Original subtitles

[Beth Holloway] From the beginning,

I really had radar, just tunnel vision, on Joran.

But Joran's parents always said the same thing.

He's a very honest boy. He's very sincere.

He… He cries.

He, in a sense, feels guilty that he… that he was there.

Um, he's innocent. He keeps on repeating, "Mom, I don't know anything."

[Beth] They just kept saying what a good boy he is,

he couldn't do this.

But I knew there was more to this story.

Anybody home?

Hello?

Greta said, "Let's go to the van der Sloot home."

And, you know, she has her news crew with her,

with the hopes that we'll get some kind of conversation on camera.

Hi.

I'm Natalee's mom.

Come in, please.

Yes, come in.

Please, stop the cameras. Okay?

Stop the cameras.

-[Greta Van Susteren] Okay. -Yes.

[intriguing music playing]

[Beth] So we went into the dining room,

and Anita's there, Joran's mother.

Anita wanted to be protective,

yet she said things that inadvertently, uh, maybe she shouldn't have said.

Even as early as third or fourth grade,

Joran was having problems with anger management.

He was under the care of a psychiatrist.

It sounded like he was having

noncompliant, oppositional defiant behavior.

It was very alarming to hear her admit to that.

She was just trying to say, "Look, we've had these issues with Joran,

but that would in no way mean that he was responsible

for the death or the murder of Natalee."

But then, when Anita was talking,

Paulus could hardly look at me.

He was sweating so profusely.

I thought, "Wow! He knows what happened."

I felt that 1,000% at that time, at that moment, at that table.

I told them I'm not stopping until I find her.

[tense music playing]

[reporter] 18-year-old Natalee Holloway disappeared

on the final night of a high school graduation trip.

Three of the suspects were back in court here.

None of the men have been charged with any crime.

The frustration is… is unimaginable.

It's unimaginable.

We must have answers.

These individuals have the answers, and we have to have them.

[woman] We have suspects, they are being interrogated,

and we are at a very crucial,

very important moment in our investigation.

[Dilma Arends Geerman] I was there when they arrested

Joran and the Kalpoe brothers.

There was a sense of relief on the island.

People really thought that it's going to be the end of it.

They're going to tell the story, what really happened.

[Gerold Dompig] Joran was 17 when he was arrested.

Normally, underage suspects break down under interrogation.

And I was convinced that we were ready

to try to get a confession.

But Joran was very difficult to interrogate.

Right away, he stuck with a story

that he dropped her off at the Holiday Inn.

But the footage proved that he was lying, so he changed his story.

[reporter] Anita van der Sloot admits her son changed his story.

[Anita] He says, "Mom, I dropped the girl at the beach."

"She wanted to stay there, I left, and I don't know what happened."

[Dompig] Normally, a person who you put under interrogation starts to break down.

But he liked to be the dominant one, the center of attention.

So he started, like, milking the thing, you know?

He changed his story, I mean, I think, 40 times.

So the only thing we knew was this guy's lying, he's lying,

but we don't get a confession.

So we turned to the Kalpoe brothers.

We could verify their stories.

Their story checked out with each other.

The forensic evidence showed that their phones went home

when they said they did.

The only one that we do not believe is Joran.

His phone was lost out of the air,

like when a person takes out the battery.

We confronted him, but still he would not confess.

There was nothing we could prove.

It was just taking so long. It was like… I still had… had no answers.

[reporter 1] Joran was arrested two weeks ago.

[interviewer] Your son has been held for 15 days…

[reporter 2] It's now been three weeks since she vanished.

[reporter 3] After 26 days of interrogation…

[reporter 4] Almost four weeks after Natalee Holloway disappeared,

the hunt takes on a new sense of urgency.

I just had a gut feeling there was more to this story.

And then we hear the news about Paulus van der Sloot.

[reporter 5] Private investigator says he has uncovered evidence

of a direct personal relationship between the lead Aruban police investigator

and Paul van der Sloot, father of the suspect.

It was a totally "holy shit" moment.

What I heard was that Joran came from an influential family.

His dad was an attorney.

He was basically being trained to become a judge.

