Wndyri Plus subscribers can listen to Morbid early and ad-free. Join WNDYRI Plus in the WNDYRI app or on Apple podcasts. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Hey, weirdos. I am Esh.

And I'm Elaina.

And this is Morbid.

This is morbid.

We haven't done this in a minute. It feels weird.

I know. We backlogged all our recording. We did a whole batch. You know, batched it up.

So I could go to Diz Nasty with my mans. Woohoo. Wow.

That was great. I wouldn't say anything.

I don't want to- Don't offend me.

I don't want to anger Disney people.

Don't offend me.

I'm going to give it another shot eventually.

Yeah, with me.

For the kiddos.

With me. And I want to bring Papa.

Yeah.

I got a family motherfucking trip, bitch.

We're going to make it great.

I want to make shirts. I want to figure out how to like it. I just wanted to see your response to that. What did you say? I said, I'm going to make shirts.

I was just kidding. I wanted to- I chose not to hear that part.

You said my brain blocked that part out. I said what? No, I like to wear my own outfits. Of course you do. I would never force a shirt upon somebody because I like to wear what I want to wear.

Yeah, I like that about you.

Thanks. Thanks. I like a lot of things about you, too. But yeah, I went to Disney and to Universal Party. I'm a theme park adult. I met some of you guys and you were so nice. I met Alexis and Sam, and I think it was Avonne that worked there, and she gave us passes to go in the Monsters Inc ride, and that was really cool. Wow. And who else did I meet? I met a lot of names, and I'm sorry, I didn't forget yours. It's just not coming to me right now.

I'm awful with names, and it has nothing to do with not wanting to know the person. It's just I'm really bad at names.

I want to remember. Oh, Shelby. I met a Shelby. She was really cool. She fucking loves you, too. Everybody that I met also loves you.

I feel like only Shelby likes you.

Shelby really liked you. Everybody else said, oh, Glad Elaina is not with you.

Glad it's just not.

No, everybody was like, I love Elaina and I love you.

No, you guys are always so sweet.

I love meeting people.

Yeah, we always have the best... Honestly, I love meeting people because we always have the best interactions. You guys are so You're so kind. You guys are so fun. We always walk away and go, They were so nice. Every single time.

Honestly, every person that is walking away from us probably hears us together or us to our spouse being like, Oh my God, they were so nice.

Oh my God, they were so nice. Or, That was so nice.

Or, That was so cool. Yeah.

It happens every time. But no, that's fun. And hi, all of the people that Ash met.

Hi.

I hope you had fun at Disney. They did.

And Universal.

And Universal. Where's your sunscreen?

I did. I wear SPF 50 every day.

There you go. Smart. I'm pale. I'm pale.

I wear my Sorella Duh drops. Please sponsor me every day. Oh, there you go.

Every day.

Every day. I'm wearing them right now, even.

I love that for you. Thank you. Thank you.

How are you? I'm good.

You have a book coming out? I do have a book coming out.

I know. I read it on the plane. You did. It's fucking great.

Listen to Ash.

Spectacular page turner, thrilling experience, terrifying We're fine to know you and to think, That's in your head. That's in your... In your head. In your head. All right, you talk.

Sorry. I'm not sure. Well, no, that was great. That's really all we need is you can pre-order The Butcher Game, thebutchergame. Com. It'll take you everywhere you need to go. Barnes & Noble is doing all kinds of fun things. There's going to be, by the time this comes out, it will have already happened. But there is, there has been a Kindle deal for the first book, so you can get ready for the second book. Oh, that's cool. But it comes out September 17th. But pre-orders are awesome and they make a difference. And it means that you'll get your book first. Sometimes you even get it the day before. Sometimes that happens.

Yeah, that did happen to a lot of people last time. And that's fun. And they were fucking stoked.

Yeah, that's a fun thing. That's why pre-orders, I know. Trust, let's level together, everybody. Sometimes a pre-order, you're like, Well, the book's not out yet. I'll just wait. I have to really fucking love the person to pre-order.

That's the thing.

And I really love you, so I pre-ordered. I appreciate that. And I understand that. I totally get it. You're like, I'll just wait till September. Why would I spend the money now? And I get that. And if you want to do that, that's totally cool. But you'll miss out on some cool shit. But I'll also appreciate that if you buy it in September when it comes out.

As long as you just buy it. Just get it.

