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Jordan van der Sloot has finally confessed to the murder of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway. As a result, her mother, Beth Holloway, was finally able to get some sort of closure.
Speaking to van der Sloot in a courtroom in Birmingam on Wednesday, Beth told the confessed killer, “You terminated her dreams, her potential, her possibilities, when you bludgeoned her to death in 2005.
“I paid my daughter’s killer money. That’s shocking. I don’t think anyone can really wrap their mind around what that means.”
Holloway vanished while in Aruba on a high school graduation trip in 2005. Her disappearance soon became international news as authorities searched for her and for suspects in her abduction.
Jordan van der Sloot was long considered a suspect as witnesses claimed they saw him and two other men leave a bar in Aruba with Holloway.
They were arrested in connection to her disappearance multiple times, in 2005 and 2007, but each time were released due to insufficient evidence.
He was eventually indicted in 2010 in the United States on charges of extortion and wire fraud for attempting to sell information about Natalee Holloway’s remains to her family in exchange for $250,000.
Beth Holloway also told van der Sloot in court on Wednesday, “For 19 years you denied killing Natalee Holloway. Your lies have caused indiscernible pain. You have finally admitted that you murdered her.
“You are a killer and I want you to remember that.”
Shortly after he was indicted in the United States, Jordan van der Sloot was arrested and convicted after confessing to the 2010 murder of another woman, Stephany Flores, in Peru.
He is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence there.
In his confession of the murder of Natalee Holloway, Joran van der Sloot said he smashed her head with a cinder block and dragged her into the ocean after she refused his sexual advances.
“I have considered your confession to the brutal murder of Natalee Holloway,” Judge Anna Manasco told van der Sloot on Wednesday.
“You have brutally murdered in separate incidents years apart two beautiful women who refused your sexual advances.”
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the extortion and wire fraud offenses in the U.S. He will be returned to Peru and that sentence will be served concurrently with his Peruvian sentence.
Joran van der Sloot has never been officially charged with the murder of Natalee Holloway despite his new confession and previously allegedly confessing to the murder while in prison in 2016.
Holloway’s body has never been found.