Just two days after Natalee Holloway vanished in May 2005, prime suspect Joran van der Sloot allegedly wrote an email to a friend saying he “took care of things.”
The email was written in 2010 and was sent to someone named “David G” from van der Sloot’s email address, The Messenger reported.
“My dad got a boat two days later,” the Dutchman allegedly wrote. “We went for a ride and took care of things. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Van der Sloot’s story has changed over the years — like that he pushed her too hard into a rock that killed her, or that he sold the teenager into sex slavery — but the involvement of a boat has come up before.
In 2008, two Dutch journalists had an undercover interview with van der Sloot. Van der Sloot said that he had met the teenager at a nightclub, and she later suffered a seizure while they were having sex.
He then alleged that he called his “really good friend” from a pay phone, and this friend then helped him dump Holloway’s body.
The outlet reported that investigators recently interviewed a boat operator to determine whether he was involved in disposing of the 18-year-old’s body.
“It’s always seemed most likely that she was taken out on a boat,” an Aruba investigator told the publication. “But the key is figuring out who would have taken him out there to do it. He and his father didn’t have a boat of their own.”
Although the details of what happened remain murky, the gist is that Holloway, then 18, was last seen leaving a bar in Aruba with van der Sloot, then a 17-year-old student at an international school on the island.
Nearly 20 years after the teen’s disappearance, van der Sloot faces legal proceedings in the US.
Van der Sloot was extradited to the US in June from prison in Peru, where he was serving time for the murder of a 21-year-old woman who was found in his hotel room exactly five years after Holloway vanished.
Now, he faces wire fraud and extortion charges “in connection with his soliciting money in May [2010] on promises he would reveal the location of Natalee Holloway’s remains in Aruba and circumstances of her death.” The maximum sentence for the extortion count is 20 years, while the maximum sentence for the wire fraud count is 30 years.
He is being held in an Alabama prison.
Holloway vanished on 30 May 2005 during a high school graduation trip. Her remains have never been found.
