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- [00:02]
Tenderfoot TV Host
You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast.
- [00:09]
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- [01:10]
Josh Zieman
The trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zieman and this is Monster Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the Son of Sam. Available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or where get your podcasts.
- [01:39]
Celisia Stanton
Hi friends, I am so excited to share this new episode of True Crime with you. If you want to listen ad free and get early access to all the episodes for this month's case, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts. It's also one of the best ways to support the show. Please be aware that today's episode contains brief references to sexual assault and descriptions of violence. Please take care while listening. It was late May 2005. The air in Aruba was heavy with heat and salt and possibility. On the island's white sand beaches, 124 high school seniors from Mountain Brook, Alabama were celebrating the end of an era. It was a school graduation trip, five days in paradise before college and adulthood began. For most of us, that kind of trip would have sounded like something out of a movie. Extravagant and pretty Much unreal. But for students at Mountain Brook High School, it was a growing tradition, a kind of rite of passage. During the day, they stretched out on the beach, and then at night they drifted between restaurants, casinos and bars. One of the students, Claire Fierman, later told NBC that the trip had fallen into this wonderful rhythm. We stayed outside all day, she said. You'd usually take a nap, get dressed, go eat dinner and then go to one of the bars. Come home whenever you wanted to. One of Claire's classmates, another student on the trip, was someone whose name you might recognize. Natalie holloway. She was 18, bright, endlessly driven. She just graduated with straight A's. The kind of student who seemed to excel at everything. National Honor Society, student government, the dance team. She'd earned a full scholarship to the University of Alabama, where she planned to study pre med and join a sorority in the fall. She was the kind of person everyone seemed to admire. Disciplined, focused, radiant. When all this happened, I was 10 years old. I remember seeing Natalie's photo on TV and thinking she looked like the girls I envied on those teen dramas. Glamorous, confident, the future wide open ahead of her. At 10, a trip like this would have felt like everything I thought high school was supposed to be. And that's the thing. If you go on one last trip before college, you should come home with stories. Sunburns, cheap souvenirs, maybe a few secrets your parents never hear about. The last thing you would expect is to become a headline. But that's exactly what happened. Because Natalee Holloway never made it home that summer. Her face was everywhere. The news just couldn't look away. Every segment, every panel, every theory replayed like a reality show. Each one turning a family's nightmare into something to consume. And yet, beneath all the noise and speculation, there was still an 18 year old girl who never made it back to her hotel room. A mystery that should have been solved but wasn't. Because even now, there are still pieces missing. I wanted to understand how that happens and what it costs. This is the story of Natalee Holloway. I'm Celisia Stanton, and you're listening to Truer Crime. The last night of a trip always feels different. You know what I mean, right? How every conversation, every laugh, every drink starts to feel like this. Countdown. It was Sunday, May 29, 2005, the group's final night in Aruba. By morning, the seniors from Mountain Brook High School will be boarding flights back to Alabama, back to parents, summer jobs and routines. But that night, all that mattered was soaking in every last minute of freedom. We were so excited, one student, Lorraine Watson, later told NBC. I mean, it was a tropical paradise without our parents together. That evening, Natalie and her friends made their way to a hotel casino. Near the blackjack tables, she met a teenager who introduced himself as Joran. He said he was 19 and visiting from Holland, just another tourist passing through. It was a small fib. In reality, he was 17, a local Dutch student. He just looked like an average, normal high school guy, really tall, lorraine recalled. I remember looking at him and thinking, oh, who's that guy? You know, he's hanging out with my friends. Before long, the group invited Joran to meet up later that night. Their plan was to head to Carlos and Charlie's, a popular downtown bar and restaurant crowded with tourists, locals and American students. For the Mountain Brook seniors, partying there was practically tradition. That night, the place was packed with more