DATE REVIEWED: 10/20/24
TITLE: Justice for Natalee Holloway
BOX OFFICE RATED: NR (This is not suitable for GOD’s children.)
PRODUCTION YEAR: 2011 Sony Pictures Television / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Peace Out Productions / Lifetime Original Movie
RATING [1 LEAST FAVORITE TO 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]: 1
REASON: This movie is based on the unsolved and true story of Natalee Ann Holloway, a 18-year-old Mountain Brook Alabama High School graduate. Natalee disappeared while out of the USA during her high school planned field trip to Aruba on May 30, 2005. Natalie had just received her diploma on May 24th in Alabama at the Wright Performing Arts Center just days before she went missing. While in Aruba, teen Natalee got together with 22-year-old Joran (your-on) Van Der Sloot and he was the prime suspect for murdering Natalee. During the lengthy and expensive disappearance/murder investigation involving multiple country officials, Joran had been arrested and released twice because there was no body so Natalee’s murder couldn’t be proved. Joran lived in a mansion in Aruba with his dad Paulus, a Dutch nationalist, and mom Anita. Natalee’s mom, Elizabeth (Beth), gave the Aruban officials a videotape that she had of Joran confessing that he dumped teen Natalee’s body in the ocean, but they closed the case in the courthouse and decided that it was said to be another made-up story and thought that Paulus pulled strings to get his son off the hook. Paulus told Beth when in Aruba that Joran’s involvement couldn’t be proven and to leave him and his family alone. Beth told the Aruba news that Joran got away with the murder of her teen daughter on vacation in the Caribbean country fresh out of high school and Paulus used his contacts of judges and other high-powered officials and abused his government status to cover up his crime and do his bidding. Beth’s lawyer friend, John Kelly, advised her to drop the case, but she refused. Paulus then kicked Joran out of the country because he was bringing bad publicity to the family and Joran didn’t care what he did to get famous as long he was in the news. Beth returned to the USA and visited the FBI in Alabama and asked Agent Craig Delaney for news, but it was too hard to investigate since the crime didn’t happen on American soil. Beth went to see her ex-husband George “Jug” Twitty who was having a birthday party at his home for himself and he had many guests. Elizabeth and George divorced two years before in 2008. Beth left George’s house almost immediately after she got there because the partygoers questioned if she would return to her teaching job and she wasn’t able to move on from her daughter’s death like George obviously could. Joran left Aruba as his dad told him and went to school at Rangsit University in Bangkok, Thailand, where he befriended the dean’s son, Sam. They went to Sam’s uncle’s nightclub, where they partied with the female Thai strippers. Joran offered the females the chance to dance at clubs in Holland for money, and he introduced Sam to Martin and Wouter from Holland. The Holland guys wanted $20,000 up front with the girls and assured Joran that he would get his money back. One of the girls saw Joran’s dark side when he held her by the throat and called her a bit**. Joran called Debra Stanville at World Headline News and offered to tell them what happened to Natalee if they paid him $50,000. The network wouldn’t authorize it, but Joran sent Debra a chip from his cell phone with recordings of conversations with Paulus. Joran claimed that a casino guy offered to pay Joran $10,000 to find a blond that could be sold into sex trafficking in Venezuela. Debra from WHN headed to Thailand to interview Joran while Beth went with Alan from WHN to Aruba to authenticate Joran’s newest claims. The World Headline News gave Joran the money they agreed upon in exchange for the interview, and he made up a story that he sold Natalee and sent her away on a boat. When Joran discovered that Alan was interviewing Paulus, Joran revealed that he lied on the recording and in the interview and Joran walked out of Debra’s interview in Thailand with the World News money. Beth was informed in Aruba what Joran did in Thailand but she refused to leave and went to Paulus and Anita’s house and knocked on the door. They ordered Beth to leave their property. Before Elizabeth left the home she pleaded with Joran’s mom but Anita declared that teen Natalee was a questionable American girl for drinking and flirting with her island son Joran. Debra aired the Thai interview with the suspect Aruban Van Der Sloot and let the people decide what they thought about the psychopathic game Joran was playing by manipulating people and falsely confessing to things to get money and lying to get whatever else he wanted. The Holland guys didn’t want to be involved with Joran after they heard about him, so they refused to do the deal or take the Thai girls. The Holland thugs (possible pimps since prostitution and pot are