What happened to Natalee Holloway? Where are the suspects now as Netflix revisits the case
Joran van der Sloot was among the suspects accused of being involved in Natalee's disappearance
Natalee Holloway was just 18-years-old and on a graduation trip to Aruba when she disappeared on May 30, 2005.
Her body has never been found, and despite one of the suspects in the case confessing to killing the teenager, he is yet to be convicted.
Over 20 years later, Natalee's family have faced years of unanswered questions, with her mother Beth relentlessly fighting for the truth about what happened to her daughter.
Netflix is revisiting the case with the true crime documentary Taken: Natalee Holloway, airing on the platform from November 4. The three-part series offers what it calls a "definitive account" of a case that keeps the public gripped so many years down the line.
We look at what happened to Natalee, and where the main suspects involved in the highly documented case are now.
What happened to Natalee Holloway?
Natalee Holloway was one of a number of 124 students along with seven adult chaperones, taking a celebratory trip to Aruba after graduating from Alabama’s Mountain Brook High School.
The teenagers landed on the island in May 2005, and were staying at the Holiday Inn resort at the northern end. At the hotel, Natalee met Joran van der Sloot, a 17-year-old Dutch national, who had lived in Aruba most of his life because of his father's job.
Joran joined Natalee and her friends on evenings out, and she was seen on the night of her disappearance leaving a nightclub with him, and getting into a car with him and his two friends, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.
On May 30, Natalee and her friends were due to fly home, but she was nowhere to be found. After searching the hotel, her passport and belongings were found untouched in her room.
On the day she should have been returning home, Natalee's mother Beth was given the news that her daughter had disappeared. Beth and Jug, Natalee's stepfather, immediately travelled to Aruba to begin to search for her.
Natalee's father, Dave, also spent many years putting substantial money and time into looking for the truth about her disappearance.
At the time, Joran said he'd dropped Natalee back her hotel after visiting a lighthouse with her, Deepak and Satish. He told authorities a security guard had helped her inside, but couldn't identify the guard when asked to.
Tourists and locals came together and spent weeks searching for Natalee, and they were later joined by volunteers from Texas, the Dutch Marines, and fighter plane pilots from the Netherlands.
Joran, Deepak and Satish were arrested as primary suspects in the case. Many subsequent arrests were made, including former security guards from a nearby hotel closed for renovation, a party-boat DJ, and that of Joran's father, Paulus.
All suspects were released without charge, and Joran, Deepak and Satish were arrested on other occasions following Natalee's disappearance, but again let go without charge.
Her remains have never been recovered, and despite Joran van der Sloot admitting to killing her in October 2023, he has still not been officially convicted of her murder.
Where are Joran van der Sloot and the other suspects now?
Now aged 39, Joran van der Sloot is currently in prison at the maximum-security Challapalca Prison in southern Peru.
In 2012, he was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the 2010 robbery and murder and 21-year-old business student Stephany Flores Ramírez in a hotel in Lima. While serving his murder sentence, in 2021, he was caught smuggling cocaine into the prison and sentenced to an additional 18 years for drug trafficking.
Prior to this conviction, he'd actually tried to extort the Holloway family. In March 2010, five years after Natalee's disappearance, Joran contacted Beth Holloway's solicitor. He said he would disclose the exact location of Natalee’s body and reveal the specific details surrounding her death if the family paid him $250,000.
Through her solicitor, Beth paid $25,000 of the money, but didn't ever learn any details surrounding Natalee's disappearance, and Joran fled to Peru before he could be arrested for extortion.
While in prison for the murder of Stephany Flores Ramírez, Joran was temporarily extradited to the U.S. to stand trial on federal extortion charges in Alabama after trying to get the Holloways to give him money.
In October 2023, he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of extortion, and as part of a plea deal to reduce his sentence for the financial crime, agreed to finally give details of Natalee's death.
Beth Holloway revealed that Joran van der Sloot had admitted to killing her daughter, saying he told government officials that Natalee had declined his sexual advances and he became angry.
According to People, he then smashed her head with a cinder block and threw her body in the ocean. He was sentenced to 20 years for the financial crimes, with this sentence running alongside his sentence in Peru.
He was then returned to Peru, and should he be released from the Peruvian prison early, any time left on his U.S sentence would be served there.
In April 2026, Beth Holloway filed a criminal complaint against Joran van der Sloot in the Netherlands.
In Aruba where Natalee disappeared, the statute of limitations for manslaughter expired after 12 years, and Joran can't legally be prosecuted in the country now for Natalee's death.
In the Netherlands, with Joran being a Dutch citizen, the statute of limitations for manslaughter has not expired and he could be tried there for her death in the future.
Deepak and Satish Kalpoe were never convicted of anything in relation to Natalee's disappearance and have remained out of the public eye ever since. Their current whereabouts are unknown.
Taken: Natalee Holloway airs on Netflix from November 4.
