Reason why Joran van der Sloot hasn’t been convicted for Natalee Holloway’s murder following Netflix doc
After the release of Netflix’s Taken: Natalee Holloway, viewers have been asking the same question: why hasn’t Joran van der Sloot been prosecuted following his confession?
The documentary, which was released on Wednesday (4 November), explores the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba and traces the years-long search that led her mother to be face-to-face with the alleged killer.
After graduating with honors from Mountain Brook High School in Alabama, Holloway went on a five-day trip to the Caribbean island in May 2005 with the rest of her graduating class.
However, on the final day of the trip, the 18-year-old vanished.
She was last seen outside the Oranjestad nightclub Carlos'n Charlie's, getting into a car with van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.
He was arrested twice in connection with her disappearance, but a lack of evidence and changing stories kept him from facing charges.
After nearly two decades of exhaustive searches, in a 2023 proffer agreement, van der Sloot admitted to bludgeoning Natalee to death as part of a plea deal for attempting to extort her family for $250,000.
The agreement allowed him to serve his sentence for wire fraud and extortion at the same time as his 28-year sentence in Peru for the 2010 murder of another woman, Stephany Flores Ramírez.
Holloway’s remains were never found.
What did Joran van der Sloot confess to?
In his recorded 2023 confession, which was played in the Netflix docuseries, van der Sloot claimed that he went for a walk on the beach with Holloway, where they laid down on the sand and kissed.
When he tried to go further, she told him no, but he groped her without her consent, and Holloway kneed him in the groin.
In response, van der Sloot said he kicked her ‘extremely hard’ in the face until she was ‘unconscious, possibly ... even dead, but definitely unconscious’.
He took a ‘huge’ cinder block that was next to her and ‘smash[ed] her head in with it completely,’ as reported by PEOPLE.
In his confession, van der Sloot claimed that he dumped Holloway’s body in the Caribbean Sea.
Why hasn't Joran van der Sloot been convicted for Natalee Holloway’s murder?
Van der Sloot is behind bars in Peru for the murder of another woman, Stephany Flores Ramírez; however, he has never been convicted for Holloway’s murder.
The reason that van der Sloot has never been convicted, despite confessing, is because of Aruba’s laws.
Aruba’s 12-year statute of limitations typically means a suspect can’t be criminally prosecuted for murder if 12 years have gone by since the crime was committed.
It’s been 21 years since Holloway disappeared, so he can no longer be convicted.
However, a spokesperson for the Aruba Public Prosecutor’s Office told PEOPLE in 2023 that the case is still open and they haven’t completely ruled out pursuing charges if serious new leads emerge.
The outlet reports that the authorities said whether he will face murder charges despite the 12-year statute of limitations ‘cannot be answered with a simple yes or no’.
They added: “The Police Force, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Aruba and other investigative entities will follow up on any serious leads that could solve the disappearance of Natalee Holloway.”
Holloway's mother Beth has since told Tudum that she's spent the past two years working with Netherlands attorneys Royce de Vries and Annemiek van Spanje to file a murder complaint against van der Sloot with Dutch authorities
She told the publication: “I’ve been working busy behind the scenes, got the murder complaint. And now we’re working on, hopefully, murder charges. So I’ve been busy, but one step at a time.”
Topics: True Crime, Netflix, News, Crime, Documentaries
Madison Burgess