legal in The Netherlands…a country that is a member of the European Union) kept Joran’s $20,000 and held a gun to his face to make him leave them in peace. Soon after Paulus (dad) in Aruba called Joran in Thai and told him that he was cut off from his parents financing and advised his son to get a job. Not long after that, Paulus suddenly had a heart attack while playing tennis alone and died. Meanwhile, back in the USA again, Elizabeth visited the FBI building again and this time went inside the men’s bathroom to tell Delaney that she would hunt Joran down if the FBI wouldn’t because Paulus could no longer protect Joran since his mob boss dad was dead. Joran returned to his mom’s home in Aruba, where Anita wanted him to turn over a new leaf and then called her son the man of the house since her husband was dead. Joran went to a bedroom and looked at the photos he had on his laptop of USA Natalee and considered trashing them, but he sent emails to John, Elizabeth’s attorney, instead. John showed up at Mayfield Elementary where Beth had returned to teaching what appeared to be a kindergarten class, and had left after Natalee’s death five years before. John explained to Beth outside the school building that Joran would take Beth to Natalee in exchange for money, so Beth planned to pay Joran. Beth hoped to get Joran on tape asking for money, and FBI Delaney agreed since Alabama was one of the three states in the US where wiretapping was legal. If they succeeded, Joran could be prosecuted for extortion in Alabama and face a long prison sentence. Joran called Beth in the middle of the night, and she recorded him asking for $250,000 in exchange for Natalee’s whereabouts. Beth and the FBI agents called Joran again to confirm that John would take $25,000 to Joran in Aruba up front and he would get the rest of the money after they found Natalee. Joran insisted on having a stipulation in the contract that attorney John drew up stating that Beth would have to pay $1 million if she revealed where the information came from. Beth later explained to her son Matt that she had to take some of the money out of his college fund to help bring his sister home and he agreed. Jug dropped Beth off at the airport and accused her of obsessing with Joran the same way Joran was obsessing with her. Jug had moved on and accepted that Natalee was gone, and he advised Beth to do the same because she was wasting her life living in the past and Joran was stringing her along and would never tell the truth because he was a pathological liar and seriously mentally disturbed. The FBI went with attorney John and mom Beth to Aruba, where John would meet with Joran in a hotel room that was filled with cameras while US agents covered the foreign hotel. Customs only allowed them to bring $10,000, and John planned to have the rest of the money wired to Joran’s account of choice but he called off the deal and left the hotel room. John ran after Joran because the FBI told him to get him back in the room where the recording devices and cameras were and so John was able to convince him to talk in the hotel room. They wire-transferred the other $15,000 to Joran’s account, and Beth wanted Joran to tell her over the phone what happened to Natalee but he refused and would only give her the story she paid for. Joran told John that Natalee died when she fell and hit her head on a rock at the beach after they were out partying, and she was a sweet and innocent girl whose death haunted him constantly. Joran went on to say that Paulus buried Natalee in the gravel of a foundation in the northeast corner where they poured concrete the following day because no one would believe it was an accident. Beth was tired of waiting on the FBI people after four days, so she and John went to the house that Joran claimed Natalee was buried under despite Delaney telling them not to. They discovered that Joran lied because the area was swampland until the houses were built two years ago, not five years when Natalee vanished. Beth called Joran, who was surprised to hear from her on his personal phone number and told her that she shouldn’t have been so dumb to trust that he would tell the truth because it would put him in trouble with serious criminals that was in his inner crime circle, but Beth threatened to nail him. The FBI searched Joran’s house, but he had already left and they later discovered that the Aruban officials who were supposed to be watching Joran let him flee to Colombia on a plane. FBI Delaney got Interpol involved to find Joran. Beth and Matt went to New York City for the five-year anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance on May 30, 2010, where Beth did a TV interview to promote the foundation that she started in Natalee’s honor to prevent more missing children. Beth didn’t want others to lose a child so young like she did and acknowledged it was over for her and Natalee. Joran went to Lima, Peru, where he left the Lavilla casino with 21-year-old Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramirez. They