More than two decades after 18-year-old Natalee Holloway vanished during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, Netflix is bringing her mother back to tell the story in full. The streaming giant's new three-part documentary series, Taken: Natalee Holloway, is set to premiere November 4, with all three episodes dropping at once.
Holloway was an 18-year-old Mountain Brook High School graduate from Mountain Brook, Alabama, when she and her classmates traveled to Aruba for their senior trip in 2005, according to al.com. She disappeared on May 30, 2005, in what became one of the most closely watched missing-persons cases in the country, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. As WVTM 13 notes, her disappearance occurred more than 20 years before the documentary's premiere.
The series will feature access to Beth Holloway along with others who were with Natalee when she vanished, according to Deadline. Per the same outlet, Natalee's mother, Beth, is ready to tell the complete story. Netflix says the series draws on previously unreported elements of the investigation through interviews with people closest to Natalee and key investigators, per NewsNation.
New Footage and Investigator Access
Producers are touting exclusive access to investigators and never-before-seen footage from Beth Holloway's long search for answers, the article notes. The project comes from Story Syndicate, with directors Dani Sloane and Matthew Galkin at the helm.
Joran van der Sloot has long been identified as the main suspect in Holloway's disappearance, per ABC News. In 2023, van der Sloot, the Dutch man who was the last person seen with Holloway before she vanished, confessed to killing her as part of a plea deal, the same outlet reports.
Remains Never Found
Holloway's remains have never been found, and she was declared legally dead in 2012, according to NewsNation. The dossier's legal record shows van der Sloot's plea proceedings required him to provide information regarding Holloway's disappearance in exchange for a reduced sentence, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, though differing accounts exist of how that sentence was structured across his separate convictions.
For a case that has haunted true-crime followers and Holloway's hometown for more than two decades, the upcoming series promises to finally let Beth Holloway narrate the full arc of her daughter's story in her own words, alongside investigators who worked the case for years.