So he knew how the system worked.

And everybody speculated that the father was, behind the scenes,

working on how we're going to fix this.

[reporter 6] The father, Paul van der Sloot,

he's a judge in training.

Somewhat of an official on the island.

[Dompig] That complicated matters, seriously,

because he had more visiting rights with his father.

And his father being a judge in training was a problem for us

because he could give his son certain advice.

He has his father,

and the benefit of his father's wisdom and knowledge

of the legal system that he is relying on,

that's really creating a problem in this case.

[Dompig] I want to be very clear and honest that,

because it's an island, everybody knows everybody, of course.

[reporter] Mr. van der Sloot, can I just get one question from you?

[Dompig] But there was no connection

between him and the police investigative team.

But later on, the Kalpoe brothers told us that, before they were arrested,

Joran had kind of like a meeting at his home with them.

And told them, "Listen, my father knows best."

"My father told me, 'No body, no crime.'"

"If there's no body, there's no crime."

The fact that the father had access to his son almost every day,

those things were… were not in our favor.

I knew then I had my answer.

He does know.

He did help the boys to get their stories straight,

cover this up.

It all made sense.

Do you feel like the Aruban government is pressing them enough for information?

There was some speculation

because one of the young men was connected

to someone, I guess, high-ranking in the Aruban government

or in the Justice Department,

that there was the insinuation that perhaps he was being protected.

Can you shed any light on that for us?

Well, you know, I think that's a possibility.

It's certainly something in the back of my mind.

[crowd] Joran! Joran! Joran!

[Beth] We were starting to realize

this is much more than just your average 17-year-old boy.

I just thought, "What in the hell have we tangled with?"

[woman] I met Joran in high school.

He was a bright kid, very nice, very comforting.

He had a very easy energy with him.

So to us, seeing Joran handcuffed, we thought it was just something stupid.

And we thought probably Natalee was another tourist

who had a little bit too much fun, and soon it will all be resolved.

We would never imagine that nice, sweet, lovely boy

was capable of harming a human being.

He would always be very kind and protective.

He was just normal,

like the most normal person that you can imagine.

There was nothing that would irk this boy to do something strange

because he had a brilliant future in front of him.

His mother was very calm, very loving, and his father is very reserved.

I'm… I'm sure he… he will never harm a girl.

-I'm absolutely positive. -Absolutely sure.

He would never harm anyone.

Everybody's like, "No. No, no, no. Not this kid."

What we're simply hearing from his friends is that he was just a good guy,

a lot of fun in class,

sometimes want to fall asleep on Monday mornings

after partying on the weekend…

But then you start seeing a different story develop.

Turned out that everybody knew this kid.

Dutch society knew this kid.

The locals knew this kid. But those were two different kids.

[Dompig] Based on witness statements,

Joran's behavior as a 17-year-old was a bit out of control.

He was in the casinos three, four days a week,

sitting at the poker table with older guys.

[reporter] Van der Sloot is drinking below age, driving below age,

gambling below age.

It's just unbelievable what he was allowed to get away with.

[Tony Zumbado] It starts to build up that he's not the angel

that the mom specifically was saying he was.

I hung out with the bartenders,

and the only thing that would come up constantly

was rumors that Joran was a player.

[reporter] Joran van der Sloot had actually put his own webpage up,

describing himself as someone who liked "physical flings" and "girls."

[Zumbado] He would roam the hotels looking for a date,

girls to have sex with.

[Dompig] Joran organized parties with tourists

in hotels where he seemingly had sex with them.

[reporter] Joran prowled the island,

seeking to prey upon young female tourists.

Especially blondes.

[Beth] I was talking to the night manager at the Holiday Inn.

She said, "Of course, we know him well."

"That's Joran van der Sloot."

And then she said,

"Joran likes to prey upon young female American tourists."

He's a known predator,

and this is the person that was last seen with my daughter alive?

I was getting daily briefings from the police.

One day, the update was that during the interrogations,

Joran is no longer denying a crime has been committed.

Now, Joran said, "It's Deepak, he did it."

[Dompig] At that point, it was clear that Joran knew that Natalee was not alive.