But it's true. If you pre-order, sometimes you do get it a day early. And that is a fun perk. And I've noticed that when I've pre-ordered things, and it is one of those moments where you're like, Oh, okay, I guess I I just have this before everyone else does.

Being ahead of the curve is one of the best things ever.

It's a fun thing. So, yeah, if you guys want to do it, it's fun. And, who knows if there'll be more? Who knows? I know. There's got to be more. So catch it. Catch it now.

The way it ends, is there more?

I'm not going to tell you that. You're such a bitch. You're such a bitch.

You're such a bitch. Well, with that.

With that, with me name calling.

Let's go. We have a case today that I am sure many, many, many, many, many, if not everybody knows. We are going to be covering the Natalie Holloway case. But I wanted to cover this one because it is a case worth covering, every cases. But we are also going to have a follow-up to this, and I just wanted to tell you guys right off the bat because we are going to be sitting down with the director from Peacock's Pathological: The Lies of Yorin Van der Sloot for a whole follow-up after this episode. So if you have a chance between now and when that comes out, it will most likely be the next episode. Definitely check that out because we're going to be talking all about that as a little- It's going to be real interesting. Yeah, definitely. It was a really good documentary. But with that being said, let's get into the case. Let's do it. So Natalie Ann Holloway was born on October 21st, 1986, in Memphis, Tennessee. She was the first of two children born to David and Beth Holloway. The family, which also includes Natalie's younger brother Matt, they lived in Clinton, Mississippi until Dave and Beth's marriage came to an end, and they decided to part ways.

But after that, Natalie's father, Dave, ended up moving to Jackson, Mississippi, around 1995. And despite the breakup of their marriage, Dave and Beth really made every effort to remain on good terms for their kids. That's awesome. To just make sure that they could co-parent in harmony. And by all accounts, they were very successful at that. Good for them. Yeah, exactly. In 2000, Beth ended up remarrying to George. His nickname is Jug Twitty. He's an Alabama businessman, and that prompted a move from Mississippi to Mountainbrook, Alabama. Natalie was right around 14 at that time, so you could assume that up and moving at that age would be pretty difficult.

Yeah, I imagine.

I'm not sure if she was in... I don't think she was in her freshman year yet. I think she was in eighth grade. But she acclimated relatively easy and really quickly became one, successful at her new school. She was doing really well and also really popular. Everyone liked her.

Damn.

Her A friend, Frances Bird, told reporters, I've known Natalie since she moved here in eighth grade. Ever since she's been here, she's been the smartest of all us friends. So she was really smart. She was a really likable person, a good friend. Yeah. By the time she reached high school, she was already thinking about her future, and her goal was to pursue a career in medicine. Her cousin Thomas said, She was everything parents look for, pretty much in every honor society you could think of, hardly ever got into trouble, pretty much everything you would want in a son or daughter.

Oh, that's Yeah.

Natalie's responsible attitude and commitment to her studies eventually paid off. By the time she reached her senior year in high school, she was a straight A student at the top of her class, and she got herself a full scholarship to the University of Alabama. Really Shit. Which I think that needs to be stressed. All A's, straight A's, is something so hard to achieve.

Oh, that's no easy feat.

Straight A's and a full ride to a really... The University of Alabama is a pretty good school.

Yeah. I don't remember, and maybe I'm not remembering it correctly because it feels like it was a long time ago at this point. I don't remember that being as focused on as it probably should have been.

No. I think we'll talk about that a little bit. This story, if you were alive and tuning into the news when this was happening- It was all you heard about. It was everything you heard about, but it was not very victim-focused in the way that I I think it should have been. It was more the story itself, of the disappearance itself, and less about Natalie, more about the tensions between Aruba and America, and the media sensation and all of that. Natalie, and I think I end up saying exactly what I'm going to say right now later, she got lost as a girl.

It was the story that everybody was... Because I remember it very clearly when this happened. Oh, it was constant. It was like when Madely McCann went missing. It was all you saw. Yeah, exactly. It was all that.

Every news station, every channel, all the time.

It was the Amanda Knox trial. It was all that. It was that intense coverage.

It's It was a frenzy. But she was also active in several extracurricular activities as well. The things that this girl made time for is nuts. She was in the Mountainbrook High dance team. She She went to her church's Bible Club. She had a part-time job at a health food store, and she also found time to volunteer with local organizations whenever she could. Damn. Just made time to do good things.

How do you have that many minutes in a day?

