The final search for Natalle Holloway has officially come to a devastating close for the family of the missing Alabama teen.
Four bone fragments found on Aruba in an area close to where a friend of Joran van der Sloot claims he and the long-alleged killer took the young woman’s body are not a match to the high school senior, who disappeared back in 2005 while on a graduation trip to the Caribbean island.
Three of the fragments were not human, while the fourth fragment did prove to be human remains but did not contain any of the same mitochondrial DNA as Natalee’s mother Beth.
That caps off an 18 months investigation that exhausted all previous research in the case and included new interviews and field work on the ground in Aruba.
This last-ditch effort was headed up by Natalee’s father Dave and private detective TJ Ward, who filmed the process for the Oxygen docu-series ‘The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway.’
Dave announced back in August that this investigation would be his last attempt to find the remains of his daughter, no matter what the outcome.
Moving on: Four bone fragments discovered in Aruba during her the 18 month search for Natalee Holloway’s remains are not a match to the missing teen (Natalee and father Dave at her high school graduation a week before she left for Aruba)
No go: Three of the fragments were not human while the fourth did not match the mitochondrial DNA of Natalee’s mother Beth (fragments above)
‘Out of the four individual bone samples only one was found to be human. The mitochodrial DNA bone sample was not a match to Beth Holloway, and so it was ruled out as being Natalee Holloway,’ explained Dr. Jason Kolowski.
He went on to state that the fragment offered up little other information.
‘We don’t know if the person is male or female. We don’t know how old that person is. We don’t know how long that person has been dead,’ said Dr. Kolowski.
And with that the case is now closed, as is the likelihood that Beth or Dave will ever have closure.
Dave and Ward did make their biggest break in the case this time around when they managed to track down John Ludwick, the man they were told helped Joran van der Sloot dispose of the teenager’s body after her death.
Ludwick confirmed those claims in an interview that aired this past weekend on ‘The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway,’ telling Ward that he and van der Sloot had Natalee’s remains cremated and then scattered her ashes in the ocean.
He also confessed to burning Natalee’s skull himself, stating that he doused it in gasoline and then set it on fire inside a cave in order to destroy any identifying hair fibers.
Ludwick appeared surprisingly emotionless and composed in his bombshell interview, which aired last month on the series.
During his sit-down, Ludwig detailed how van der Sloot offered him $1500 to dig up Natalee’s body back in 2010 and then have it cremated on the island.
That proved to be a bit of a process, however, as it was illegal to cremate humans at that time, forcing Ludwick to bring the remains back to his aunt’s property and crush them up first.
‘The idea was to crush everything to the point where it wasn’t recognizable as her bones or skull or anything like that,’ revealed Ludwick.
‘The only thing that got burned was the skull to burn the hair fibers. It was doused in gasoline in a fire pit in a cave.’
Heartbreak: Natalee’s father Dave now walks away with no closure after heading up the investigation, revealing it would be his last attempt to locate his daughter (Natalee’s mother Beth just days after her disappearance)
Monster: Ludwick also told investigator TJ Ward that he burned the missing teen’s skull after dousing it in gasoline to destroy all her hair fibers (the final photo of Natalee Holloway)
After the skull had been burned and all the bones crushed, van der Sloot added in some dog remains, and once at the crematorium Ludwick said he told the worker that he had lost a pet.
‘I went in there with $200 cash, and said: “This dog means a lot to me and, freakin’, I don’t want anyone to be the last one to touch it except me. If I give you $200 can I push it in myself?” revealed Ludwick.
The two men then borrowed a fisherman’s boat and took the ashes out to sea, where they scattered the remains according to Ludwick.
The interview marked a shocking departure from Ludwick’s past claims about the case, which he has managed to keep mostly quiet about over the years.
When he did speak however, Ludwick made a point of staunchly defending van der Sloot against any claims or allegations that he had murdered Natalee or had anything to do with the disappearance of the 18-year-old Alabama student.
Dave said his self-funded investigation into his daughter’s disappearance would be his last.
It also mark the end of his decade-long relationship with Ward, who has been working for the family since shortly after Natalle disappeared back in May 2005 while on a class trip.
Soon after she went missing, the investigation led police to van der Sloot.