[Beth] That was when the tide changed.

When suspects are no longer denying a crime,

then that means the crime happened.

[reporter] Finally, some candor from authorities,

who say this is a murder investigation.

[man 1] They don't believe we're going after the scent.

I think we're going after human remains.

[Dompig] That was a turning point. It was a heavy load.

I felt terrible for her mother.

[reporter] As time goes on, with still no clues,

Natalee's family is thinking the unthinkable.

[Beth] I had to begin to face reality.

That was a big turning point.

That night, I was booking plane flights

to head to Aruba to help Beth find Natalee.

For the first time, Beth looked defeated.

She wasn't sleeping. She wasn't eating much.

You know, we all felt like Beth was dying inside.

The next morning, after I had made it to Aruba,

we're all quiet, just driving through the hills.

I broke the silence and I just asked Beth,

did she think that Joran had killed Natalee?

[tearfully] And she said, yes, she did.

[Beth] I felt like I was going to have an emotional meltdown completely.

I was done. Gone.

I just needed to get somewhere to pray.

Across the island,

there were these large white crosses that were leading up a hillside.

And I went to those crosses and fell to my knees,

and would just pray and grieve and cry out for God to give her back.

When I got to about the fifth cross,

I can't explain it, but I knew I was completely different.

I accepted that God trusted me to take care of her for 18 years.

Button your pajamas.

Now, I was going to trust him to take care of her.

[Sue Remick] Everything started to shift from being a search and rescue

to a search and recover.

[Beth] I had to get to work.

It was time to get justice for my daughter.

Please. Thank you.

[man] They have told everything they know about Natalee,

about what happened.

-[reporter] Restrictions on their release? -There are no restrictions.

[reporter 1] In Aruba, two of three young men

held in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway are now free.

[reporter 2] After changing their original story,

they eventually told authorities

they drove Natalee and 17-year-old Joran van der Sloot

to the beach, where they last saw the couple together.

What I know is that those kids are innocent.

They are punished for nothing.

They are innocent.

[reporter 3] Two brothers who'd been detained for questioning are out of jail.

[reporter 4] How's it feel to be home?

[Zumbado] All of a sudden, the Kalpoe brothers get released.

That was my first moment of, like, despair.

I was… I was furious.

Deepak Kalpoe and Satish Kalpoe were in the car with my daughter.

They had a responsibility to take my daughter back to the hotel

and not dump her out at a beach with a sexual predator.

I believe they were complicit in her death.

[intense music playing]

Two suspects were released yesterday

who were involved in a violent crime against my daughter.

Do not allow these criminals to walk among your citizens.

Help me by not allowing these two to get away with this crime.

I am asking this in the name of my beautiful, intelligent,

and outstanding daughter, who I haven't seen for 36 days,

and for whom I will continue to search until I find her.

Thank you all so much.

The Kalpoe brothers were released

because there were no grounds to hold them.

When Beth called them criminals, that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

When she starts calling them criminals, this is simply not true.

[man] We've done so much to try to locate the body.

The government, police, ambulance, the military…

[woman] What else do you want us to do?

If this would've happened to an Aruban girl in the States,

I wonder how many people would have taken the day off from their work to go search.

[Geerman] The perception was created

that Aruba truly didn't care about Natalee Holloway,

and the truth was just the other way around.

The fact that 40% of the police budget in 2005

was dedicated to just one case should say a lot.

The whole one side of an entire building at the Holiday Inn

was covered with these dishes,

broadcasting that an American girl was missing on Aruba.

That's the economy.

This would never happen in the USA.

[reporter] The investigation was botched from the beginning.

[Dr. Phil] They just need to know there's 270 million people over here

that are going to forget you people exist as a destination.

[Charles Croes] It was almost as if

there was this million pound-blanket on the island

that was just pushing us all down, you know?

And… And we had to fight against that.

[Zumbado] Beth becomes the persona non grata on the island.

That's when it just goes crazy.

I guess, uh, we should point out we're being followed.

It was very uncomfortable and threatening to be in Aruba.

It's just awful.

[man] There he goes.

-[Van Susteren] Where? -[man] The one with the headlights on.