than 100 of their classmates. According to biography, Yoran showed up about an hour before closing with two local friends, brothers named Deepak and Satish Kalpo. The music was loud, the lights low, and the drinks easy to come by. In Aruba, the legal drinking age was 18, so there was no fake IDs, zero sneaking around required. It was the kind of night that felt endless, and maybe if they'd known what was coming, they would have tried to hold on to it. The laughter, the blur of music, the way it all shimmered under the glow of the party lights. When the DJ announced Last call, he played Sweet Home Alabama, a nod to the crowd that had made the bar their own that night. I can imagine the moment, voices shouting over the chorus, arms thrown around each other, the kind of joy that just feels too big to end. Outside, the streets spilled over with students trying to grab taxis, waving and yelling to each other in the warm night air. Lorraine remembered it as kind of chaotic. She thought that must have been when Natalie got separated from the group. Around 1:30am classmates saw Natalie get into a white car with Joran and the two Kalpoe brothers. For most of them, it didn't seem unusual, just another ride at the end of a long night. But that was the last time anyone ever saw Natalee Holloway alive. By Monday morning, the seniors from Mountain Brook High School should have been gathering in the hotel lobby, bleary eyed, sunburned and ready to fly home. But Natalie wasn't there. Her passport and bags were still in her room. No one had seen her since the night before. Back home, Natalie's mother, Beth, was driving east with two friends after a weekend in Hot Springs Arkansas. Three days of sunbathing, resting and soaking in the rare quiet that comes when, just for a moment, you get to step out of your life. I couldn't help but think about that parallel Natalie in Aruba, her mother at the lake, both of them spending their last carefree days in the sun, neither knowing that the lightness of those moments was already slipping away. Beth was behind the wheel of her Chevy Tahoe, heading back toward Alabama when her phone rang. There's something kind of absurdly human about that. I feel like how an ordinary phone call, something you answer without thinking, can divide a life into before and after. One of the trip chaperones was on the line. Natalie hadn't made it to the airport for a few seconds. The world must have gone still, the kind of silence that isn't confusion so much as recognition. The body knows before the mind does. I knew she'd either been kidnapped or murdered, beth later told NBC. There was no hesitation, absolutely none. I get that instinct, that immediate, almost primal certainty that something bad has happened. But I've also felt that blur between intuition and fear before, when you can't tell whether it's your gut trying to warn you or your anxiety rehearsing the pain just in case. But Beth wasn't rehearsing. She wasn't guessing. She knew Natalie was the oldest child, responsible, disciplined, and family described her as dependable. And, you know, I think we all know somebody like Natalie, the kind of person who reminds you of curfews, who double checks plans, who always follows through. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Beth put it simply, Natalie has never been late in her life. Her parents, Beth and Dave Holloway, had divorced when Natalee was seven. Years later, Beth remarried, building a new life with her husband, Jug Twitty, in Mountain Brook, Alabama. When the opportunity for the Aruba trip came up, Dave wasn't convinced. He thought it was too extravagant. But Beth had seen it as safe, a supervised graduation trip, a kind of rite of passage. Her stepson had gone two years earlier without incident, but now all that safety, she imagined it was gone. According to Vanity fair, Beth called 911 from the road, telling the dispatcher her daughter was missing, that she was on her way to find her. She was driving 110 miles an hour and wouldn't stop for anything. Within hours, a family friend had arranged for a private jet. By late afternoon, Beth, Natalie's stepdad, Jug, and three close friends from Alabama were in the air. They left one seat open, the one they hoped Natalie would occupy on the way home. It's hard not to pause on that image, though. A private jet arranged within hours, a seat left waiting. The speed of it, the access, the kind of privilege most families could only dream of. In a moment like that, most families searching for a missing child would be begging for help, waiting on hold, filing reports that no one reads. But the Holloways had connections. They had money and resources, and they used them. That, I think, is important to acknowledge. And also, if you had the means, who wouldn't use every available resource to bring their child home? No matter how many stories I tell, the cruel calculus of tragedy remains the same. Money can