Who Killed Natalee Holloway? All About the 18-Year-Old’s Murderer, Joran van der Sloot

Joran van der Sloot became internationally notorious after 18-year-old Natalee Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip to Aruba in May 2005. She was last seen alive leaving a bar and restaurant in Oranjestad around 1:30 a.m. on May 30, 2005, with Joran and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, who were all locals, in a Honda Civic. 

The search for Holloway began after she failed to return to her hotel room and missed her flight home. The three men were first arrested on June 9, 2005, but were all eventually released due to lack of evidence. They were arrested once again in November 2007, but Aruba prosecutors later dismissed the case. 

Her case remained unsolved for 18 years, but in October 2023, van der Sloot admitted in a U.S. federal court proceeding that he killed Holloway and disposed of her body in the Caribbean Sea. However, her remains have never been found. 

Van der Sloot was born in 1987 in Arnhem, Netherlands. His parents, Anita and Paulus, raised him alongside his two brothers. The family moved to Aruba when van der Sloot was a child, where his father worked for the country’s justice department and was training to become a judge, and his mother worked as a teacher. 

Van der Sloot attended the International School of Aruba and was an honors student. He also enjoyed playing sports, including tennis with his father, who died of a heart attack in February 2010. 

“He was a sweet boy who loved animals and his grandmother. Funny, open. He has gradually lost [his] way. It was insidious,” Anita told the Dutch media publication De Telegraaf in 2010.

She said that her son was a liar and would sneak out of their home in Aruba at night to go to casinos. Anita also claimed that her son developed mental problems over time. “Joran is sick in the head, but he wanted no help,” she told the outlet. 

On May 30, 2010, five years after Holloway went missing, van der Sloot murdered 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramírez in his Lima, Peru, hotel room. He was there for a poker tournament and met Ramírez in a casino. The two entered Joran’s hotel room around 5 a.m. Hours later, he left the room alone. 

After Ramírez was reported missing by her family, she was found dead in the hotel room on June 2. Van der Sloot was arrested on June 3 in Chile and was brought back to Peru. Days later, he admitted to authorities that he and Ramírez got into an argument, during which police think she found out about his connection to the Holloway case, and she hit him on the side of the head with her fist.

“At that moment, impulsively, with my right elbow, I hit her in the face exactly on top of her nose. I think she started to faint. It affected me so that I grabbed her from the neck and strangled her for a minute,” he said in his confession.

Van der Sloot said, "There was blood everywhere.”

“What am I going to do now?” he wondered. “I had blood on my shirt. There was also blood on the bed, so I took off my shirt and put it on her face, pressing hard, until I killed Stephany." 

On January 11, 2012, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to Ramírez’s murder, and he was sentenced two days later to 28 years in prison. 

When van der Sloot was originally arrested in June 2010, U.S. authorities also issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with asking Holloway’s mother, Beth, for $250,000 in exchange for information on where her daughter’s remains were. He was paid $25,100, but Beth later described the information provided as “worthless.”

In October 2023, he pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Alabama—where Holloway was from—after extradition from Peru. As part of the plea deal, he provided accurate information about Holloway’s disappearance in exchange for 20 years. Van der Sloot said that he killed Holloway on the beach, bludgeoned her face with a cinder block, then disposed of her body in the water.

He told prosecutors that Holloway wanted to get dropped off at her hotel, but he arranged to drop them off farther away so they could walk back. The two strolled along the beach, lay down and started kissing. Soon after, Holloway wanted him to stop. When he didn’t listen, she kneed him in the groin.

“When she knees me in the crotch, I get up on the beach and I kick her extremely hard in the face,” he said. He found the block and then hit her in the head, went into the ocean and pushed her body out to sea. 

Holloway’s mother was in the courtroom during van der Sloot’s sentencing. “Joran, for 18 years you denied killing my daughter. Your lies and manipulation, taunting us with fake news interviews and wild stories of what happened to her, have caused indescribable pain and harm to my family and me. The grief I feel lives way down deep in my soul.”  

Beth also told van der Sloot she hoped he remembers his status as a killer “every time that jail door slams,” Beth said.

Van der Sloot apologized to Holloway’s family: “I am not the same kind of person today as I was then; I have given my heart to Jesus Christ.”

Van der Sloot is currently serving his sentences in Challapalca prison in southern Peru, where he is also serving an additional 18 years and four months in prison due to drug trafficking charges. He will be in prison until 2045 because a prison term in Peru can not exceed 35 years unless the defendant is given a life sentence.

In August 2026, he requested a transfer to another Peru prison after claiming to receive death threats from other inmates, which a judge must approve.