Natalee’s friend Jessica Caiola, who was on the Aruba trip, previously said on the docu-series that van der Sloot was frequently spotted around the group during their vacation on the tiny Caribbean island.
‘I remember seeing Joran van der Sloot at the casino at our hotel. That was the first time I saw him and I remember chatter of him. ‘He’s so cute,’ ‘Who’s going to hook up with him?’ Those sort of things were floating around. That was probably the extent to which I got close to him,’ said Caiola.
‘I don’t even remember if Natalee with with him at that point, or if any of us were necessarily with him. What I can tell you is he was there multiple nights of our trip. I believe it was the second to last night I saw him at the casino.’
And she is certain she saw him on that final night.
‘He was absolutely at Carlos’n Charlie’s, 1000 percent,’ stated Caiola, who added that for the next few years she would frequently be called in by the FBI to recount her final night with Holloway.
‘Natalee and I were actually talking at the bar and interacting and having a good time,’ recalled Caiola of the hours before Holloway disappeared on the island.
Suspect: These fragments were discovered in the wake of an interview with Joran van der Sloot’s best friend John Ludwick (above in 2009), who said he cremated Natalee’s body in 2010
Seen at the scene: Natalee’s friend Jessica Caiola (above), who was on the Aruba trip, previously said on the docu-series that van der Sloot was frequently spotted around the group
She also revealed that while she believes van der Sloot killed her friend, she is not certain when that death happened, believing it was likely after she was reported missing.
‘I thought she was still alive and she had been sold or traded, something of that nature and we could find her,’ said Caiola.
‘The reason I though this is there was no tinge of her clothing.’
The series kicked off with Ludwick’s former roommate Gabriel providing Dave with a play-by-play account of what allegedly happened the night his daughter went missing, saying that van der Sloot had asked the bartender for two drinks and to ‘fix it good.’
Those drinks were laced with the date rape drug GHB according to Gabriel, and soon after van der Sloot gave one to Natalee she allegedly began ‘foaming at the mouth.’
Van der Sloot, who has never been charged with the murder or disappearance of Natalee, has admitted to giving her a drink that night.
‘He panicked, he didn’t put her on her side or nothing, and she choked on her vomit,’ claimed Gabriel.
Van der Sloot did not say anything according to Gabriel because of the GHB, claiming he was giving the date rape drug to ‘all the girls’ and was afraid of getting in trouble with the police.
Gabriel said that instead, van der Sloot called his father Paulus, who allegedly arrived on the scene and got ‘pissed’ when he saw that the young woman was dead.
‘And he says [to his son], ‘OK, wait here,’ and he goes back to the house and gets a burlap,’ said Gabriel of Paulus’ next move.
‘He comes back and says, ‘OK, she doesn’t fit here.’ So he stomps on her legs and cracks her legs and puts her in the burlap and folds her over.’
At that point Dave asked Gabriel to confirm that this was Paulus doing this, to which he responded: ‘Yes.’
Paulus van der Sloot was also never charged with the murder or disappearance of Natalee, and passed away in 2010 after going into cardiac arrest while playing tennis.
‘So they grab her and put her in the back of [Paulus’] car and they drive her to a park. And they pick a spot, puts her in, covers her up and his dad goes, ‘grab that cactus, that will just cover everything up,”continued Gabriel.
‘And his dad goes, ‘Don’t you tell nobody. Nobody.’ But he told John.’
Dave has said in the past that when he met Paulus the man told him that he had to do everything he could to protect his son and would not cooperate with any investigation.
Done: Dave is now preparing to move on with his life (above in the Oxygen docu-series)
Plot: Ludwick (above in 2017 interview) and van der Sloot then borrowed a boat and scattered Natalee’s ashes at sea claimed Ludwick, who had previously denied any involvement in the case
Van der Sloot is serving a 28-year sentence in Peru after being convicted of killing 21-year-old student Stephany Flores Ramírez in 2010, five years to the day of Holloway’s death.
He is set to be extradited to the U.S. after completing his sentence in 2038 to face charges he tried to extort money from Holloway’s family.
Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother, alleges that van der Sloot told her he would reveal where her daughter’s body was located for $25,000 in cash.
Van der Sloot married Peruvian Leidy Figueroa in July of 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.