move mountains, but it can't change what's already happened. They landed in Aruba around 10 that night. The island was warm and still. Beth and the others climbed into two vans and headed towards the stretch of beach resorts where Natalie had stayed. From the moment she stepped inside the Holiday Inn, the same hotel her daughter had spent the last week in, Beth started asking questions. Who had Natalie seen last? Who was she with? According to Vanity Fair, it wouldn't take long before they discovered that some of the students had seen Natalie the night before at Carlos and Charlie's, talking with a tall Dutch teenager named you're on something. Beth asked a hotel employee if she knew who that might be. The woman did. It was Joran van der Sloot, she said. Then she hesitated, lowering her voice. He tends to prey upon young female tourists, she shared. The casino staff pulled security footage from the night before so Beth and Jug could see for themselves on the tape. They spotted him, the boy everyone was talking about, sitting at a poker table. Beth told Vanity Fair that she studied the video, memorizing him, his short hair, his dark almond shaped eyes. By then, word of Natalie's disappearance had spread. One of the locals, a wealthy businessman named Charles Croz, joined their search effort. He owned a cell phone rental company on the island, and when he heard what had happened, he offered to help however he could. Charles started asking around about Yaron and eventually came across a few teenagers on the beach who said they knew him, knew where he lived. Beth, Jug, their friends, and Charles Croes decided to take what they'd found to the local police, and soon officers agreed to go with them to Joran van der Sloot's home, an average looking house in a town called Nord. It was past midnight when they arrived. The group waited outside as officers sounded their siren. Lights flickered on in neighboring homes, but the van der Sloot home stayed dark. Finally, a man stepped outside. Joran's father, Paulus van der Sloot. Beth watched as he spoke with police, made a call, then told them his son was gambling at the Windham Casino. He agreed to ride along to help them find Joran. But when they got to the casino, Joran was nowhere in sight. Paulus made another call, and this time he said, they just missed him. Joran had already gone home, so once again they turned back around toward the Van Der Sloot house. This time, though, Joran was standing in the driveway with Deepak Kalpo. If you remember from earlier, Deepak and his brother Satish were part of the group Natalee's friends had last seen her with. When Beth and Jug approached, the tension was immediate. Joran insisted he didn't know Natalie, had no idea what they were talking about. Natalie's stepfather, Jug Twitty, pushed back, though eyewitnesses had seen them together and growing impatient. Someone else from the group interjected, yelling out, just tell us where she is. Paulus didn't appreciate this hostility being directed towards his son. Don't be so rude, he said. This is not America. You can't act like that. Charles Croz, the urban businessman who was helping Natalie's family, stepped forward, trying to calm the moment. He asked the officers if he could speak with Joran alone. Then he turned to him and tried to level with the kid. This was serious, he said. If he knew anything about the missing girl, now was the time to speak up. Joran's story started coming out in pieces. He said he'd met Natalie at the casino earlier that day, that she'd invited him out to Carlos and Charlie's. He said she'd been drinking heavily, that he and his friends gave her a ride home, dropped her at the Holiday Inn around 2am and watched her stumble inside. But when Charles pressed, the story shifted. Joran said they hadn't gone straight to the hotel, that Natalie wanted to drive around. He said she'd performed oral sex on him in the backseat, that they'd stop by the lighthouse. Charles later told Vanity Fair that he thought Joran was close to admitting something until one of the Alabama men behind him shouted out in anger, well, you Aruben assholes better get your act together. And now the fragile comm that Charles had built was suddenly shattered. Joran went quiet. His father stepped forward. That's it, he said. This is no good. The conversation ended there, but still Yaron agreed to return to the Holiday Inn to show them where he dropped Natalie off. He claimed a security guard had helped her inside, but once they arrived, he couldn't identify anyone. Jug started demanding more answers. Deepak turned to Yoran. Don't tell them anything, he said. You don't have to tell them anything. And in that instant, it was over. The questions, the hope, the possibility for answers. Only hours after landing in Aruba, Beth had found the last person seen with her daughter. But Natalie was still missing, and the truth was already starting to slip away.
