Van der Sloot was arrested and convicted of killing a business school student in Peru. In May 2010, the body of the young student was found in a hotel room that van der Sloot had booked. He was extradited from Chile, arrested, tried and convicted of the killing.
While it was not an arrest connected to Natalee, it clearly showed him to be capable of violence and murder.
While the police in Peru investigated the murder of the 22-year-old student, van der Sloot confessed to murdering her. He said he did it because she was snooping around on his computer looking for personal information about him and his connection to Natalee’s murder. He claimed that when he found her doing this, he panicked.
He killed her and fled the scene. He offered to tell the Peruvian authorities where they could find Natalee’s body but they were not interested in that. They were only interested in information about the student killed in Peru.
On May 24, 2005, Natalee graduated from Mountain Brook High School. Six days later, she was gone. She had gone to Aruba with a group from her Alabama school. The group was made up of 125 youngsters looking to celebrate one last time before embarking on the next chapter of their lives. They chose the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, considered to be a tropical paradise.
Natalee’s plans had been to go to the University of Alabama, where she would start a pre-med program. Nothing suggested the fate that awaited the ambitious 19 year old.
Soon after van der Sloot was arrested, Aruban investigators traveled to Peru to see if they could find any new evidence about Natalee’s disappearance. For his part, van der Sloot was given a sentence of 28 years in Peruvian prison.
Dave Holloway, Natalee’s father, went to the state of Alabama and asked them to declare his daughter dead. Despite her mother’s objection, the state agreed and a declaration of death was made for Natalee Holloway.
While the man, who most think murdered Natalee, is in prison, Beth Twitty has not given up on finding Natalee. Beth has done multiple press interviews and written a book of her own. Her book details what she has been through and what she thinks happened the night of her daughter’s disappearance.
Beth has claimed that the police in Aruba ignored statements van der Sloot made in which he said that he harmed Natalee.
