Taken: Natalee Holloway – Timeline of the tragic 2005 disappearance case that drew worldwide attention

Natalee Holloway is the subject of the upcoming Netflix docuseries, Taken: Natalee Holloway. On May 30, 2005, 18-year-old Natalee Holloway went missing. She was last seen in the early hours of May 30, 2005, when she left a local night club with a group of local young men in a gray Honda.

The group included Joran van der Sloot, who was 17 at the time, and confessed to murdering Natalee. Here's a complete timeline of what happened.

Timeline of events the case in Taken: Natalee Holloway is based on

Taken: Natalee Holloway will explore the case of Natalee's disappearance and her mother's fight to get answers. Here is a complete timeline of events describing what happened to Natalee, and how her case proceeded:

May 30, 2005: Natalee Holloway disappeared

As we will see in Taken: Natalee Holloway, on May 30, 2005, Natalee was supposed to return from a graduation trip to Aruba which she had gone on with 124 fellow students from Alabama. However, she never showed up at the airport. She was last seen in the early hours of May 30, 2005, leaving the nightclub, Carlos 'n Charlie's in Oranjestad, Aruba with Joran van der Sloot and his two friends, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.

June–September 2005: The first arrests

In June 2005, Aruban authorities arrested Joran van der Sloot and his friends, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, who were brothers, on the suspicion of kidnapping and murder. However, by September all three were released without any charges.

February 2006: Van der Sloot said his piece

Joran van der Sloot is a Dutch citizen, and in 2006, he was in the Netherlands, attending school. But he did come to the United States and gave an interview to ABC News in February 2006. In the interview, van der Sloot claimed that he had left Natalee on a beach and gone home. He said:

"The last time I saw her, she was sitting on the sand by the ocean."

He denied harming or killing her.

November 2007–February 2008: The investigation was reopened

Joran van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were arrested again in November 2007. They were released without charges the following month. As ABC News reports, in February 2008, Aruban officials reopened the case after Dutch crime reporter Peter de Vries released secretly recorded footage of van der Sloot discussing Natalee's death. Investigators, however, could not independently confirm his statements.

March 2010: Joran van der Sloot allegedly tried to take money from the Holloway family

As the synopsis of Taken: Natalee Holloway reveals, Natalee's mother never stopped looking for answers. Thus, when in March 2010 van der Sloot allegedly asked Beth Holloway for $250,000 in exchange for information about Natalee's remains, she agreed. $25,000, however, had to be paid at first to get van der Sloot to begin talking.

During a sting operation, Beth's lawyer, John Q. Kelly, met van der Sloot in Aruba. He gave him $10,000 in cash, while another $15,000 was transferred to his bank account. Van der Sloot allegedly claimed that Natalee had died after he threw her to the ground and her head struck a rock. He also claimed that his father had buried her body beneath a house. The information proved to be unreliable, and van der Sloot soon left Aruba for Peru.

May–June 2010: Joran van der Sloot murdered another woman

As ABC News reports, on May 30, 2010, van der Sloot murdered 21-year-old Stephany Flores in Lima, Peru. She was found dead in his hotel room. He fled to Chile but was arrested there in June and returned to Peru. That same month, US authorities charged him with extortion and wire fraud over the alleged attempt to obtain money from Natalee's family.

January 2012: Natalee was declared legally dead

As Taken: Natalee Holloway will revisit, on January 12, 2012, an Alabama judge legally declared Natalee dead. The following day, van der Sloot received a 28-year prison sentence in Peru after pleading guilty to Flores' murder.

May–June 2023: Van der Sloot was extradited

In May 2023, authorities announced plans to transfer van der Sloot from Peru to the United States to face the outstanding federal charges. On June 8, he was extradited to the United States. The federal case was also a way to get answers about Natalee's disappearance.

October 2023: Van der Sloot confessed

On October 18, 2023, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud. As part of the agreement, he provided details about Natalee's death. He told prosecutors that Natalee had rejected his advances on the beach, which is why he kicked her in the face and then struck her head with a concrete block before pushing her body into the sea.

He received a 20-year US sentence, to run alongside his Peruvian sentence. However, the judge said that the confession could not be used to prosecute him for Natalee's murder.

After van der Sloot confessed and was convicted, Beth Holloway said:

"I got the answer I’ve been searching for the last 18 years. ... For me, reaching the end of the nightmare is better than closure."

October 2026: The case is getting revisited in Taken: Natalee Holloway

Netflix's three-part documentary series, Taken: Natalee Holloway, will revisit the case through Beth's experiences, interviews with investigators and previously unseen footage. Taken: Natalee Holloway will be released on Netflix on November 4, 2026.