‘Taken: Natalee Holloway’ Director Goes Inside Biggest Bombshells Revealed In Series

0:00Joran van der Sloot: The disappearance of Natalie Holloway was one of America's most high-profile missing person cases. On Memorial Day weekend in 2005, the 18-year-old was in Aruba with her classmates celebrating their high school graduation. On the final night of the trip, she was last seen leaving a nightclub and getting into a car with three young men, including a local 17-year-old named Joran van der Sloot. The next day, Natalie never showed up at the airport, and her mother, Beth Holloway, was alerted that her daughter was missing. Beth immediately made her way to the island, and within hours of landing, confronted Vandersloot.

0:31Joran van der Sloot: Beth said that from that first encounter, she suspected he knew exactly what had happened to her daughter. Despite the widespread media coverage and exhaustive searches on land and in the water, Natalie was never found, and Vandersloot was never charged with her murder. In 2010, he attempted to extort a quarter of a million dollars from Beth in exchange for disclosing the whereabouts of Natalie's remains. He provided false information about the location, but had already pocketed$25 ,000. Just months later, five years to the day of Natalie's disappearance, he killed 21-year-old Stephanie Flores in Peru.

1:03Joran van der Sloot: While serving a 28-year prison sentence for that murder, in 2023, the Peruvian government allowed him to be brought to the United States to face federal wire fraud and extortion charges stemming from his 2010 ploy. As part of a plea agreement in that case, he confessed to killing Natalie and dumping her body in the ocean. The story of her disappearance and her mother's 18-year search for answers is featured in Take In Natalie Holloway, and one of the directors of the series, Dani Sloan, joins Forbes True Crime to discuss.

1:37Joran van der Sloot: Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, the host of Forbes True Crime. Joining me now is Dani Sloan. She's the director of the new Netflix docuseries, Take In Natalie Holloway. Dani, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. Back in 2005, the disappearance of Natalie Holloway was a story that gripped not only the nation, but the entire world. Natalie Holloway was 18 years old, and she had her entire life ahead of her. She just graduated high school, and she was going to college in just a couple of months. But to celebrate this really monumental milestone in her life, she was on a class trip to Aruba.

2:12Joran van der Sloot: She was with her classmates celebrating the moment. And on the last night of that trip, she disappeared without a trace. She was never seen again. She never made it to the airport to head home. So to start off the conversation, what drew you to the story? And why did you think now was the time to retell it?

2:31Beth Holloway: You know, I, like so many other people, I remember this story when it happened. I was, you know, like end of middle school, early high school. And I have these like very vivid memories of being in the grocery store with my mother and like seeing the tabloids and seeing Natalie's name splash, you know, her photo and just, you know, the sort of disparate details of the case kind of like lived in my brain for all of these years. But it wasn't until 2023 when the case popped up in the news again, because of, you know, what we, what we talk about in episode three of the series that it sort of inspired me to dig back in and go, wait, like what actually happened here?

3:07Beth Holloway: And didn't we know that you were van der sleut had done it all these years ago like why is this just breaking news now and what i found was you know of course a much you know bigger story and this 20-year quest um you know led by

3:20Joran van der Sloot: beth holloway to get answers i think that's a good point because i'm one of those people too i was a few years younger than natalie holloway i remember seeing her picture on every single magazine when you went to the grocery store constantly on the news on different episodes of things like dateline and those types of shows just talking about this case. And you learned so much about this case from watching your series. What was something you learned diving back in in 2023?

3:48Beth Holloway: I mean, there was so much. Obviously, you know, Beth's involvement. You know, she was a familiar face. I think a lot of people knew Beth Holloway was Natalie Holloway's mother and had seen her do various interviews. But I think to really dive into the behind the scenes of understanding that she was kind of the machination that kept this going all these years. And if not for her determination, you know, those answers probably would still allude all of us as to what happened that night. So I think, I think that was a big thing. The other big piece is, you know, I sort of vaguely knew that Joran had been doing these interviews, but I don't think I realized the extent of the lies that he told.

4:25Beth Holloway: And of course, the fact that he extorted, you know, Beth, uh, in 2010 and just how horrific that experience was for for her i agree i mean i remember back in

4:39Joran van der Sloot: 2023 when we got the news that he ultimately confessed to it i thought as well didn't we already know this wasn't he the person who did that that i mean i thought like we all knew that he was the person who killed natalie holloway and i just was struck watching your series that it seemed like every time Beth Holloway, who perhaps is one of the most persistent people in this world, I mean, I just can't imagine what she was going through. I can't imagine that resilience, that resolve that one must have to find answers for her daughter. It seemed like every time she was so close to getting them, a door was slammed in her face.