- [17:23]
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Celisia Stanton
By the time Beth and Jug finished talking with Deepak and Euron, it was nearly 5am the police told them to return to their hotel and wait for a detective. They didn't sleep around 8:15 that morning, Detective Dennis Jacobs arrived. He started by asking for a description of Natalie, which he recorded. Then he led them to his office. But as Beth told dateline's Chris Hansen, Detective Jacobs priorities seemed misplaced. According to Beth, a detective told her to wait, said he needed to shave and have his Frosted Flakes before he could meet with her. Beth, already frantic and terrified for her missing daughter, was forced to wait in the lobby for hours. In an interview with Biography, Beth described the urgency she felt. We wanted to convey what they had told us, she said, all the details surrounding that initial night and how they'd taken us to the Holiday Inn and also really establishing who Natalee was. I didn't want him to think he was dealing with a drug addict or a runaway. And that last part really stood out to me. Because how police perceive a case does tend to influence how they'll handle it. In most departments, time and resources are limited. It's not unusual for investigators to hold off on full searches when they think a person may have gone missing voluntarily. It's an approach that's often meant to be strategic, not cruel. A lot of missing persons cases, especially involving teens, do turn out to be runaways. And While Natalie was 18 at the time, her age could have very likely played into the perception of her disappearance. In 2023, the National center for Missing and Exploited children found that 93% of their cases were runaways, most between the ages of 15 and 17, and nearly half were found within a week. So it doesn't always make sense for police to immediately launch major kidnapping or homicide investigations. That's US based data. But as Beth described to abc, Urban officials seem to operate under similar assumptions. The police tell me, you know, this happens a lot, so don't really worry about her too much. She'll show back up. Don't worry about it. And while that attitude might be meant to keep things calm, and it can also cost precious time, especially when foul play is involved. And for families, that weight can be excruciating. You know something's wrong, but you can't get anyone to listen. You're terrified and you're alone. It made me wonder, can police really tell the difference between cases that need time and those that need action? If resources were expanded, could every case get the kind of urgency families desperately want? And if not, how do we make sure those families still feel supported, not dismissed, in their panic and pain? Those were the questions swirling in my mind as I read about Beth's early interactions with police. Because when Detective Jacobs finally reappeared in the lobby. He told her they no longer needed her statement. The next day, Natalee's dad, Dave Holloway, arrived in Aruba. He told NBC that police had already taken statements from Yoron and the Kalpoe brothers and concluded that they'd had nothing to do with Natalee's disappearance. They told him not to worry, that she was probably still out partying. Many tourists, they explained, get involved with drugs or new friends and disappear for days. Most of them come back. But Dave pushed back. That's not my daughter, he said. And while I can imagine how shocking that must have been for him to hear, it wasn't an impossible theory. As Vanity Fair reported, Aruban officials were used to tourists going missing, cruise passengers who missed their ship, visitors who stayed a few extra days without telling anyone. Almost all of them turned up within just a few days. So while Natalee's family suspected foul play from the start, Aruban authorities saw something else. A pattern that almost always ended with someone being found. But if police weren't ready to investigate, Natalie's friends and family knew they had to take matters into their own hands. They organized their own search. According to Vanity Fair, Beth and other volunteers ran radio announcements calling for anyone who could help. About 100 tourists and locals showed up, combing beaches and scrubland for any sign of Natalie. And soon, the official response began to grow. A week after she disappeared, CBS reported that a massive search team of FBI agents, Aruban police, soldiers, and roughly 700 volunteers were scouring the island. They found nothing. No body, no clothing, no proof she'd ever been there. That same day, NBC reported that the Aruban government had released thousands of civil servants from work to help with the search. Between two and four thousand people in the coming weeks. Three F16 fighter jets from the Netherlands, a volunteer team from Texas, and even the Dutch Marines joined in. But even as the search expanded, Beth's focus stayed fixed on the men she believed were responsible. Joran van der Sloot and brothers Satish and Deepak Calpo. The last people seen with Natalie. Joran was 17, a Dutch honor student at an international school in aruba. Deepak was 21 and Satish 18. Despite their claims that they dropped Natalie off at her hotel, Bess said she couldn't find a single witness or piece of security footage showing that Natalee ever made it back. That's when she said she became convinced Joran and the Kalpos were lying. Finally, six days after Natalie disappeared, police made their first arrests, but not of Yoron or the Kalpoe brothers. Instead, Aruban police detained two former hotel security guards, Antonius Mickey, John and Abraham Jones. According to cnn, Aruba's laws only require reasonable suspicion for an arrest, a lower threshold than