I don't know. But after all the hard work that she put into her schooling and just being an overall badass in general, Natalie asked her mom if she could attend the annual Mountainbrook High School class trip to Aruba. Every year, the seniors graduated, they would go to Aruba for a reward, a celebration, that thing. Beth really couldn't think of a single reason to say no to Natalie.

I mean, why?

Yeah. She wrote, Her stepbrother, George, had gone two years before, and if I could swing it financially, I wanted Natalie to have the experience.

Of course. I understand that.

It's I think, I believe she was 18. Yeah, she was 18. And it's like, I want her to see the world. She put so much hard work into her schooling and all that.

And Aruba is known as a safe island. Yeah. We both had our honeymooms there. Yeah. It really is known as one of those places that people aren't super on edge going to. It's like, what really would make her say no? Exactly. Natalie's a good kid. She's shown herself to be responsible. She's shown herself to be trustworthy and that she can handle this freedom.

Yeah. It's like her stepbrother went, like how are we going to say yes to one kid and no to the other? There's so many factors. But Dave, on the other hand, Natalie's dad, he wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea.

I can understand that, I see both sides of it, 100%. I totally agree that.

He wrote in his 2023 memoir, I was apprehensive about Natalie taking this type of trip, and I tried to talk her out of it. I didn't like the idea of her traveling that far away with so many other students and so few chaperones.

I can totally get Which makes perfect sense. Because I would probably be more on that end because I tend to be a helicopter parent.

Yeah, which I don't think anybody can blame anybody either way for how they felt.

Absolutely. I can see both ways. I totally understand why Beth was like, She's giving me no reason to believe that. You know?

Yeah. And she deserves this.

If she goes to this relatively safe place with her friends, that she's going to have a fun time and come home and everything will be fine. It'll be great. And that's the thing.

Students did this every year. Yeah, I got it.

So you understand. And again, what are the odds? You just think, what are the odds? Exactly.

It wouldn't happen to me. It's awful. But despite her father's apprehension, he did end up giving Natalie a $500 check to cover half the cost of the trip to Aruba. A few weeks before the trip, you just think, what are the odds? Exactly. It wouldn't happen to me. It's awful. But despite her father's apprehension, he did end up giving Natalie a $500 check to cover half the cost of the trip to Aruba. A few weeks before the trip, it Beth attended two information sessions about it where the parents who wouldn't be on the trip would receive more practical details. And most importantly, they learned about the chaperones who would be in charge of the students while they were on the island.

See, they're doing their due diligence. That's the thing. They're doing the thing that That's what they should be doing.

Right, exactly. In 2007, Beth wrote, The position of the chaperones was made clear. They'd be there for emergencies such as lost passports, but they wouldn't be conducting bed checks or roll call. So they were really just there in case of emergency. An issue, yeah. Which you can understand because these are mostly 18-year-olds.

Yeah, I can totally understand that. That would stress me a lot.

But it would stress me a lot. But at the same time, I can see where she was like, She's 18. She's going to be going off to college. There's no chaperones there.

I cannot imagine being in that position because it really is that must... I don't have teenagers, so I don't know. But it feels like that age would be the toughest because It's like they're technically in the eyes of many situations, adults, quote unquote. Yeah. And it's like they see themselves as adults because they're being told by so many things that they're adults now. And they have to take on adult responsibility, so why can't I act like an adult? Why don't I get adult freedoms? And it's like, you need to walk that line. And I understand that it must be hard to figure out how. I don't envy them, and I'm not excited to that. Don't look forward to that time. Not excited to that.

I don't blame you. But considering, like I just said, that Natalie and most of the other students were either 18 or nearly 18, this position seemed reasonable to Beth. On the morning of May 26, 2005, Natalie arrived at the airport with 125 of her fellow students and seven chaperones. Like Dave Holloway, Beth's decision to let her daughter go on this trip was not made lightly or without reservations. Known for its very vibrant nightlife and countless casinos and clubs, Aruba had a particular allure for unsupervised teenagers who were looking forward to being away from their parents in a region where the drinking age is actually 18.

Yeah, that's another update thing here.

That's another factor of all this. Beth recalled, When a former Mountainbrooke student came back from his class trip, he told us a chilling incident at a night spot called Carlos & Charlie's. According to the student, quote, some locals had tried to get a couple of girls in his class to leave with them, but the student, quote, stepped in to help diffuse a potentially dangerous situation. So she had heard about that and was very apprehensive. That would make me very nervous. Very nervous about it. But it was one instance.

