Joran van der Sloot claims he's now born-again Christian after confessing Natalie Holloway murder

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Thursday, October 19, 2023

Eighteen years after the 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalie Holloway during a senior high school class trip to Aruba, Joran van der Sloot, the man long suspected to be her killer, has confessed to murdering her after she rejected his sexual advances on a beach in the former Dutch colony but says he is now a born-again Christian.

Van der Sloot’s confession comes as part of a plea deal connected to federal extortion charges to which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Wednesday, ABC News reported.

Though he denied killing Holloway in a 2006 interview with Chris Cuomo, claiming he left her on a beach, van der Sloot explained in a partial transcript of a proffer meet with prosecutors on Oct. 3 how he smashed her face with a cinderblock then dumped her body in the ocean after she refused to have sex with him on the beach.

Get Our Latest News for FREE

Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.

Subscribe

He said the night he killed Holloway on the beach she really wanted to go back to her hotel.

"She asked to go back to her hotel but I was just trying to get dropped off a little bit further away from her hotel so we could walk back to her hotel and I might still get a chance to be with her,” he told investigators in a recording of his confession.

He explained that he was able to convince her to spend time with him on the beach before she went back to the Marriott Hotel.

“We lay down together in the sand and we start kissing each other. I get her to kiss me again and we start kissing each other, and I start feeling her up again and she tells me, no. She tells me she doesn't want [me] to feel her up. I insist. I keep feeling her up either way, and she knees me. She ends up kneeing me in the crotch,” he said.

"When she knees me in the crotch, I get up on the beach and I kick her extremely hard in the face. She's laying down unconscious, possibly even dead, but definitely unconscious. And I see right next to her there's a huge cinderblock laying on the beach."

Van der Sloot, a Dutch citizen who is now 36, says he smashed Holloway’s face in until it collapsed.

“I take this and, yeah, I smash her head in with it completely. Her face basically collapses in. Even though it's dark, I can see her face is collapsed in,” he explained.

He said he became afraid after smashing Holloway’s face with the cinderblock.

"I decide to take her and put her into the ocean. So I grab her and I half pull and half walk with her into the ocean. I push her off. I walk up to about my knees into the ocean and I push her off into the sea,” he said. "After that, I get out. I walk home."

Holloway’s body was never found and in 2012, an Alabama judge signed an order declaring her legally dead, CNN reported. Van der Sloot would go on to kill again in 2010. He confessed to the murder of Peruvian woman Stephany Flores.

Judge Anna Manasco told van der Sloot that she factored his criminal history into the sentence she gave him for the federal extortion charges.

“I have considered your confession to the brutal murder of Natalee Holloway,” she said. “You have brutally murdered, in separate incidents years apart, two beautiful women who refused your sexual advances.”

Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, confronted van der Sloot at his sentencing on Wednesday.

 "Joran, for 18 years you denied killing my daughter," and now "you have finally admitted that you, in fact, have murdered her."

"You are a killer. I want you to remember that every time that jail door slams," she said.” Even if you have finally confessed ... you can't be tried here for her murder. But I do employ the court to give you the maximum sentence possible," Beth Holloway said.

Van der Sloot attempted to convince the court and Holloway’s family that he is a changed man.

"I am not the same kind of person today as I was then, I have given my heart to Jesus Christ," he said.

Natalee’s younger sister, Kaitlyn Holloway, told The New York Post that she is not convinced of van der Sloot’s religious conversion.

“He is a monster and even laying eyes on him made me feel sick inside,” she said. “He did apologize, and he said something along the lines that he gave himself to God and that he’s a Christian — that he’s a changed man. I really don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it was a sincere apology considering all the damage he has done. I think it was some BS.”

Natalie Holloway’s brother, Matt Holloway, told Court TV that he, too, was not convinced.

“He's been such a liar. This, the past, his whole life. That's all he is, is just a psychopathic liar. So I take it, I take it lightly,” Matt Holloway said.

Natalie’s father, David Holloway, called van der Sloot “evil personified in a victim impact statement.

“Despite everything he has done to us, he is not sorry for what he did,” David Holloway said. “He expressed no remorse, regret, or even compassion … He is evil personified.”