- The disappearance of Alabama student Natalee Holloway remained a mystery for 18 years before Dutch national Joran van der Sloot confessed to bludgeoning her to death in May 2005 on an Aruban beach.
- Natalee, 18, was on a trip to Aruba with her classmates to celebrate their high school graduation when she vanished, and her body has never been found. She had last been seen outside a nightclub at 1:30 am that morning, leaving the venue in a silver Honda alongside van der Sloot and two Surinamese brothers, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.
- Van der Sloot confessed in 2023 as part of a plea deal in an Alabama federal court, where he pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud charges for scamming Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway, out of $25,000 in 2010 by falsely promising to reveal the location of her daughter's remains.
- The killer said he beat Natalee to death with a cinder block after she rejected his sexual advances and disposed of her body in the ocean.
- Under the plea agreement, van der Sloot received a 20-year sentence that will run concurrently with the 28-year prison term he is currently serving in Peru for the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Peruvian student Stephany Flores Ramirez.
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