The meeting behind the headline
When Beth Holloway traveled to Aruba after her 18-year-old daughter Natalee vanished in May 2005, she was not simply waiting for investigators to bring her news. She was trying to reach the people who, she believed, could help explain what had happened. That search brought her face to face with the parents of Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch teenager last seen with Natalee and two other young men on the night she disappeared.
The encounters with Paul and Anita van der Sloot became an important, emotionally charged part of the early case. But the record contains more than one conversation, and the details should not be collapsed into a single dramatic scene. Contemporary reports from June 2005 describe an initial meeting in Noord. In the weeks that followed, Beth also sat down with the couple for an off-camera conversation while journalist Greta Van Susteren was reporting from Aruba. Years later, Beth and Van Susteren recalled that second encounter in an ABC News interview.
What Anita said in the first public account
One of the clearest contemporary records of Anita van der Sloot’s words comes from a Fox News interview with Greta Van Susteren, broadcast on June 22, 2005. Anita said she and her husband had wanted to speak with Beth earlier, but police had advised against a meeting because emotions were high and the facts were not yet clear.
Asked what it was like to sit down with Beth, Anita said she understood that Beth was a mother in pain who still did not have her child. She said she wanted to hold Beth and let her know that the van der Sloots supported the search for the truth. Anita also insisted that the family was not hiding anything. In the same interview, she said she believed her son “200 percent” — a statement that reflected her position as his mother, not an independently established finding about the case.
Anita also described her own family’s distress. Joran had been in custody for roughly two weeks, she said, and she had lost count of the days. She spoke of feeling desperate at times and quiet at others. Her comments showed two mothers describing fear and uncertainty from sharply different positions: Beth was searching for her missing daughter, while Anita was defending a son who had become a central focus of the investigation.
The bracelet that connected the two families
One small detail from Anita’s interview has stayed with the story. She was wearing two bracelets, one of which read “Hope for Natalee.” When Van Susteren asked about it, Anita said Beth had given it to her the day before. The bracelet was a visible sign that the two women had made contact even while the investigation was placing their families on opposite sides of an increasingly bitter public dispute.
That detail is easy to overlook beside the larger claims and accusations that followed. But it helps explain why the first exchange could be described as “positive” in the Associated Press report published by CBS News on June 22, 2005. Beth declined to disclose the specifics of the conversation at the time. The AP account did not say that the families agreed about Joran’s role; it recorded Beth’s limited public description of the interaction.
The later meeting Greta Van Susteren remembered
In a 2019 ABC News interview, Beth described a later, private meeting with Joran’s parents at their home. Greta Van Susteren, who was reporting from Aruba, accompanied her. Beth said Paulus van der Sloot had invited them inside. She explained that she wanted to be close enough to Joran’s father to make him feel, in some way, the pain she was experiencing.
Van Susteren remembered Beth as stern and direct. She recalled Anita crying and sobbing during the conversation. Van Susteren also said Paulus was perspiring heavily. She was careful to acknowledge that perspiration can have medical explanations, while describing the impression it made on her at the time. That observation is a recollection of what Van Susteren saw; it is not proof that Paulus knew what had happened to Natalee.
Beth later expressed her own belief that Paulus knew more than he was saying. That was her interpretation, formed amid a desperate search and the changing accounts surrounding the night Natalee disappeared. It should be reported as Beth’s belief, not converted into a proven fact about the father’s knowledge or conduct.
Why the timing matters
Natalee disappeared on May 30, 2005, after a night out in Oranjestad during a high-school graduation trip. She was last seen leaving Carlos’n Charlie’s with van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. Beth arrived in Aruba and quickly sought information from the people who had last been with her daughter. In June, police detained van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers as part of the investigation. At that stage, no one had been convicted of a crime connected to Natalee’s disappearance, and the accounts given by the young men were disputed and changed over time.
The June 22 AP report and the June 22–23 television interviews are valuable because they preserve what the families were saying while the search was still underway. They also show why the chronology matters: Beth’s first reported contact with the parents, Anita’s televised comments, and the later off-camera meeting recalled by Beth and Van Susteren were related encounters, but they were not necessarily the same conversation.
