Paul van der Sloot, his son was left adrift after he died unexpectedly from a heart attack on February 2010. According to Holloway family attorney John Kelly, a desperate Joran emailed him that March, writing, as Kelly told Dateline, “‘I want to come clean. Now my father is dead. Nothing is hidden from me. There is nothing I can hide.
With Beth’s permission, John Kelly met with Joran in Aruba, promising to start with $25,000. The young man said he knew where the body was; John asked what would happen if they didn’t pay him. Joran replied that Beth can still wait five more years. The family then turned to the FBI, which helped orchestrate a plan to make Joran think he’d be getting paid in order to catch him committing wire fraud, which would at least be something to hold him on.
John and Joran met again, and this time John wired him a total of $25,000. In turn, Joran led John to a house near the Aruba Racquet Club, where he claimed he had stashed Natalee’s remains in what was then a freshly poured foundation, before the house was built. John said on DatelineJoran stated that he went to the beach with Natalee. He wanted her to go but she refused. Then he got angry and threw her. In fact, he actually did the gesture while driving, and I was able to see the video of him throwing her. According to him, she struck the back of her skull, dripped blood, and was soon dead.
John said he was skeptical of Joran’s overall story, which was that he first hid Natalee’s body at the beach with his father’s help, and then the next day they buried her. However, he hoped something had been shaken.
“When I got aboard the plane May 11, [2010], I thought it was a done deal,” John said. John said, “And he would be arrested at any point. We would have some closure if he spoke at any point.
But the house Joran pointed to hadn’t been under construction in 2010, according to the authorities who said they didn’t find his story credible enough to make an arrest. He was not even charged with wire fraud.
John said that Joran remained in touch with him up until May 25, claiming he would turn himself in. Instead, he flew for Peru.