EXCLUSIVE: Mother of Natalee Holloway makes emotional return to the beach where her daughter was last seen and opens up about being extorted by Joran van der Sloot in new interview
- Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba in 2005, is believed to have been killed
- In a 20/20 special that will air next Friday, her mother Beth is revisiting the island
- Discusses how she was blamed for murder of Joran van der Sloot’s other victim
- Van der Sloot fled to Peru from Aruba after getting a $25,000 down payment on the $250,000 he extorted from Beth
- He had told her he would reveal where Natalee’s body had been buried
- Soon after he got that money he was gone he murdered Stephany Flores Ramírez
It has been 15 years since Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba, where many believe she was murdered by Joran van der Sloot.
Now, in a 20/20 special that will air next Friday at 9/8c on ABC, her mother Beth is revisiting the island and the very beach where her 18-year-old daughter was last seen in 2005 for the first time.
In an exclusive preview of the episode obtained by DailyMail.com, Beth also discusses how she was blamed in part for the murder of van der Sloot’s other victim, Stephany Flores Ramírez.
Beth is revisiting the island and the very beach where her daughter was last seen for the first time
It has been 15 years since Natalee Holloway (pictured) went missing in Aruba, where many believe she was murdered by Joran van der Sloot
Beth Holloway is pictured in Aruba in a 20/20 special that will air next Friday at 9/8c on ABC
Vasn der Sloot fled to Peru from Aruba after getting a $25,000 down payment on the $250,000 he extorted from Beth Holloway after telling her he would reveal where Natalee’s body had been buried.
‘Some people have said, “well Beth, if you didn’t give him that 25 grand he probably wouldn’t have had the money to go to Peru and kill Stephany,’ says Beth.
Soon after he got that money he was gone, and five years to the day that he is believed to have murdered Natalee, he did the same to Stephany.
He even met both girls at a poker table.
Van der Sloot is currently serving a 28-year sentence in Peru after being convicted of killing 21-year-old student Stephany in 2010.
He is set to be extradited to the U.S. after completing his sentence in 2038 to face those extortion charges.
Van der Sloot married Peruvian Leidy Figueroa in prison in July of 2010.
In an exclusive preview of the episode obtained by DailyMail.com, Beth also discusses how she was blamed in part for the murder of van der Sloot’s other victim, Stephany Flores Ramírez. She is pictured here with her daughter
Van der Sloot (pictured) is currently serving a 28-year sentence in Peru after being convicted of killing 21-year-old student Stephany in 2010
A month later, authorities sent him to the infamous Challapalca prison located high in the Andes when he threatened to kill the warden of the lockup he was being held in near Lima.
Figueroa spoke for the first time soon after that in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, insisting that van der Sloot is ‘gentle, sensitive, kind’ and ‘no monster’.
She also insisted that her husband had changed since they started an unlikely prison romance four years ago, saying he was a ‘different man’ after finding God and had been ‘seeking forgiveness’ for the evil he committed in the past.
Figueroa did not reveal what ‘evil’ was she was referring to at the time.
In September of that year she gave birth to the couple’s first child, a baby girl.
They named the baby Dushy after van der Sloot’s grandmother.
A few months after that van der Sloot was stabbed in prison, according to Figueroa, though a warden later claimed that this was untrue.
Stephany was killed by Van der Sloot five years after Natalee went missing