Netflix's Natalee Holloway Doc: Biggest Revelations, From the 10-Day Delay to the Confession

Netflix’s new docuseries“Taken: Natalee Holloway”is pulling the 2005 case back into the spotlight, and it’s coming with receipts. The series features interviews with Natalee’s mother Beth Holloway, her friends, FBI agents, and former Aruban police chief Gerold Dompig, and it doesn’t shy away from the investigation’s missteps. Among the biggest revelations: police reportedly took ten days to arrest Joran van der Sloot, and his father’s legal connections complicated the case at nearly every turn.

There’s also the paper trail of van der Sloot’s contradictions. He changed his story roughly 40 times during police questioning, and a 2010 extortion sting arranged by Beth’s attorney, John Q. Kelly, helped box him in. In 2023, he was extradited to the U.S. on extortion charges and confessed to bludgeoning Natalee to death as part of a plea deal. He’d already been convicted of murdering another woman in Peru in 2012. Natalee’s body has never been found.

The docuseries is also kicking off a bigger debate about true crime as a genre, who gets to tell these stories, and what justice actually looks like when a case drags on for two decades. Beth’s line from the series has become the emotional center:“The not knowing is the most torturous part.”Are you watching the doc, or is this one you’d rather skip? Tell us in the comments.