Technically, that can happen anywhere. That can happen in their hometown. That can happen tomorrow night. It's like, of course, it's going to put you on a little high alert, but it's like, you know.

You got to take it for what it is. But whether the student storyteller was being truthful or exaggerating for a story's sake, the tale of this young woman in peril definitely frightened Beth, and For that reason, she made it a point to warn Natalie, be vigilant when you're around unfamiliar people, especially at bars and nightclubs. They had that conversation probably multiple times.

You do just have to hope that you've taught them well and that They're going to be humans that have to go out in the world eventually.

Yeah, and that's what you've prepared them for, their whole life. While Natalie was away, Beth figured it would actually be a good time to take a little long weekend get away herself. She called a few friends, and they arranged a little girls' weekend at her family vacation home in Hot Spring. They were on their drive back to Mountainbrook on Monday, May 30th, when Beth's cell phone rang. The voice on the other end was that of a young woman who Beth didn't recognize, but she would come to know as Jody, the tour coordinator, that Beth had actually spoken to during those information sessions before Natalie left for her trip. But Jody explained that the group had assembled in the hotel lobby that morning, but when the chaperones did a head count, Natalie was missing. She was not among those in the headcount. In fact, Jody went on, quote, When the other Mountainbrooke students met in the holiday and lobby to board busses for the airport, Natalie's roommates notified chaperones that she hadn't returned to the room the previous night.

No, this would... Just hearing this is- You would lose it. This is your worst nightmare. I swear my brain is in fight or flight mode for her. It's just that's your worst nightmare. Yeah, it gives you chill. Your worst nightmare.

You story. Just be sitting in your seat on your way home like, no, no, this is a dream.

This is a nightmare. Thinking of a hundred thousand different things that could be happening. Yeah, exactly. And everyone is worse than the last one.

And just sitting there thinking this can't be happening. There's no way.

And she's so far away. That's the other thing that I'm sure she probably struggled with just as a parent. Oh, yeah. Is being an ocean away. Oh my God, yeah. You know, like an ocean between you thing. Exactly. That must have already been something she was sitting with. Like, that's hard.

A hundred %. I mean, for us, it's like a five, six hour flight. Like, that's a long time.

That's a long time. Like, when, John had to fly down to, to like a couple hours away when his father passed away, and he had to do it unexpectedly just for a couple of days. And he still is like, he's like, being a plane ride away from you and the girls was not for me. He was like, not for me. I thought about it all day, every day for two days.

That's when nothing dangerous is going on at your homestead. That's when nothing is really like- Obviously, he was dealing with other stuff, but there was no alarm bells where he had to get home to you guys for any reason.

It was just if something happened, It was like, the thought that I had to jump on a plane to get to you or it was going to take a long time to drive to you. I feel that way, too. Whenever I'm even a couple hours away, even into New York or something like that, I feel too far away. I do. I totally get that. And nothing's happening. So it's like when something- When something detrimental. When you're getting that phone call and you are hours away on a plane, the helplessness that must have been felt is something I can't even conceive of. No.

And Beth said, she wrote, instantly, I know something bad has happened.

Because you're a mom, you just know. Exactly. You're a parent.

A mama always knows. We always say that. So she called her husband from the car and asked if he could arrange for immediate transportation to Aruba. And she was surprised when he hesitated. He suggested maybe Natalie had just missed her flight. But Beth was like, no. She said, Natalie might be early for something, but never late.

See, and she knows her daughter.

She's like, I know Natalie. She would not have miss that flight.

No. And honestly, I'd be like, I will overreact. Exactly. I'd rather show up there and overreact.

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So Jugg twitty didn't object any further and started making some phone calls to see see what he could do about getting a private flight to Aruba straight away.

In the meantime, Beth called her son Matt, who relayed the information about Natalie missing the flight to his father, Dave, adding that Beth and Jugg were booking a private plane and leaving for Aruba ASAP. So So Dave Hollowey got online and found the phone number for the hotel, and he managed to reach one of the chaperones who volunteered actually to stay behind in case Natalie showed up.

Wow. That's a real one.

They really showed up for each other here. Unfortunately, though, The chaperone didn't have any more information than what had already been relayed. They were like, I'll stay if she's here. Which is awesome. But that's all I really know. But they did mention that the group had received some help from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, an agent who was actually there on vacation and had made some calls to local police on their behalf. That's great. So a lot of people stepping in to help here in the beginning.

In the beginning.