5:13Joran van der Sloot: And I was shocked that she arrives in Aruba just a couple hours after finding out that her daughter didn't make get to the airport. And she goes to Joran Van der Sloot's house that night. And she immediately in her gut says, this guy's involved somehow in my daughter's disappearance. What were those conversations with her over 20 years later, her reflecting back on that time?

5:38Beth Holloway: I mean, it was astonishing. I mean, to your point, like, we all knew the name. It was never a mystery. Like, typically when you think about these cases, and, you know, I've told many of these stories before, I've obviously watched many of these stories, you know, depicted in documentary form before, there is a period of whodunit, what happened, kind of piecing things together. That actually didn't exist here. She knew within the first few hours, especially talking to Natalie's friends from that night, you know, who were on their way back to the U.S. while Beth was on her way down to Aruba, the name Euron van der Sloot.

6:16Beth Holloway: He gave his real name. They knew. I mean, they didn't know all of the details. He had presented as a, you know, a tourist just like them, which obviously when Beth got to the island and, you know, linked up with some of the locals, she very quickly realized that none of that was true. But she knew his name from really the first few hours of this. So it's kind of astonishing to think about. There was no period of whodunit. And I think, you know, 20 years later, she's thinking about this. Like, it is that. Like, this should have been resolved. We should have had answers that first day. And as she kind of reflects back and thinks about it all these years later, I think she is kind of just met with a, my God, really, how did it take so long?

6:55Beth Holloway: Like she can really access that frustration again when she thinks about the fact that she knew a lot of what she eventually, you know, confirmed to be true all these years later within those first few hours.

7:07Joran van der Sloot: To that point, she's frustrated saying, hey, hey, why is Yaron Vander Sloot the last known person with my daughter, this person where the locals of Aruba are saying, oh, we know him. The night manager at the hotel goes, oh, he's a essentially a predator. We know him with the young tourists. Why isn't anything being done about him? But then on the flip side, you have the locals in Aruba and they're getting really upset with the way the American media is perceiving them or this perception on them that they aren't doing enough when someone said, hey, a huge chunk of our police budget that year was spent on this one case, about$3 million was spent on this case looking for Natalie.

7:49Joran van der Sloot: We're doing everything we can. I know that you had footage in the series of, I believe, a lawyer at the time in Aruba saying, if an Aruban girl went missing in America, would Americans be having the same fervor that we're having? We're taking our days off work trying to find her. What did you think of that clashing of perception of Americans thinking Aruba's not doing enough while Aruba is getting really aggravated with the way they're being portrayed in American media?

8:19Beth Holloway: It was super important for us to be able to represent all of the different sides here because, you know, and ultimately this is what the power of documentary and the power of documentary series is. Like we don't have to, you know, tell the story in a quick news package. We don't have to tell it in a really formatted quick way, you know, you are able to really kind of build and see the way that this pressure cooker kind of happened. And I think that that's a piece of what's so interesting about the story and a piece that really nobody knew until, you know, years later that it was this perfect storm.

8:52Beth Holloway: And it really starts with, you know, Beth being frustrated about not getting these answers, realizing that she kind of has a card to play with the media. You know, the media comes down because they realize this is a good story, but because, you know, Beth is down there kind of making noise and talking to the local stations and talking to local reporters. It gets the attention of the national media outlets in the U.S. And everybody goes down, and it becomes this, like, kind of perfect storm pressure cooker tornado. So, you know, where it landed with the people of Aruba and, you know, with Beth did not happen in a vacuum, and it didn't happen overnight.

9:28Beth Holloway: It was weeks and weeks and weeks of, you know, satellite dishes on the on you know every kind of building that there was down there constant press conferences you know pressure you know also like the reporting of misinformation i i you know the the incredible ruben reporter delma who we interviewed and tony um you know who worked for a u.s outlet talked about the fact that they're getting pressure to come up with stories every day and so even as we've dug back into the archival i mean the amount that we didn't have time for in this series about the misinformation and the lies. So you kind of can see how it all just gets misconstrued and the people of Aruba start to become frustrated because the things that are being said about their island, like they didn't do this.

10:13Beth Holloway: This was Euron who did this. And the kind of focus starts to get on them and it creates this kind of powder keg.

10:21Joran van der Sloot: I think based on what you said in the first response, you were a very similar age. And when we grew up listening or hearing this story, it was almost a cautionary tale. Natalie Holloway's disappearance and other stories like it, where if you're going out with your friends, you go out with those friends and you leave with all of those friends. There's a buddy system. No one is left alone. And Natalie Holloway's friends, you talk to them in this series. And they said at the time the media was hounding them. They felt really exploited by the media. They felt really unfairly criticized by the media that somehow this was their fault when you're on, on the other hand, is just walking around a free man without a care in the world, seemingly in the Netherlands.

11:07Joran van der Sloot: How did you get her friends to come back and revisit this really, really painful time with you? And not only that, but trust you because of their past experiences with the media.