the US where probable cause is required. So when Mickey and Abraham were taken into custody, the evidence against them was thin. It came down to one tip from the Calpo brothers themselves. They told police that after dropping Natalie at the Holiday Inn, they saw a security guard approach her. A man, they said, who was, quote, dark skinned, wearing a black T shirt and carrying a radio. Under arrest, Mickey and Abraham insisted they were innocent, but it didn't seem to matter. I was trying to clear my name, mickey later told people. But they wouldn't listen because of what those boys said about us. Beth was horrified. She told Biography. They didn't have any hesitation to arrest these two black security guards. And we're thinking, well, we took them to the boy she was last seen with and couldn't get them to act. So that's when we knew we were screwed on that island. I can only imagine how helpless that must have felt to watch two strangers get arrested while the people you believed responsible walked free. But from the perspective of the Aruban police, Beth wasn't seeing the whole picture. In an interview with 48 Hours, lead investigator Gerald Dompic said they were following a formal process. In fact, he said Joran and the Kalpos were on their suspect list and they were already under surveillance. Their phones tapped, their emails monitored, their movies, movements tracked. Arresting them too soon, he said, could have jeopardized the entire case. To Beth, it looked like negligence. To Dompic, it was procedure, patience in the face of growing chaos. Soon the security guards were released, and to the outside world, it seemed like Aruban authorities were no closer to answers. The public pressure was enormous. Every day brought new headlines, new speculation, and mounting tension from the Aruban government, a country whose economy relied almost entirely on American tourism. Dompic later said the pressure reached the highest levels, with calls coming from US Officials all the way up to Aruba's prime minister. Under normal circumstances, Dompic said, they would have waited longer to make arrests, would have taken more time to collect evidence with the suspects under surveillance on the outside. Instead, just 10 days after Natalie's disappearance, police arrested Joran Van Der Sloot and brothers Satish and Deepak Kalpo in custody. Their story completely unraveled. Deepak and Stiche's mother told CNN that her sons admitted to lying to protect Joran. In truth, the boys had gone to a beach and left Joran there with Natalie. Joran's mother said her son admitted to sitting with Natalee on the sand, but claimed he'd left her there alive. The three spent weeks, weeks behind bars, facing intense questioning and public scrutiny. Vanity Fair reported that around the three week mark, a government spokesperson hinted that charges were imminent. Then over the weekend, Joran was spotted walking with investigators retracing his steps from the night Natalie vanished. So when reporters learned there'd be an announcement Monday morning, it was clear to everyone what was coming charges. Justice for Natalee, her murderer finally found. Instead, the clerk read something no one expected. There would be no charges. Joran would stay behind bars a little longer. The Kalpoe brothers would walk free. Beth was furious. She met with the Aruban prime minister, and within weeks, the brothers were rearrested. Deputy Chief Dompic later told Vanity Fair that rearresting the brothers was a big gamble. By then, Joran had already told police that Natalee had passed out. And in the car that night, he'd admitted to touching her sexually. And the investigators thought that that detail might be enough to support a charge of sex without consent. So in bringing the Kalpoe brothers back in, Dompic said the goal was pressure. If they could threaten the brothers with accessory charges, maybe one of them would finally talk enough to help build a case around Yoron. But the brothers didn't crack, and within a week, Yoruba, all three were released. Police had no body, no weapon, no evidence, just three boys whose stories kept changing. Without proof, there was nothing left to hold them. For Beth, that moment marked a turning point. She'd come to Aruba searching for answers, but what she found instead was a system that seemed unwilling or unable to deliver them.
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Celisia Stanton
Did I burn down the toy?
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Josh Zieman
I don't think so.
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- [31:15]
Celisia Stanton
While so much had been unfolding on the island with the arrests, the releases, the shifting stories, something else was happening in the background that I want to talk with you about. In the days after Natalie's disappearance, the atmosphere in Aruba had become almost circus, like journalists from nearly every American network flooded the island, filling hotels and lining beaches with cameras and microphones. One private investigator who worked with the Holloways later told E. News that before long he was being recognized. Everywhere he went, flight attendants would pull him aside mid air to ask for updates, the kind of surreal detail that shows just how massive this story had become. But the media swarm on the island was only half the story. Thousands of miles away, the frenzy continued on American television screens. Networks cleared their schedules, filling in their broadcasts with news about Natalie. There were panels, breaking updates, live interviews from Aruba, each hour promising a new lead, a new theory, a new reason to keep watching. Researchers at Roosevelt University later found that in the six months following Natalie's