Beth Holloway appears in Netflix's three-part documentary Taken: Natalee Holloway, which reached No. 1 on the U.S. television chart on November 6, two days after its November 4 premiere. The series moved ahead of Love Is Blind in the United States rankings.
Natalee Holloway on Netflix
The rise put new attention on a case that began more than 20 years ago, when Natalee Holloway was 18 and traveled to Aruba with classmates from Mountain Brook High School in Alabama in May 2005. She was last seen leaving a nightclub with Joran van der Sloot, Deepak Kalpoe and Satish Kalpoe, and she never returned to her hotel or boarded her flight home.
Beth Holloway traveled to Aruba to help find her daughter, and she later recalled that she immediately believed Joran van der Sloot was lying. The documentary places her account alongside the case timeline, showing how the search moved from a missing-person investigation to years of disputed statements and shifting claims.
FBI footage and recordings
The series includes previously unseen footage from an FBI operation involving Joran van der Sloot and John Q. Kelly, along with previously unseen recordings of van der Sloot discussing the money he expected to receive in exchange for information. In those recordings, he accepted a $25,000 down payment and referred to the remaining $225,000 as the bigger part of the deal.
Van der Sloot directed Kelly to a home where he claimed his father buried Natalee Holloway's remains, but building permits later showed that the house did not exist when she disappeared. He eventually admitted that he had made up the story, and the documentary says the blouse presented as potentially belonging to Holloway was later determined to be part of a scam.
Joran van der Sloot account
Van der Sloot was arrested multiple times during the investigation but was not charged at the time in connection with Holloway's disappearance. In 2010, he attempted to extort $250,000 from her family in exchange for information about where her remains could be found, and in 2023 he pleaded guilty in the United States to federal extortion and wire fraud charges.
As part of that plea agreement, he gave an account of Holloway's killing. Her remains have never been recovered, and former Aruban deputy police chief Gerold Dompig discusses the investigation and van der Sloot's changing accounts in the documentary.