11:17Beth Holloway: It wasn't easy. I mean, look, I I'm always a big advocate for, you know, I want people to sit down and tell their stories and feel like they have a platform when they feel safe. And so it was a lot of conversation. It was a lot of dialogue with them. But ultimately, you know, we wanted to portray what happened back then. And I think through a 2026 lens, like you see those clips. I mean, Natalie, you know, not going out with a cell phone. I mean, think about it. Like back then, we didn't have SIM cards in cell phones. Like that, you know, we, her cell phone was just like a piece of metal that like wasn't doing anything for her.

11:52Beth Holloway: So it wasn't that weird that she didn't go out with a cell phone. And to your point, like, you know, we didn't we didn't know back then about the buddy system. Like, I remember when I went to college and my mom talking to me about, you know, covering my drink and, you know, different ways to be safe. But, you know, Beth even says in 2005, like they were from a small community in Alabama. They went on the trip with chaperones. I mean, God, I went on a senior year of high school trip. I didn't have chaperones, you know, like they were extra cautious, I think, in a lot of ways. And so to see the way, you know, the trauma that was really inflicted on her friends and how hard it was for them to kind of live through that, you know, my hope is that this was cathartic for them to be able to sit down all these years later and for people to really see what happened.

12:35Beth Holloway: Because, again, you don't get that in a four minute news package. You don't get that, you know, just looking at the footage back then. But hearing them talk about how traumatizing that was for them, I hope people really can sit with that and see the kind of ripple effects and damage that was done.

12:51Joran van der Sloot: And to that point, I mean, you never think something bad is going to happen to you or your group of friends until it does. I mean, everyone's mom was telling them, cover your drinks, do this, do X or Y. And you always thought, hey, is my mom being a little much? Is she being overprotective? And then, you know, because you never think that will happen to you. But in your series, you talk to, like I said, Natalie's friends. You talk to her mother. You talk to law enforcement. you have the first public conversation with the former deputy police of chief in Aruba at the time. He hasn't talked publicly about this case in over 20 years.

13:28Joran van der Sloot: You spoke with him for this series. Was there a conversation at all that you had that changed the trajectory or your perspective of where this story or series was going? You know, he, again, in kind of making sure people feel comfortable and making sure that

13:44Beth Holloway: but they feel like they're going to get a fair shake and be able to kind of say what they want to say. You know, it took a lot of conversation to get him comfortable with participating. Obviously, you see he didn't go on camera. It was an audio only interview. You know, so you see him in archival footage, but you don't see him in present day. You know, I think the idea that he had been really trained in a way very similar to, you know, people in the U.S., law enforcement in the U.S. But what none of them had trained for and none of them could anticipate was the media pressure cooker. I mean, you hear him say, like, he became the spokesperson and his job became, you know, updating everyone.

14:24Beth Holloway: And, you know, coming to the table every day and doing these press conferences and talking to the media, like, he wasn't prepared for that. Nothing he had ever done had prepared him for that. And so, you know, you think about the perspective of the law enforcement in Aruba, like, you know, I think everyone can debate if missteps were made or if things should have been done later. You hear him in his interview even debating that among, you know, kind of internally, you feel that struggle, I think. But the idea that this was not the job he kind of signed up for, to be the spokesperson for what was going on on a day-to-day basis, I think, you know, he says.

14:59And I think it's kind of the perfect analogy.

15:02Beth Holloway: Like I'm a surgeon, I need to be on the operating table. You know, the surgeon's not the one outside the hospital doing the press conference telling, you know, everybody how the surgery went. And he was kind of doing double duty in that way. So I think it gave me kind of a deeper understanding of like all the things that, you know, kind of went wrong and what really happened here.

15:23Joran van der Sloot: I remember back then just how nonstop this story was. And I guess I didn't realize how on the ground it was really hard for people, journalists, the police to be updating people and to be trying to find new angles and new headlines and updates on the story. And I mean, just the way people talk about stories then versus now, it feels like night and day when you were looking back at that old footage and that old coverage. Did anything shock you?

15:54Beth Holloway: You know, and some of this made it in, some of this didn't. I mean, I will just say I've been doing this for a long time. I've done a lot of other different, you know, series and features for different platforms, Netflix especially. I don't think I've ever had, you know, access to this much footage before. Every single day of that summer, I mean, this was the period from May into about September, right, of the coverage of this case. And then obviously, you know, in episodes two and three we jump a couple years later, I've never seen this much coverage of a case. I mean, it was wall-to-wall monoculture in the zeitgeist.