disappearance, major networks featured the case as a lead or headline story 950 times. But for the networks, it wasn't just about justice. As one reporter put it, natalee Holloway has been very, very good for cable television. According to Vanity Fair, that first summer, Greta Van Sustren saw her ratings jump nearly 60%. Rita Cosby became MSNBC's number one host. And Nancy Grace, a former prosecutor known for her righteous anger, someone we all know now, found her audience by covering Natalie's case night after night. For American viewers, the story had literally everything a missing girl, a tropical backdrop, a grieving mother and a suspect who seemed to be hiding something. Bill O'Reilly called it a soap opera, and you can see why it was packaged that way. It was gripping, emotional, easy to sell. Before Long, it was hard to tell the difference between a national tragedy and a TV event. I think about that a lot, how the search for truth can slide into performance. It's something we've talked about on this show so many times before, how empathy can morph into fascination, how people start watching for updates the same way they'd wait for plot twists. And as the coverage grew bigger, louder, more profitable, the actual search for Natalie, the real search, was getting buried beneath the noise. And in some ways, Beth Holloway Twitty had become the face of that noise. She gave hundreds of interviews with Greta Van Sustren, Diane Sawyer, Dr. Phil, even Condoleezza Rice. She was determined to keep her daughter's story alive, to make sure no one would ever forget Natalie's name. Each night, she went on television, demanding answers, pressing officials, naming names. She insisted that Joran Van Der Sloot had harmed her daughter, that she and her family had been failed by corrupt police and by an island that she believed wanted the story to go away. For many Americans, she was heroic, a mother refusing to be silenced. And there's truth in that. But on the island of Aruba, the picture looked very different. Local reporters told Vanity Fair that the Beth they saw in person wasn't the Beth appearing on Fox News at night. By day, they said, she was gracious, expressing her deep gratitude for the locals who had helped her family. But to a Rubens who caught clips from American tv, she sounded furious, accusing their officials, their home, of corruption and deceit. That dual image that they felt like they were witnessing compassion on one channel, anger on another. It started to divide the very people who'd once tried to help the family. One early ally, Julia Renfo, editor in chief of Aruba Today, had helped organize the first search teams for Natalie. But after Julia appeared on Greta Van Sestren's show and described Joran as an excellent student with a good reputation, everything shifted. The next morning, Julia ran into Beth and Jug in a hotel lobby. She went to greet them, and Jug erupted, pushing her and shouting at her to stay away. Furious about what she'd said on television the night before, Julia later told Vanity Fair she was so shaken, she filed a police report. And while Jug denied pushing her, he did admit he'd lost his temper. It was one of many relationships fractured under the weight of the spotlight. Every word, every rumor, every theory was amplified, and everyone involved was being pushed closer to the edge. And as the story grew, it began reshaping the island itself. US Headlines painted Aruba as corrupt, unsafe, even lawless Tourism. The island's lifeblood began to drop. And that wasn't by chance. Beth and others had publicly urged Americans to boycott Aruba. And for an island that depended on U.S. visitors for nearly three quarters of its economy, the fallout was devastating. One study found that a decade later, American tourism still hadn't returned to its pre 2006 levels. Even Charles Croz, the businessman who helped bring Beth to Joran's house that first night, told Vanity Fair, they're killing Aruba for me. It remains one of the sad paradoxes in this story. The person many believed responsible for Natalie's disappearance was Dutch, not Aruban. And yet it was Aruba that bore the brunt of the blame. And to be fair, Beth believed the island should bear responsibility. It was, after all, their system that had failed to solve her daughter's case. But as Deputy Chief Dompic told reporters, Aruba had spared no expense. In its first year, the investigation cost roughly $3 million. That was almost 40% of the police department's annual operational budget. $3 million for a single case. And it wasn't only the government pouring in resources. According to E. News, the Holloway family's reward for information leading to Natalee's safe return reached $1 million within the first few months of her disappearance. And honestly, those numbers are just astonishing. It's far more than most families of missing people could ever imagine being spent on their loved one's case. But as I learned from my research, all of these resources came with their own complications, a flood of false tips, scams, and dead ends that created emotional whiplash for everyone involved. Each new lead brought this new flicker of hope, only to collapse back into disappointment month after month. There was still no body, no answers. But it didn't seem to matter. The story had outgrown the investigation. Networks kept it alive because viewers couldn't look away. But not everyone felt comfortable watching. As the months went on, some began to question why this case, out of so many, had captured so much attention. By the end of that first summer, Anderson Cooper said what many were already thinking. It's getting downright ridiculous, he told his viewers. He said he wouldn't mention the case again until there was real news, real