Natalee Holloway’s mother recalls last time she saw her daughter, before she left for Aruba

Natalee’s Holloway’s mother, Beth, has emotionally recalled the last time she ever saw her daughter alive.

The 18-year-old’s disappearance has been brought back into the limelight after Taken: Natalee Holloway, a new three-part Netflix docuseries about her story. 

Natalee, from Mountain Brook, Alabama, went missing while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba on 30th May, 2005. Joran van der Sloot, who was 17 at the time, confessed to killing her in 2023, 18 years after her disappearance. 

It was an unofficial trip where they were accompanied by seven chaperones, and the last time her mother saw her alive was at a friend’s house, before they left for the airport.

Beth told People she and Natalee ran through her packing list in the early hours of the morning of 26th May, 2005, to make sure she had packed everything she needed to take to Aruba, including her passport and cash. She remembers Natalee saying: “Yes, Mom. I’m good. I’ve got everything I need.”

Credit: Netflix

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After that, she drove Natalee round to a friend’s house where they were gathering before heading to the airport and kissed her goodbye. She recalled: “Then her friend opened the door and I watched Natalee’s silhouette disappear in the light, and the door was closed, and then it was dark again.”

In another interview, Beth said: “In October of 2004, Natalee asked me if she could go on the senior class trip to Aruba. It was a Mountain Brook High School tradition. In fact, my stepson had gone two years before. In the weeks before her graduation, I attended two parent meetings in regards to the trip. I felt very comfortable with Natalee going.  

“She’s always been very responsible, and there were over a hundred students going. In the early hours of Thursday, May 26, 2005 I dropped her off at a friend’s house and told her goodbye. We told each other love you and I left. Driving away, I never imagined that would be the last time I ever saw her.”

Just four days later, Beth got a call from one of the chaperones that Natalee had gone missing. She chartered a private jet and arrived on the island that same day. 

Beth stayed in Aruba for a whole year, and said her son Matt, Natalee’s brother, “had to become a man” and grow up very quickly.  “I was gone pretty much for a year, and he grew up pretty fast and in a hurry,” she said. 

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