Where Joran van der Sloot’s parents Paul and Anita are now, 21 years after Natalee disappeared

Joran van der Sloot’s parents, Paul and Anita, appear a lot in Netflix’s new docu-series Taken: Natalee Holloway, but where are they now? Here’s what we know. 

The three-part true crime series was released on Wednesday and tells the story of 18‑year‑old Natalee from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who went missing while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba in May 2005.

Joran van der Sloot, who was 17 at the time, was one of the last people to see her alive after meeting her at the nightclub Carlos’n Charlie’s on her final night in the Caribbean. He confessed to killing her in 2023, but hasn’t been convicted, and Natalee’s body has never been found. 

He was long a suspect in her disappearance, but his parents, Paul and Anita, van der Sloot defended him for many years. However, everything changed in 2010. 

Credit: Netflix

Joran van der Sloot’s father Paul died in 2010

Paul van der Sloot died from a heart attack on 10th February 2010, aged 57, almost five years after Natalee disappeared. He collapsed after playing tennis in Aruba and was declared dead at a hospital. At the time of his death, he was still a lawyer in Aruba, and his death came very unexpectedly. 

Credit: Netflix

Anita van der Sloot is an artist and still lives in Aruba

Anita stayed in Aruba after her husband’s death and is still an artist and art teacher, the same job she had when Joran was growing up. 

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She held the role of Visual Arts & Art History Teacher at the International School of Aruba for 33 years, from August 1991 until her retirement in June 2024.

Now, Anita describes herself as a “nature and animal lover, mixed media artist, visual arts teacher, motivator, inspirator who loves good people.”

She appears to have dropped the van der Sloot from her name and goes by her maiden name now, Anita Hugen. 

Credit: Netflix

It’s not clear whether she is still in contact with Joran, but she famously called her son “sick in his head” in a 2010 interview with De Telegraaf after he was arrested for killing Stephany Flores Ramírez. 

“If he killed Stephany, he’ll have to pay the price. I won’t visit him in his cell, I cannot embrace him,” she said. “I can’t cry for Joran like I did for Paul. I hope that he gets psychological help.”

Anita has stayed away from the media since then, and didn’t publicly comment after Joran confessed to killing Natalee Holloway in 2023. 

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