While Beth waited to hear back from her husband about the travel going on, she placed a call to the FBI field office in Birmingham, but it was a holiday weekend, so the office was closed. Now, not knowing what else to do, she just started going through the list of students on the trip and placed one call after the other. And after talking to a few of the kids on the trip, a picture of the previous night's events started to emerge. To celebrate their last night on the island, the students had gone out to Carlos and Charlie's, the same club that Beth had actually heard about from that previous student, where they partied until a little after midnight. As As they were leaving, a few people saw Natalie get into a dark-colored Honda with a teenager that a few of the students had actually become friendly with during the trip. Jugg's nephew, Thomas, told Beth his name is Jeren or Jaron or something like that. According to Thomas, the guy was a Dutch tourist who was staying at the same hotel, and to him, he didn't seem dangerous. They never do. They never do. After a few hours, Jugg had managed to secure a private flight, and a short time later, he and Beth were on their way to Aruba.

The plane touched down a little after 11:00 PM. So you just imagine that. Imagine the stress of just going to the airport in general when you're going to do something fun and exciting. Just imagine that.

You're like, Just get me on that plane and get me there.

Imagine having to get through TSA security while you're dealing with this. I can't even. But they went straight to the holiday inn where the students were staying, and they were met by the remaining chaperone and that vacationing DEA agent who was still providing some assistance distance. After making introductions, Beth went to the front desk and asked about that Dutch teen who had been seen with her daughter. The person behind the counter knew exactly who she was talking about and immediately answered, Oh, yes, Jorin. He gambles in the casino. He likes to prey on young female tourists, especially the blondes.

That is the worst thing she could have possibly heard.

I can't imagine something worse.

He likes to prey on... Like, prey.

Pray on young female tourists, especially the blondes. For anybody who doesn't know, Natalie is a blonde.

I can't.

I have goosebumps.

Yeah, that's heart-wrenching.

The desk agent went on to describe Yoren as a tall, quote, good-looking boy, like a Dutch Marine.

Debatable.

Very debatable. And most importantly, when Beth asked where this boy was from, the agent said, Oh, he lives in Aruba. Yeah. So from the moment they arrived in Aruba, Beth Jugg and Dave Holloway, he ended up making his way there, too, felt an acute difference in foreignness in the way that things were being handled. Natalie's disappearance had been reported to the local police, and everybody at the hotel and local casinos had been made aware of the situation. But as far as Natalie's family could tell, nobody seemed to be taking the matter very seriously. There were people out combing the beaches for Natalie, but they were people. They weren't police or search and rescue. They were just volunteers. And just people from the hotel, even.

And you'd want to just be tearing the world apart as a parent. You're like, everyone snap to it.

Especially law enforcement.

Yeah, this is your job.

Exactly. Everybody just kept telling the hallways, Just wait for her. She'll come back. But obviously, they weren't feeling good about that because by then, Natalie had been missing for almost 24 hours and was last seen with a local who was now, they knew, known to prey on young blonde tourists.

Yeah, and they know their daughter. Exactly. It's the same thing they used to do to people. They would do all the time. Oh, they just ran away. They still do. They just ran away. They'll come back. I bet they're just like, hiding. I bet they're just doing this. And the parents are like, no, you don't know my kid. I know my kid. Exactly. I know that they wouldn't do that. And it's like, and clearly, Natalie would not take off for 24 hours and miss her flight back home? No. She's just never going home. She met your on and she's just never fucking leaving. Exactly. Let's all get a grip. No. This is a problem.

This is a huge problem.

It's so infuriating. I would be losing my mind if I were her parents. Absolutely. I can't even imagine how they felt.

Because they're sitting there and they're like, It feels like you're treating this very blase. And they were getting pissed off. Good. As we all know from watching the case play out, the story play out on the media, this became a very tense debate between how a Reuben official were handling this and how the family wanted it to be handled.

Which makes it even harder.

It made it 10 times harder.

That there's such a barrier between certain things and things are done differently in different places. It's like you're very out of your element. You know how things work generally where you live. You have a general sense of how the situation will unfold. Right. Somewhere else, you have no fucking clue. No idea.

You don't know what the protocol is. And it just wasn't what they expected. I'll get into it. Aruba feels that they handled this, like how it was supposed to be handled. And that's that. Interesting. They say that they have It's a different way of doing things. They don't even let the family in on the closest details. They keep everything very close to the chest because they don't like when the media gets involved because that can fuck up an investigation.