I remember being out with Beth and somebody yelling, you know, "Go home."

It was very different than when we arrived.

[reporter 1] Today, Beth Holloway confronted Deepak Kalpoe…

I will stop at nothing to get answers.

There is nothing that I won't do. There's nowhere that I won't go.

[reporter 2] Are you frustrated with Beth Holloway?

I'm very frustrated because this is doing too much.

We are paying too much now for this incident.

Go home! If you don't like it, go home.

[crowd cheering]

[Beth] I didn't pay any attention to it.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I was just a mother who was desperate.

[producer] Talk to me about the day that Joran is released.

I was devastated. Why?

Why would you do that?

[tense music playing]

[reporter 1] A major development this morning in the Natalee Holloway case,

a judge in Aruba is releasing prime suspect Joran van der Sloot

from jail.

How can this guy be released?

[reporter 2] He could still be considered a suspect in this case,

and could still be charged if more evidence is presented.

[reporter 3] He must remain in a Dutch territory

and be available for questioning under the terms of his release.

Prosecutors determined they didn't have enough to charge him,

so they had to let him go.

[man] He wants to go home.

He feels he hasn't done anything wrong.

He is maintaining his innocence.

[reporter 4] After 12 weeks in custody,

Joran van der Sloot is getting what he wants.

[reporter 5] Joran, how does it feel to be going home?

[Dompig] It's difficult because the police and the attorney's office,

these are separate powers.

If we had a confession or a body, it would be enough to go to court.

But we never got those, so we had to release him.

[Anita] Joran and my husband has gone through a lot of slander,

based on speculation, based on rumors, on gossips.

We always went for the truth.

[Beth] They're all out high-fiving each other,

Anita's hugging him, and they're just squeezing him.

You know, she's so happy. "Oh, my baby."

I felt anger. Yeah, it's anger.

I mean, I don't want to keep talking about it, how I felt.

So the suspects who took my daughter from Carlos'n Charlie's

on the last night of her senior trip,

who were the last to be seen with her alive,

and who offered at least a dozen different versions

of what they did with her,

are now free.

Natalee's handwriting on her immigration card

stated the duration of her stay would be for four nights.

She has been gone… She has been gone for 97 days.

[Natalee giggling]

[Beth] Do you have wet hair?

Here comes Natalee. Do you wanna dry your hair?

What's your name?

I'm Natalee.

[Beth] Last I saw Natalee was at 4:00 in the morning,

on their way to the airport

to have the most fabulous trip of her life.

And, um, I'm not… I'm not going anywhere.

-[girl] Hey, Natalee. -Hello.

[Beth] I know that I will find Natalee.

I know that, and I will bring Natalee home.

[tense music playing]

When I got back home to Alabama,

it felt like the whole world went on without me,

but I was stranded in time.

-This is Natalee's room? -[Beth] Uh-huh.

To be in her room, you know,

that was painful.

Just left it pretty much as she had it.

And these were some dresses that we had just bought for sorority rush.

When Beth came back without her, it was heartbreaking.

At the end of the summer, we all go off to our different colleges.

It was really hard to know that Natalee wasn't going with us.

By our freshman year, we had gone ahead and set up a dorm room for Natalee.

So there's this part of me that's obviously in denial

because there's still no answer, and, boy, was that exploited in the media.

-Every parent's worst nightmare… -Worst nightmare…

Can you imagine finding yourself in another country,

on an island, looking for your little girl?

[Madison Greer] The media, they were, like, hounding us at this point.

Any way, shape, or form they could contact us, they would.

"We need a statement. We want to ask you questions about this."

At some point, you just say yes.

I want to go to Claire Fierman, a friend of Natalee Holloway.

Hey, Claire.

Hey.

Claire, when did you realize Natalee was not there to return home?

One of our friends came and found me and Katherine in the airport

and told us Natalee wasn't flying home, that they did not know where she was.

[Grace] What did you do?

Well, we had to get on the plane immediately after that.

-And we got on the plane-- -[Grace] Nobody tried to call her?

Her cell phone was in her room at the time.

She didn't take her cell phone with her.