updates. It's kind of striking to look back on that moment now when the term missing white woman syndrome was only beginning to enter the mainstream. Black journalist Gwen Ifill had coined it just months before Natalie disappeared. Because this story wasn't just about one missing girl. It was about the hierarchy of whose stories fill our airwaves and who's vanish without a Trace. Because for every Natalee Holloway, there are hundreds of missing people whose names we never learn. Black women, indigenous women, poor women, sex workers. Their families left to grieve in silence, their faces never appearing on our screens. It strikes me how little has changed in the 20 years since Natalie disappeared. How the media still teaches us that some losses are national tragedies and some are just private. But of course, this isn't a critique about Natalie herself. And I want to be careful not to place the burden of fixing those injustices on her family. Beth and the rest of Natalie's loved ones weren't chasing fame. They were chasing hope. They used every tool they had, including the news cameras that sometimes made their pain even harder to bear. Natalie's father, Dave Holloway, told E News the media attention put on additional stress. But if it hadn't been for the media in a couple of weeks, it would have been forgotten about. That's the impossible tension in this story. And maybe in true crime, it's itself the same spotlight that can expose wrongdoing can also distort it. It can humanize one person and then flatten them into a headline. It can illuminate or it can consume. And for the Holloways, it did both. Because even after all the lights, all the cameras, all the noise, they were still living inside the same unanswered question, what happened to Natalee? Soon, months turned into years. A cycle of arrests and releases and new evidence that always seemed to fall apart. All of it leading nowhere. Until five years to the day after Natalie disappeared, another young woman's life came to a violent end. This time, there would be a body. In early June of 2010, nearly 3,000 miles from Aruba, hotel staff in Lima, Peru, unlocked the door to a small, no frills hotel room. Inside, there was a bed, a fan, a television. The mattress was shoved aside, the blankets torn from the frame. And there in the stillness, was the body of a young woman. At first, police thought she'd been stabbed. There was that much blood. But the autopsy revealed something even more brutal. She'd been beaten to death. Her name was Stephanie Flores Ramirez. She was 21, the only daughter in a family of boys. Her father, Ricardo Flores, was a well known businessman and politician in Peru. To him, Stephanie was his heart, his baby girl. She'd been last seen with a young man. They'd been at a casino together, had eventually checked into that hotel room where her body was discovered. And when police checked the registry to see who the room was registered to, the name staring back at them was one the world already knew one that had haunted the Holloway family for five years. Joran Van Der Sloot. That's next time on Truer Crime. Hey, if you're still here, thank you so much for listening. Stories like this are hard, but they really matter. And there is something you can do next. We include action items at the end of every True Crime episode, because awareness alone doesn't bring anyone home, and it doesn't bring justice any closer. When Natalee Holloway went missing In Aruba in 2005, her family faced every parent's worst nightmare. And in those first uncertain days, a volunteer search and rescue team called Texas Equisearch showed up to help. The organization was founded by Tim Miller, a father who started it after his own daughter, Laura was kidnapped and murdered at just 16 years old. Texas Equisearch was born out of heartbreak, but also out of hope. Since its early days as a small horseback search team, they've helped in thousands of cases across the US and abroad. And they do it all at no cost to law enforcement or to the families. Still hoping for a miracle? You can learn More, Volunteer or donatexasequisearch.org your help could fund the next search, the next chance to bring someone home. As always, you can keep up with True or Crime on Instagram, x threads and blueskyrewercrimepod, or you can sign up for our newsletter at truercrime.substack.com to stay in the loop. If you want to follow along with me personally, I'm on Instagram and TikTok, Alicia Stanton and I also write a weekly newsletter called Sincerely Celicia where I share my favorite recommendations and unfiltered thoughts on politics, culture and life. You can read and subscribe@sincerelycelecia.substack.com a full list of sources and action items from today's episode is available at. True or Crime Podcast. Truer Crime is created, hosted and written by me, Celicia Stanton, and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Additional writing, research and production by Olivia Heusinkfeld. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Editing by Liam Luxon, artwork by Station 16, original music by Jay Ragsdale and makeup and vanity set mix by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Orin Rosenbaum and the team at uta, the Nord Group, and the team at Odyssey. For more podcasts like True or Crime, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us@Tenderfoot TV. Thanks for listening. Foreign. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of True Crime. If you want an ad free version of the show, plus early access to every episode for this month's case and tons of other great Tenderfoot podcasts. You can subscribe to Tenderfoot plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts. It's a small way to support the work, and it makes a big difference.