You know what?

You can see the benefit in that. You can see the benefit in that totally. But you can also see why the Holloway's were pissed off. Absolutely. I can very much see- From an outside point of view with no horse right next to me in this race, I can understand the benefit of that, and I can go, Okay, I get it. But I don't know that I would in that situation.

I can't tell you that I would understand the benefit if it was my kid.

Exactly. But having arrived a little later than his ex-wife, Dave Holloway took some time to get caught up on everything. But going forward, His experience was more or less the same as Beth since she had been there. When he arrived at the police station and asked to speak to somebody about his daughter, he was directed to Detective Dennis Jacobs, who, after hearing the story, asked, How much money do you have? What? Which is a strange question. The question also seemed odd to Dave, but he ignored it and just continued asking questions about what was being done to find Natalie. To his dismay, Dave found that Detective Jacob's attitude was exactly as Beth had described the other people involved. The detective told Dave, This happens all the time. Basically suggesting that Natalie had met a boy, gone off for a few days, was having fun, and he said, She'll probably show up in a few days. She's just partying hard.

Yeah, we know her. Oh, yeah, because you know my We know her better than you, her parent. So don't worry about it.

And then after that, the detective suggested that Dave and the others go have a beer at Carlos and Charlie's to relax. And they were sure that Natalie would probably show up there.

Yeah, go to the place where she was last seen and go have a beer.

You'll relax there.

You'll relax there.

Can you imagine being told to have a beer while your kid's missing? Just go have a beer. She'll turn up. I would be L-E-M losing my religion at this point.

I would be losing it.

What 100%.

I would become the news story. I can't kudos to them for not scorching the entire Earth.

I think they wanted to.

Absolutely. I'm sure they did, but good for them for keeping their eye on the prize. Yeah.

Under the circumstances, it's easy to understand Beth and Dave's panic in the moment and their confusion and frustration that more wasn't being done to find their daughter. Yes. But I want to note that locals have a very different recollection of these first few days of the investigation. I'm just trying to tell both sides here. Yeah, you got to. According to Gerald, I think it's Dombai, the Deputy Police Chief in charge of the case, he said, Pressure from the family sidetracked the investigation from the outset. He said, It caused several mistakes to be made that compromised the investigation. And continued, They brought out their big guns on the very first day, and they started shooting. They didn't understand the way things are done in our system. They didn't want to understand. They act like they came from a world where you can just crush people. It was very harmful through our investigation. Okay. That's all quotes. Like we've been saying this entire time, I'm sorry, but if I had an 18-year-old missing daughter under these same circumstances, I would be acting the exact same way. And I have to assume that Most people would be.

I can't fault them for being. For acting any type of way, really. Yeah, that's the thing. I really can't. I'm sorry. I just can't.

But just want to show both sides.

Yeah, you got to give both sides. And I'm sure that it's seen a different way from the people in the investigation. So it's good to point that out because none of us were actually there. So it's like, you got to say these things.

Exactly.

You just wonder, too. You're like, did you explain to them, though? You know what I mean?

Did you explain how this works?

Because you see them panicking. You do have to... I'm like, are you putting the same amount of empathy into your work that you should be? That you're sitting there going, okay, these people are suffering, and they are in the worst possible scenario that anyone could ever imagine, so I have to give them their due of like, you're going to panic and lose it and fly off the handle. But then say, Okay, so how can I make them understand that we do understand that and we empathize with that? That's what needs to be campaign.

To me, and this is just a pure opinion based off of what I read, it sounds like the law enforcement approach this in a very clinical manner. That's what it seems to me. That's not comforting.

It's like if it had just been touched with a little empathy, we get it. It would have made all the difference. We understand that we can't imagine how you're feeling right now, but this is the way we have to do things. And if we want to find your daughter, we understand that that's all you want, and that's all we want. It just can be conveyed in a different way, I feel like, and maybe it wasn't.

And the hallways, they didn't feel like they had acted like any type of way that was wrong.

Out of the ordinary for your child's missing in a place you're unfamiliar with.

They said that that wasn't the case, that they didn't come out guns blazing. They said they were always willing to work with locals and actually offered any resources that they could. But regardless of who's right and who's wrong, I just note the difference because it becomes a very significant feature in Natalie Halley's disappearance. It also really set up the rift between US and Arubaan officials that had an undeniable effect on the search for Natalie. Of course. I think things would have gone very differently had the heads not budded like they did.

Yeah, that makes sense.