Did you try and call her before you got on the plane?

No. Well, we knew that she didn't have her cell phone with her, so…

[Grace] Why would anybody know she didn't have her phone with her?

They saw her phone in the hotel room. She hadn't taken it with her that night.

It seems to me that everybody keeps their cell phone with them.

Why wouldn't she have it?

But you're telling me people did try to call her, right?

Being asked questions like, "Why would you have let her drink?"

"How did you let this happen?" "Why didn't you call her?"

[Greer] "Did she have a tattoo?" "How many drinks did she drink that day?"

"Why do you think he picked her?"

I mean, it was awful.

When you hear stories that people started drinking in the mid-afternoon

and drank through the night, that's kind of excessive.

[Claire Fierman] It was like they had to have a villain.

So it's our fault.

"Is it my fault? Is it her fault?"

You know, and that's an excruciating experience.

[Greer] We were over here distraught and struggling,

and meanwhile you've got Joran out there doing whatever he wanted to do.

[reporter] After nearly three months of jail and interrogations,

Joran van der Sloot is now a college student

in the Dutch town of Arnhem.

While Aruban police say he remains a suspect,

he is in the Netherlands without any restrictions.

[Greer] He got to live life and be a college student,

not being blamed for anything, not being held accountable.

And I'm like, "Someone step in here."

[man, in Dutch] Does Joran know more about the case or not?

Tonight the mystery comes to an end.

[Beth, in English] Peter de Vries is a very well-known investigative reporter

from the Netherlands.

He believed 100% that Joran was guilty.

He wanted to… to solve this case.

Peter had a connection with a man who did some undercover work for him.

Patrick van der Eem arranged to do a surreptitious recording of Joran

in a vehicle.

[Peter de Vries] Uh, we did a hidden camera operation

for a couple of months,

and that's the key.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Patrick, in Dutch] What do you have in your bag?

A little gift for you, man. Something small, but great.

[Beth] Patrick van der Eem had befriended Joran.

It was really the first time that we were getting a candid look at Joran.

He was talking without knowing he was being recorded.

So I thought, "This may be it."

[Patrick, in Dutch] Will they ever find her, do you think?

-No. -[Patrick] No?

I'm done with it.

[Patrick] But where the fuck is she, Joran?

She'll never be found.

[in English] He knows exactly what happened. In every detail.

[Patrick, in Dutch] She's dead, isn't she?

[Joran] Of course.

Yes. That is, there is just something… Something happened there.

[Patrick] Of course something happened. She's no longer around, is she?

[Joran] The ocean's big, isn't it?

[Beth] Joran didn't accept any responsibility,

but he really did place himself with Natalee

at that moment that she died.

That's the game changer.

[in Dutch] It's all probably going to work out even better than I'd hoped.

[Patrick] Yeah? Why's that?

I mean, now I'll probably get a lot in damages too.

[Beth] It was shocking to me.

We have the confession from the main suspect.

It felt like the truth was finally breaking loose of this giant iceberg,

like it's beginning to chip away, okay?

We're getting a little movement.

[reporter] Two days before the program aired in Holland,

Joran called in to a local TV show to deny his own tape revelations.

Van der Sloot claimed that everything he told Patrick was a lie,

meant to impress his new friend.

He's the son of a lawyer, of a judge. He knows how it works.

[Beth] Even though he changed his story immediately,

I was still pretty hopeful something was going to happen with Joran.

Maybe a rearrest or something like that would be forthcoming.

[Dompig] After the undercover operation of the Dutch journalist,

Aruba succeeded in reopening the case.

But the judge didn't accept the footage as a confession.

It didn't give them what they hoped it would give them, sadly.

The main thing that was lacking in this case

is that we never found Natalee.

And that frustration of the family, I do understand.

[Beth] It was crushing.

It was like they always push you so close and then, bam, done, over.

[Greer] It made us all very angry that he'd gotten away with it again.

There was definitely a shift after that.

The missing piece of the puzzle has always been words from Joran van der Sloot.

[reporter] What are your memories of Natalee like?

I don't really have that many memories. I mean… I… I knew her for one night.