went to a hotel room and they held his Passport until he checked out, where Joran refused to tell Stephany his name so she took his ID and used Google to lookup his name from his ID on the Internet while he was in the bathroom. Joran came into the room and caught Stephany, and she tried to leave the hotel room and get away from the suspected murderer but he beat her up and then strangled her to death. Joran casually went to the lobby to get breakfast for him and his (absent) girlfriend, and he was told by the staff to move Stephany’s Jeep parked out front. Joran told the desk clerk on his way out not to have housekeeping clean his room that day because his girlfriend was sleeping and the employee told him OK. Joran ditched the young woman’s Jeep and hitchhiked, and he joked that he killed someone and he was leaving Peru because he lost his ID. Joran paid the driver and later his helper’s gang to sneak him across the border from Peru into Chile, and the police let the smugglers through without checking the back of the van where Joran was hiding. Beth and Matt returned home to Alabama from New York and had movie night, and then Beth visited her ex husband Jug and they had coffee in his house and both said they missed each other. Back in Peru, Stephany’s wealthy parents, Marielena (Maria Elena) Ramirez and Ricardo Flores (Ricardo ran for Peruvian president), reported Stephany’s two-day disappearance to the police. They reviewed the video footage at the casino, and Captain Martinez identified Joran. Joran’s hotel room hadn’t been cleaned for two days, and the clerk let the police in and they found Stephany’s dead body. Martinez informed Stephany’s parents that she was dead and Joran got away, and Michelle reported it on breaking news back in the USA. Beth heard the USA news talking about Natalee and now Stephany with the murder suspect Joran and Elizabeth blamed herself because she thought Joran used her money to kill Stephany. Mr. Flores contacted his friends in high places at Interpol so Joran wouldn’t get away with another murder. In Chili, Joran dyed his hair red and called Anita in Aruba, but she refused to send him money to come back to Aruba and told him to turn himself in to the police because she couldn’t believe he turned out a murderer when his brothers weren’t on the news as such. Interpol surrounded Joran’s motel, so he stood in the middle of the road until a female officer spotted him and her team arrested Joran. FBI Delaney told Elizabeth the news of Joran’s arrest, and Chris Hansen from Dateline reported from Lima. Joran wore a bulletproof vest on his way to the jail so he wouldn’t be shot dead by the crowd in the streets. Joran wanted to return to Aruba or Holland for trial but he would be tried in South America with no extradition. Joran was interrogated and he lied that his mom told him on the phone recently that Stephany was dead and he had planned to turn himself in to cooperate and prove his innocence. Joran then tried to get off the hook by offering to reveal where Natalee’s body was to get a lighter sentence. The Peru hotel cameras revealed that Joran was the only other person in the hotel room, so he confessed that he killed Stephany but he lied that he did it in self-defense after Stephany read about him and Natalee on Google’s search site on his laptop. Joran refused to sign the typed statement of his confession. At Stephany’s funeral, Mr. Flores told the news that his daughter was chosen by God so Joran could be arrested for the crimes he committed against innocent women and Ricardo hoped that Joran being put behind bars would give peace to the Holloway family in the USA. Elizabeth then flew to South America to visit Joran. Beth had wanted to peel the skin off Joran’s face for five years, so she was snuck into the prison to secretly do a wired interview with Joran and ask him questions about Natalee because he would be convicted no matter what so she thought now he might as well tell her the truth. Joran refused to tell Beth anything, and he wanted time to think up another story and asked for Beth’s address. Elizabeth gave criminal Joran her email instead to stay in touch with her. Joran commented that his gambling addiction caused him to tell lies and murder girls. Beth broke down in tears, but Joran still wouldn’t give her an answer so she explained that she lost her job, her husband and everyone else because of what he did to Natalee. Then Elizabeth realized that Joran liked the attention and would keep it going for many years and would never tell her the truth about Natalee, so Beth decided on the spot that she would move on and let Natalee go and told the murderer Joran so. Joran left the private chat room with Beth, and afterward Elizabeth stayed and told the cameras that she was done hating Joran and basically hoped he rotted in jail for the rest of his life. The movie ended with Joran awaiting trial in Peru for the murder of Stephany and it was said that he was never charged with teen USA Natalee’s disappearance in Aruba.