Natalee Holloway's Mom Beth Shares Her 18-Year Fight for Justice: 'My Never-Ending Nightmare is Over' (Exclusive)
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Alabama teen Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba in May 2005. Joran van der Sloot just admitted to killing her but may not be charged with murder
The first time Beth Holloway was face-to-face with her daughter’s killer was just a day after the teen went missing on a high school graduation trip to Aruba.
Beth was in a car looking for Natalee Holloway when the 17-year-old boy — who was among the last people seen with her as they left an island bar in the early morning hours of May 30, 2005 — approached the mother’s parked vehicle.
“I want my daughter back,” Beth told him, recalling how Joran van der Sloot smirked and beat his chest in reply. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Courtesy Beth Holloway
Natalee Holloway with mother, Beth HollowayRelated: Natalee Holloway's Mom Reveals How Joran van der Sloot Killed Her Daughter in 2005 (Exclusive)
“He had this power over me,” Beth tells PEOPLE in its latest issue, on newsstands Friday. “Because he had all the answers, and I had none.”
Butch Dill/AP
Beth Holloway (center) with son, Matt Holloway (left) and lawyer John Q. Kelly (right)Related: Natalee Holloway's Mother Confronts Joran van der Sloot in Court: 'You Brutally Killed Her'
But earlier this month — 18 years after Natalee went missing — that all changed, Beth says, when she walked inside the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and Jail in Alabama, notepad in hand, and faced van der Sloot, now 36, once again.
For more on Natalee Holloway's murder and her mother's quest for justice, subscribe now to PEOPLE, or pick up this week's issue, on newsstands Friday.
This time, van der Sloot — who had pleaded guilty to brutally killing Stephany Flores Ramírez, another student, in Lima, Peru, and had been serving a 28-year sentence there since 2012 – was finally stateside in a small cinder block-walled room and hooked to a polygraph test.
Related: Killer’s Confession Reveals Horror of Natalee Holloway’s Last Moments
Over hours of interviews with federal prosecutors and agents, he described in cold detail first reported in PEOPLE how he had killed Natalee after she rejected his sexual advances — kicking her in the face and then smashing a cinder block into her head so that her face “collapsed in.” Then, he said — in a transcript of the confession obtained by PEOPLE — that he walked her limp body out to sea.
“Even though knowing the answer from such a brutal confession can just blister and burn your soul, I needed to know what happened,” Beth says. “The not knowing is more tortuous than knowing.”
Butch Dill/AP
Beth HollowayRelated: Joran van der Sloot Pleads Guilty to Extorting Natalee Holloway's Mother
The confession was part of a plea deal in which van der Sloot admitted guilt to one charge each of extortion and fraud Oct. 18 and will serve 20 years concurrently with his murder sentence in Peru. He admitted to taking about $25,000 of Beth's money in 2010 on the false premise of giving the grieving mother answers about her daughter’s disappearance. After saying he would direct the family to Natalee's body in exchange for the funds, van der Sloot later emailed them to say his intel was “worthless,” prosecutors say.
If van der Sloot is released early in Peru, he will return to the U.S. to finish out his sentence stateside. He likely won’t be charged for Natalee’s killing, as Aruba’s statute of limitations for murder is just 12 years. Given that, it would be unusual for him to be charged there in Natalee's killing, although, following news coverage of his public confession, Aruban authorities emphasized that the case, which was reportedly previously closed, was in fact open.
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After 18 years of searching, “my never-ending nightmare is over,” Beth says. “All those never-ending swirling theories and scammers and informants — no, it's over. Everyone has their own wishes and desires: mine was answers.”
Recalling that May 2005 morning with a smirking, chest-thumping van der Sloot in Aruba, Beth adds: “I've been desperately seeking those answers for so long. It was a huge victory to finally have them.”
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