I should've stayed home, this wouldn't have happened to me.

[Zumbado] All of a sudden, Joran was on TV and smiling.

I couldn't believe that.

It's about time that people get to see the other side of the story.

Joran van der Sloot is talking.

The former suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway

tells a Dutch newspaper

he would have liked for the case to have gone to trial.

Joran becomes a reality TV star

because the American media can't have enough of him.

In an interview last night, van der Sloot told his side of the story.

Van der Sloot's defense… are you sitting down?

She'd been drinking, but she wasn't drunk. I mean, she… she knew what she was doing.

[Zumbado] Here we had the prime suspect

continuing to say what he was doing to her, fondling her,

blatantly saying ugly things about her.

[Joran] She was laying on top of me, kissing,

and she put her hands in my pants and I put my hands in her pants.

And the media was loving it because that was ratings.

[Remick] It did feel shocking.

You could tell that he felt like he was untouchable.

He seemed to taunt Beth.

She was talking about her mom.

-She told me her mom was Hitler's sister. -[man] What does that mean?

-I don't know what it means-- -[man] Was it part of a conversation?

No, it was, uh… It came up.

[Beth] He was just the most arrogant asshole.

He loved the attention that he was receiving.

And it was also… It was a way… It was a way to make a buck.

So he was charging for these.

Everybody was tuned in to, what's he going to say now?

It wasn't about, where is Natalee?

And then the tabloid magazines are coming in,

and they start creating stories of what could've happened,

that she's pregnant, and that she's living someplace else.

[Beth] When I would go into the grocery store

and see the tabloids sensationalizing the gory details,

it was terrible to… to see all that.

Joran van der Sloot says he was offered money by a stranger

in return for a blonde girl.

[Joran] He just handed me $10,000,

grabbed the… the girl by the arm and he went to the boat.

With each interview,

it was just a continuance of his many lies.

[Van Susteren] After we conducted this interview,

Joran told us that he had been lying

and that he had not sold Natalee Holloway to a stranger.

I think it just showed that Joran had this narcissistic personality.

He couldn't let it go. He couldn't let the limelight go.

There's a reason why he lies.

He's covering something up so horrible that he… he can't tell the truth.

[man] In the period between 2006-2010,

if you were keeping a scorecard

for the running conflict between Joran and Beth,

Joran was winning hands down.

Do you understand… I mean, how could a girl just disappear?

[Joran] I don't know. I think that's the million-dollar question.

[John Q. Kelly] Joran was capitalizing on the story,

gaining celebrity, making money, and sort of thumbing his nose at her.

That was a very low point for Beth,

which is why Beth brought me on board.

Even while I knew that Joran was spewing lies,

ultimately, I knew the possibility of pursuing actual litigation

was very unlikely because of the jurisdictional issues

and the Aruban legal process.

But I was able to get he and his father served with wrongful death complaints.

[man] In the lawsuit,

it suggests that your parents knew that you were basically a sexual predator.

I'm not a sexual predator,

and, uh, my parents don't know what I do when I go out.

The hope of the wrongful death suit

was just to let Joran know he wasn't welcome in the US,

and if he ever did come here, it was going to be ugly.

Joran never set foot in the States again after that.

But Joran always thought that he was one step ahead of everybody

and, you know, could outsmart everybody.

And I guess that's why he had the nerve, the audacity,

to contact me about meeting with him face-to-face in Aruba.

I thought he was insane to even be suggesting this to me.

But I wanted to play this out and see where he's going with it.

I thought it was complete bullshit.

You know, I didn't believe a word of what he was saying.

I knew he had no intention of giving any truthful information whatsoever.

But I told Beth that there might be a play there

to get him trapped on a extortion wire fraud charge.

If we could get him to accept part of his payment from a wire transfer.

[Beth] If Joran has balls enough to step into this arena,

he better know what he's doing.

Because in the United States,

wire fraud and extortion are a federal crime.

[Kelly] Have a seat.

Let's go. I'm ready to tangle with the devil.

Are you ready to be really specific where Natalee is?

I can't believe I'm doing it, but I… I'm ready.

[tense music playing]

[music ends]