Natalee Holloway’s grief-stricken mother lashed out at Joran van der Sloot in an Alabama courtroom Wednesday, as the Dutch killer finally confessed that he bludgeoned the teen to death on a beach in Aruba nearly two decades ago.
“You are a murderer!” Beth Holloway told van der Sloot during her victim impact statement in federal court.
“Remember that every time that jail door slams shut. You are a killer. You didn’t get what wanted from Natalee — sexual satisfaction — so you brutally killed her.
“Joran, while you’re living your life in prison until you’re an old man, I’ll live the rest of my life with wonderful memories of a beautiful young lady who had her whole life in front of her,” she said. “Natalee will always be 18 in my heart.”
She then turned back to the killer who has complicated her family’s life and hampered their quest for answers over so many years a final dig.
“By the way, you look like hell Joran,” she said. “I don’t see how you’re gonna make it.”
Van der Sloot, 36, finally admitted he had smashed the bubbly teen with a cinderblock in 2005 after she rebuffed his sexual advances and kneed him in the crotch on an Aruba beach — then went home to watch porn, according to the family and court records.
The Dutch citizen has long been the prime suspect in Holloway’s disappearance but has only now confessed as part of a plea to US federal charges he extorted money from her family, which was paid to him under the condition he would take them to Natalee’s body.
He led them to a dead end and fled to Peru, where he killed Stephany Flores — another young woman who shunned his advances — and is now serving a 28-year sentence in that case at a Peruvian jail.
Natalee Holloway disappeared while on a high school class trip to Aruba in 2005. She was last seen leaving a local bar with van der Sloot before she went missing.
In his federal confession, he said the two began kissing on the beach but she pushed him off when he began to fondle her. When he persisted she kneed him and he first kicked her in the head, then struck her with the cinderblock.
He said he carried her body into the surf and released her into the sea.
Despite the confession, van der Sloot is not being charged with her vicious slaying because the statute of limitations for murder in Aruba, one of the four countries which makes up the Kingdom of the Netherlands, is 12 years. However, he was sentenced to 20 years on the extortion conviction in the US.
He will now be extradicted back to the Peru to continue his sentence there. His time in prison there will also contribute to his US sentence.
In court, Beth Holloway said her daughter would be 36 today and had dreamed of becoming a doctor.
“I think about what kind of doctor she would have become,” she said. “She would be married. Have children — my grandchildren. But you destroyed all this. You terminated her potential, her dreams and her possibilities when you bludgeoned her to death in 2005.
“You took away my son’s big sister. You changed the course of our lives and turned them upside down.”
Dave Holloway, the slain teen’s father, asked the judge to throw the book at van der Sloot.
“Please sentence this man to the fullest extent of the law,” he said in his statement. “Today marks some legal accountability, but we are convinced that a higher power will pronounce the ultimate judgment on this defendant and anyone else who helped him prevent us from bringing Natalee home.”
As Natalee’s parents left the courtroom, Beth Hollaway turned to reporters.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” she said. “Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder. He is the killer.”