Chilling moment Joran van der Sloot confesses to killing Natalee Holloway | US News
A federal court in Alabama has released the audio recording of Joran van der Sloot confessing to killing Natalee Holloway on an Aruba beach in 2005.
The disturbing recorded confession provided Holloway’s grieving family with long-sought answers after she disappeared on vacation nearly two decades ago.
Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extorting Holloway’s family on Wednesday. As part of his plea deal, van der Sloot agreed to give Holloway’s family ‘all information and evidence’ about her disappearance.
During a taped interview with prosecutors, van der Sloot finally confessed to killing Holloway after she spurned his advances.
Van der Sloot, a Dutch citizen who grew up on the Caribbean island, was one of the last people seen with Holloway the night she vanished. Five years later, he was convicted for killing another young woman in Peru.
Holloway and van der Sloot were last seen together at a bar in Oranjestad. According to van der Sloot’s account, after they left he called a cab to take her back to her hotel.
But instead of dropping her off at the hotel, van der Sloot asked the driver to drop them off ‘a little bit further away’ so they could walk along the beach.
Van der Sloot said he hoped that he ‘might still get a chance to be with her’ on the walk back alone.
Van der Sloot said he laid in the sand with Holloway and began kissing her. She began fighting his advances when he tried to grope her.
‘She ends up kneeing me in the crotch,’ van der Sloot said. ‘When she knees me in the crotch, I get up and I kick her extremely hard in the face.’
Van der Sloot then calmly narrates his decision to end her life.
‘She’s lying down unconscious, possibly even dead, but definitely unconscious. And I see right next to her there’s a huge cinderblock laying on the beach. I take this and I smash her head in with it completely. Her face basically collapses in. Even though it’s dark, I can see her face is collapsed in.’
Van der Sloot said he was ‘scared’ after the gruesome murder, and decided to abandon Holloway’s body in the ocean. He said he walked knee-deep into the Caribbean Sea before pushing her into the depths.
Van der Sloot said he hoped his testimony would provide closure for Holloway’s family.
‘I would like the chance to apologize to the Holloway family, to my own family,’ the convicted murderer and fraudster said. ‘I am no longer the person I was back then.’
Attorneys for the Holloway family said they did not expect van der Sloot to be prosecuted in Aruba since the statute of limitations has since passed.
‘It’s hard to hear what he did, but it’s very victorious to finally be at the end of this nightmare,’ said Natalee’s mother Beth Holloway.
In a victim impact statement read on Wednesday, Beth admonished van der Sloot for tormenting her family for years.
‘Joran, for 18 years you have denied killing my daughter Natalee. 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.’
She continued: ‘You didn’t get what you wanted from Natalee, your sexual satisfaction, so you brutally killed her.’
Van der Sloot’s confession came three days before what would have been Holloway’s 37th birthday. Her family said she planned to go to medical school and become a doctor.
‘I think about what kind of doctor she would have become,’ the grieving mother said. ‘She would be married. Have children. My grandchildren. But you destroyed all this.’
Van der Sloot was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison for extortion and wire fraud. As part of his plea deal, he will be allowed to serve the sentence concurrently with his 28-year sentence for murder in Peru.
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