But at the casino the following day, Beth and Jugg poured over security camera footage of the gaming floor looking for the boy that Natalie had last been seen with. After getting a better description from Jugg's nephew, Thomas, the couple finally located Yoren on the tape and got a printout of the still to bring to the police. Excited to finally have a solid lead, Beth and her husband rushed to the casino lobby, and they actually almost collided with the handlers that they were with, Alberto and Claudio, who had been talking to some of their local contacts. They not only managed to find a last name for the boy seen with Natalie, but also an address for where he lived on the island. Their suspect's name, Yoren Vandersloot.

You would think this would be the golden ticket?

A hundred %. In my opinion, it should have been.

And the fact that it took so long is so mind boggling.

It's mind boggling. And then on the same side of things, there was no evidence.

That's the problem. And that must be the worst part is you know.

Exactly. But you can't prove it. There's no way to prove it.

And you know he's just walking around just not saying it. And it's like that much- And the way he walked around not saying it, and then what he does to this- And for how long?

What he did to this family, because he confessed he did this. What he did to this family, just taking away their daughter is one horrific, horrible, nightmarish thing. What he continued continue to do for the series of the next decade is unthinkable.

Yeah, he's like, souless. Like, truly souless. Souless.

But anyway, it took some time in convincing, but Beth and Jugg were eventually able to convince local police to accompany them to the address that they were given for Yoren Vandersluit. When they reached the house, Beth waited in the car while the officer spoke to Yoren's father, Paulus, who told them that his son wasn't home. Paulus placed a call to Yoren, and Yoren told his he was playing poker nearby at the Wyndham Hotel. So this is like, I think this is probably like a couple of days later, and this motherfucker's just sitting at a poker table. And we'll find out exactly what he did to Natalie. The fact that he was able to just sit at a fucking poker table and Gamble is mind boggling. Yeah. Mind boggling. But since he said he was there, police headed to the hotel with Paulus to find the teenager. But when they got there, there was no sign of Yoren. Big thing Yorin loves to do is play games. Liar. Liar who plays lots and lots of games aside from poker. But after speaking with the casino staff, Paulus got another call from his son, and he said he was back at home in the company of his friend, I think it's Deepak Kalpo.

So Beth continued to wait in the car the second time while police interviewed Yoren and Deepak, who were standing in the driveway next to a dark Silver Honda. Oh, stop. If you remember, Natalie was last seen in a dark-colored Honda. So as she waited, Beth was on speakerphone with some of the kids from the trip who provided a very accurate description of both Yoren and Deepak. Now, according to Yoren, he met Natalie at the Black Jack table at Carlos and Charlie's that night that she went missing. The way he speaks about her is disgusting. So I just want to let you know that off the bat. Yeah, he is foul. He immediately spoke negatively of Natalie saying, She came on to me huge, dancing suggestively like a slut. And he knows full well what he did to this girl, and this is what he's saying.

He continued- Well, he's mad.

He is. Oh, he's big mad. He continued claiming that he, quote, did Jello shooters off of her stomach and brought her a shot of 151 proof room. Natalie's friends claimed that when the bar closed, she said that she was going to get a ride back to the holiday and with Yoren and his friends. But Yoren said she just wanted to go with him. So he, Natalie, and his two friends got into the car and headed toward the beach. He told the officers that he and Natalie were making out in the back of the car, but she was, quote, unquote, so drunk, she kept falling asleep and waking up. Maybe you should stop trying to- Maybe you should bring her back. Do anything with her then and just bring her back to the hotel. Because if you're a good person, that's what you would have done.

But you're not.

But clearly, you're not. He claimed that when they got to the beach, they had consensual sex, which they literally couldn't have if she was so drunk that she was falling asleep and then waking up and then falling asleep again. That's not consensual sex. And he provided us a description of the underwear that she was wearing that night. But then he decided in the middle of all that that she was too drunk, so he did bring her back to the holiday inn, and that was the last time he saw her.

He's such a good guy. Yeah.

According to Dave Holloway, the local police were more than happy to accept Yoren's explanation. But the family and friends who arrived to look for Natalie were very skeptical that he was telling the truth for many reasons. Dave said, Jacob's considered the boys' statement to be consistent that they had all said they dropped Natalie off at the hotel. However, the tapes did not show Natalie returning to the holiday in that night.

Exactly. That's the thing. I'm like, that's weird. That's when I would get fucking pissed.

Why are you accepting that story as truth?