What changed after the 2005 conversations?
For years, the case remained unresolved. Van der Sloot gave different accounts of what happened after he left the nightclub with Natalee. In 2023, as part of a U.S. federal case involving extortion and wire fraud, he admitted in a proffer agreement that he killed Natalee in Aruba in 2005. He pleaded guilty to the U.S. charges, which concerned his attempt to obtain money from Beth in exchange for information about her daughter.
That admission is a major later development, but it does not retroactively turn every suspicion voiced in 2005 into an established fact. Nor does Anita’s public defense of her son in June 2005 tell us what she knew privately at that time. The contemporaneous interviews show what she chose to say publicly: that she believed Joran, that she felt her family was living through a nightmare, and that she wanted the truth about Natalee to be found.
In a November 4, 2026 interview with Netflix Tudum, Beth said the years of not knowing had ended for her, but that she was continuing to pursue accountability through lawyers in the Netherlands. As of that interview, van der Sloot had not been charged with Natalee’s death. The distinction between his 2023 admission in the U.S. case and any separate murder prosecution remains important.
What Anita’s words reveal — and what they cannot prove
Anita’s statements are revealing as a record of a family under pressure. She expressed sympathy for Beth, said she wanted to comfort her, and wore a bracelet supporting the search for Natalee. At the same time, she publicly stood by Joran and rejected the idea that the family was withholding information. The tension between those positions helps explain why the meeting drew attention: the women could recognize one another’s pain without sharing the same view of the young man at the center of the investigation.
But a careful account has to stop where the evidence stops. Anita’s tears, her bracelet, Beth’s suspicions about Paulus, and Van Susteren’s recollection of the room are meaningful parts of the historical record. None, by itself, proves what either parent knew about Natalee’s fate. The strongest reporting keeps the statements attributed, places them beside the dated contemporary coverage, and distinguishes what was known in 2005 from what emerged in 2023 and afterward.
Frequently asked questions
When did Beth Holloway first meet Joran van der Sloot’s parents?
Contemporary reporting places an early meeting in Noord, Aruba, around June 21, 2005, while Beth was distributing prayer cards for Natalee. CBS News published an Associated Press report about the exchange on June 22.
What did Anita van der Sloot say about Beth Holloway?
In a June 22, 2005 Fox News interview, Anita said she wanted to hold Beth and let her know that the family supported finding the truth. She described Beth as a mother in pain and said both families were suffering.
What did Anita say about her son?
In the same interview, Anita said she believed Joran “200 percent.” That was her stated personal position during the 2005 investigation, when he was being held as a suspect and had not been convicted of a crime connected to Natalee’s disappearance.
Why was Anita wearing a “Hope for Natalee” bracelet?
Anita told Greta Van Susteren that Beth had given her the bracelet the previous day. The detail was included in the Fox News interview broadcast June 22, 2005.
Did Beth meet the van der Sloot parents more than once?
The historical accounts describe an early encounter in June 2005 and a later private conversation with the parents that Beth and Greta Van Susteren recalled in a 2019 ABC News interview. The available accounts should not be treated as one single meeting.
Did Joran van der Sloot later admit killing Natalee?
Yes. In a 2023 proffer agreement connected to U.S. extortion and wire-fraud charges, van der Sloot admitted killing Natalee in Aruba. As of Beth’s November 4, 2026 interview with Netflix Tudum, he had not been charged with Natalee’s death in a separate murder case.
Sources and further reading
- CBS News / Associated Press, June 22, 2005: “Aruba Missing Case Parents Meet”
- Fox News, June 23, 2005: “Transcript: Van der Sloots Speak”
- CNN transcript, June 23, 2005: reporting on Beth’s meeting with the van der Sloots
- ABC News, November 21, 2019: Beth Holloway’s account of her search and later meeting with the van der Sloots
- Netflix Tudum, November 4, 2026: Beth Holloway’s latest comments and legal efforts
Editorial note: This article distinguishes contemporaneous 2005 statements from later recollections and the 2023 admission. It does not treat either parent’s demeanor or Beth’s suspicions as proof of knowledge or criminal involvement.