanted to go home yeah she just wanted to go go back to the hotel this is a little graphic he said it's very graphic he
said i started feeling her up and she tells me no she tells me she doesn't want me to feel her up he said then natalie need him in the crotch sending him into a blind rage which good for her her that's what you fucking do when somebody's touching you and you don't want to be touched that guy he continued when she needs me in the crotch uh i get up uh on the beach and i kick her extremely hard in the the face she's laying down unconscious possibly even dead but definitely unconscious still angry over the rejection he then grabbed a large cinder block that was laying on the ground nearby and hit
natalie in the face with it several times he told the prosecutor this is very graphic trigger warning her face basically collapses in even though it's dark i can still see her face is collapsed in he's so fucking disgusting just to say that so matter of a fact that her her face collapsed in because she didn't want to have sex with you or she didn't want you even to touch her in that way foul you don't get to do whatever the fuck you want to do you don't get to touch girls that don't want to be touched he thinks he can who the fuck are you and he's had ample time and ample evidence around him to
think that he can do whatever he wants whatever he wants exactly it's so gross i just i i don't understand that that thought process of just thinking you get to do whatever the fuck you want to do he definitely added in that note of i kicked her extremely hard in the face and maybe she died and i'm like you didn't know no like i you know that was him trying to like he thinks he's like macho here oh yeah for this whole thing no and it's like he's like you're disgusting he's a demented string bean exactly once he was convinced that natalie was dead though he said he then dragged her body out into
the water and pushed her into the ocean ensuring that her remains would never be found i don't know if i believe that i think probably ultimately but i don't know it's so hard to believe anything he says it feels like that is probably what he did because it was the simplest solution to his problem yeah and it was right right behind him you're not i don't see him going through a lot of trouble yeah i see him looking behind him seeing the ocean and being like well she'll never be found it's just and she wasn't it's so sad that she was never it's like it's aruba the sharks there's all kinds of things
unfortunately that is the easiest method of you don't even getting rid of that's so stupid i didn't even think of like sharks i was like but when search and rescue looked like they didn't find a body no she's i'm sure that was that's awful and he knew that he lived in aruba he knows the the terrain he knows the waters he knows what's in those waters yeah he knew that once she was in there and i mean with blood and such like she's that's it that's awful yeah well per the per the terms of the deal he made with the prosecutor urine wouldn't be charged for natalie's murder which is awful such a travesty
he would never be held legally responsible for her death but although the statute of limitations for murder in aruba is 12 years it had long since how is there a statute of limitations on murder i don't get that yeah i don't understand that one doesn't make sense to me yeah it doesn't make sense for me either but even though the the statute of limitations had long since passed the aruban authorities did release a statement saying that they were going to keep the investigation open and asked U .S. officials for copies of documents pertaining to Vandersloot's confession.
Well, that's good. In their statement, a spokesperson for the Aruba's prosecutor's office said they would review and analyze the materials before deciding on procedural steps.
For Dave and Beth Holloway, Yoren's confession was bittersweet, I guess you could say.
Beth said, Even with this confession, he can't be tried here for Natalie's murder, but I am satisfied knowing he did it.
he did it alone and he disposed of her alone but still the hearing meant that finally after 18 years of uncertainty the holloway's pursuit of justice had finally come to an end and her victim impact statement beth addressed your and saying you finally admitted that in fact you murdered her you terminated her dreams her potential her possibilities when you bludgeoned her to death in 2005 you didn't get what you wanted from natalie your sexual satisfaction so you brutally killed her you are the one in aruba no one wants to be the black mark on the island which is that was a great statement it gives
me chills all the way down to my legs because that's what it goes back to it's not aruba it's not it's you and you're the problem and that's what yeah in her statement to the press following the hearing beth gave a statement on uh about the confession on behalf of the family saying it's just blistering to your soul and it hurts so deeply but you know you're there in a functionality role because this is the moment that I've been searching for for 18 years even as hard as it is to hear it's still not as torturous as the not knowing it was time for me to know yeah I mean the not knowing because then
your mind must be a perfect way to describe it because the unknown is way worse exactly you know but then you hear this and then you're like Like, is it?
But even that, like, even the is it, you're like, you hear this, and you're like, that's what my child's last moments were?
Yeah. Like, that's got to be a whole— I'm sure that opened up a whole other flood of grief.
Absolutely. That you weren't even sure existed.
Absolutely. Because now you've got these horrific details.
And then you have to heal from that.
First, you have to— Now you have to heal from that.
And I'm sure you never actually heal, but you have to work on the process of somehow coming to terms with the fact that this happened in your life and this happened to your child and the fact that she's missing that you don't know what happened and then you find out what happened and then you have to come to terms with that yeah i mean i don't wish that on anybody my worst enemy no that's a awful awful sentence to have to endure in life it is on november 1st 2023 jordan vandersloot was returned to peru to finish serving his sentence for the murder of stephanie flores ramirez he's actually set
to be released from peruvian prison in 2043 when he will be 56 years old at which point he will be deported from peru in the event that he's released before that projected date he will be sent to alabama to finish his his sentence for the extortion on beth holloway per that plea deal that he made with u .s authorities but still he could if he gets out of prison at 56 years old that's scary and that's wild that's young that's still very much capable of inflicting even more pain on even more families like how is he just getting away with killing two women and he admitted to killing natalie but will never
be legally held responsible for that none of that makes sense to me and unless i don't know it was a little confusing like what aruba would do because the statute of limitations is, what did I say, 15 years?
But they said they were going to keep the case open.
So maybe they're making a special, I don't know how that works.
Yeah, I'm not sure if maybe he could face charges there at some point.
It's a little unclear.
Why doesn't everybody just throw some charges at him?
Honestly. Keep him in there.
Who's going to, hopefully he just like, something happens in person.
I don't want him to get out of person.
Yeah, I don't want them to get out of there either.
I just don't want them to be able to exist outside of those walls.
What country is going to be like, yeah, you can live here?
Yeah, come on in. I remember we covered a case once where somebody did get out of prison for doing something awful, and I think they went to Florida, and Florida was like, no, you can't stay here.
Yeah, Florida was like, get out.
Yeah. Yeah, so I could see that happening.
Yeah, I wonder how that all works, but hopefully we never have to find out.
Yeah, seriously. And I really feel for this family, for all that they went through.
But like I said, definitely check out that documentary that I mentioned at the top.
It's on Peacock. And that will most likely be our next episode as a follow -up.
Lots of information.
Yes. He's going to be an interesting person to talk to.
Exactly. Yeah. So with that being said, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you... Keep...
It... Weird. But never ever as weird as you're in Van Der Sloot, because that's not weird. That's deranged.
Fuck that. A film by like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad -free on Amazon Music.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery .com slash survey.
Hey weirdos, we need to tell you about something that has completely blown our minds collectively.
There's a new show called Lawless Planet that's uncovering true crime stories so massive, they're affecting the entire planet.
Post -Zak Goldbaum is investigating real cases where environmental destruction meets murder, conspiracy and cover -ups.
We're talking about activists who disappear in the Amazon rainforest, whistleblowers who risk everything to expose deadly corporate secrets, and communities being silently poisoned while powerful people profit.
What makes these stories truly terrifying?
They're happening right now.
This isn't history, it's a massive criminal conspiracy unfolding in real time with consequences that affect us all.
Each episode This episode feels like opening a case file into the darkest corners of corporate and government power.
Trust us, once you start listening, you will not be able to stop thinking about these stories.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