16:30Beth Holloway: It was everywhere. And every single news anchor was down there. This wasn't just, oh, let's send a couple of reporters and see what happens. You know, this was the big names. Like, every single reporter you can think of and seeing, you know, these people 20 years later who were still very prominent figures in the media, was surprising. I think a piece of it for me, and again, some of this made it in, some of it didn't, but there were tips being called in constantly. There were psychics picking up the phone and telling the police that they knew where Natalie was. There was a lot of involvement from the very early blogosphere.

17:12Beth Holloway: A lot of what we see now on TikTok and on social media. This was a period pre-social media, but people were really engaged in this and calling in and, you know, saying things and giving tips and the mountain of just information that was coming at law enforcement and also coming at Beth. Beth had a tip line too, and people were calling her, had access to her. It was running everyone ragged. I think the, to be able to really see the toll that that took on everyone from law enforcement, honestly, to the media, to Beth, it's pretty astonishing how how much that just kind of took them in different directions when at the end of the day everyone knew it was yaron from from that first minute including beth and beth did not stop

17:57Joran van der Sloot: though searching for answers 18 years later though finally because of a proffer agreement yaron van der sloot he did confess to killing natalie he hasn't been charged for her murder though. He's still sitting in a Peruvian jail because he murdered another woman. And I'm curious, I know Beth talked a lot about this feeling that there's no closure here, but this nightmare of wondering what happened to Natalie for sure feels complete for her. That feels like that's settled. That nightmare is over. But do you think there's going to be justice for Euron in this case? Do you think that he's going to get in trouble?

18:35Joran van der Sloot: Is he going to serve time for this crime?

18:39Beth Holloway: Look, I think there is always the hope. I think it would take a lot to reopen the case, right? Like we're talking about a case where there have never been any forensics. There's no body. You know, DNA is obviously hard to come by. And that is why he was able to kind of spin these stories for all of these years and tell these different lies because there, you know, there was nothing to sort of counter what he was saying. So, look, I think that there's always a chance. I think that there's always, you know, you never say never in a case like this, right? This is 20 years of, you know, it was never good enough for Bath, you know, to just sort of take Yoron at his word that something had happened.

19:19The fact that she actually got the truth out of him, like she's an unstoppable force to anything she puts her mind through.

19:26Beth Holloway: So, you know, you can never say never, but I think it's tricky when, you know, everything kind of lives in Yoron's head. and you know it's without forensics it's hard to kind of imagine that there's a path here but look I mean he's he's in prison in Peru for 28 years he got a kind of concurrent sentence of 20 years for the extortion and wire fraud so you know there's there's justice I think Beth feels a sense of closure she says in the series and I think she's kind of able to move on to whatever the next chapter is. And if this, you know, kind of presents itself a different opportunity again, she will be the first one to take it.

20:08Beth Holloway: But I think getting those answers really did give her the piece that kind of eluded her all these years.

20:13Joran van der Sloot: And just watching this again, the fact that Yoram was able to just change his story, someone said 40 times at least, just the fact that he was saying these really despicable things about Natalie Holloway in interviews, he lavished this attention, the fact that he kept changing up his story, the fact that it seemed like he could admit to this and then get away with it time and time again. I mean, it was just really, really disturbing to see. But 20 years later, what do you want viewers to take away from your series?

20:46Beth Holloway: First and foremost, I think, you know, and what people have been taking away is, you know, Beth's resilience. I think, you know, I'm a mother myself and it is really inspirational to go like there is no end to a mother's love and a mother's devotion and what what we will do for our children um and beth is like that personified times a hundred like times a million she is she is just an incredible model of how grief can kind of manifest in a way that's really different right like she's not you know the grieving parent you know waiting for law enforcement to come to her there's obviously nothing wrong with with that especially when you you know, you're in a situation where you feel that you can trust what is going on behind the scenes.

21:31Beth Holloway: She did not in this situation, and she really mobilized. And I think she has forged a really different path for what the role of a parent can look like when the unimaginable happens. And I know that she kind of privately has, you know, worked with other families who have found themselves in this really awful club of having lost a child so publicly or lost a loved one so publicly and she has really like been there for people who have found themselves in this, in this situation. She didn't have that roadmap laid out for her. She really kind of forged it herself. Um, and you know, I think the other thing is that it's never too late, right?

22:10Beth Holloway: Like 20 years passed and the truth is still really meaningful. If that's what you're seeking, no matter where you are in life, no matter what has happened to you, like there is closure there. And I think she is kind of the embodiment of what can happen when you, you know, pursue something and get the result that you ultimately want. It did not bring back Natalie. She says that in the series, but she feels a very different sense of peace. And I think it's important when people are grieving or going through something really hard to figure out what is going to give you that sense of peace. And I think she did early on.

22:43Beth Holloway: And I think that was sort of her saving grace all the way through.

22:46Joran van der Sloot: Take It Natalie Holloway is out on Netflix now. Dani Sloan, thank you so much for your time today for this conversation. And you're welcome back anytime.