This random kid who is known to prey on girls?

On blonde tourists.

I'm sorry. We're just going to accept what he says, that he's a good guy and just brought her home.

And you already have the footage from the holiday. Let's not be dumb. It doesn't show her returning to the hotel. So what's the hole in that story? And maybe this was one of the moments where the police did feel like they found a hole and were just not saying anything because they were keeping it close to the chest. But as a family member, that would drive me fucking insane.

And that's when that tactic of investigation does become an issue. I understand not wanting to get the media involved. But the family- You got to keep some family members in the loop, man, because they're going to start thinking that you're not doing anything, and then they're going to go to the media to get help.

And that's exactly what I'm about to happen.

You can't blame them for it. It's like, come on. There's got to be... Because, again, we can understand the benefit of keeping things away from the media and keeping things close to the chest. The media can fuck everything up. So it's like, we get it. We always say that in investigations, we get keeping things close to the chest. But there's got to be a balance with the family. It's a fine line. There's got to be a balance, especially with parents and shit like that. There has to be some flow of communication so they know that you're doing your job and that this form of investigation that you guys do is It's working, that you're actually moving forward with it.

Exactly. It should be that way with anybody, but especially the fact that they traveled all the way here to find their daughter. That's the thing. Let them in on some information.

Let them in on it.

Just, come on. So getting nowhere with local police, Beth and Jugg finally got a hold of the FBI office in Birmingham on June first, and that office agreed to provide whatever assistance they could to search for Natalie. At the same time, Beth received a text message from her son that read, Mom, I called called CNN. Now the whole world knows about Natalie. Wow. Because I think her brother saw that nothing was really being done. He's hearing the frustration in his mom and dad's voice and his stepdad, and he's like, Okay, well, then we have to fucking do something. I get it. Oh, I get it. I 100% understand why they went to the media. I know there's a lot of different opinions about that. For sure. Personally, I get it.

Well, and I think the only people who should be able to really have valid opinions about it are family members of who have gone through this stuff.

Agreed.

Those are really the only opinions that I would want to hear on the matter.

Because you don't know what you would do. What do you think?

You've been through this. You know I can sit here and speculate what I would do and what I wouldn't do. And how you would feel. But I have not been through that. Exactly. So it's like, and everybody else speculating and saying that they shouldn't have it. They should have done this. If you haven't gone through something similar.

You don't know.

We don't really know. You don't know. You just don't. That's the shit that will spin your worlds into a whole different orbit and you can't even begin to prepare for it.

No. And hopefully, nobody ever has to.

And then that's the thing. You hope that you never, ever have to know what that decision making process is like.

Exactly. But when the news about Natalie's disappearance broke on the major US news outlets, the tips began flooding in, which, as we know, can either help or completely fuck something up.

And that's where it's like, I can understand all the different sides of this because there is downsides.

There are definitely downsides. People People claimed to have seen Natalie at various places around the island that night, with many claiming to have seen her in the company of known drug dealers.

So it gets out of control.

It gets out of control. To Beth, Jugg, and Dave, the local police had already proven themselves to be of little use, so they just spent days following up on those leads themselves. Any tip they got, they tried to follow up on every single thing they got. The days began to run together as the family pursued every lead, just like anything they possibly could, increasingly that Natalie had been kidnapped and trafficked to another country. That's the other thing. It can completely steer you in a different direction that you've never even thought of, and that, unfortunately, isn't what happened. Yeah, exactly. You understand why they want to chase down every lead. But it sucks that people will call in and say things like that and not think of the fact that these people wasted so much time going down that road when they never had to. Yeah.

It's like when they would go to the ends of the Earth for their loved ones. So they will chase these things down. It's like, you have to be a special fucked up to be putting in. If you're one of the people who puts in those fake tips and shit. I don't understand that at all. That's a special shit.

I don't get that. But at that point in the investigation, few people in Aruba seemed interested in helping Beth, much less than investigating the case. However, Beth did manage to find two allies in, I think it's Julia Renfro and Angela Munzenhofer. An editor and reporter for the English language magazine Aruba Today. Mothers themselves, they were incredibly sympathetic and offered to help in any way they could, including using the magazine to rally American tourists and expatriates to help look for Natalie. After a few radio announcements and articles, more than a hundred American tourists and a handful of locals and policemen were searching the island for Natalie, doing the job the local police were seemingly reluctant to perform. The advocacy coming from the women at the Aruba today, caught the eye of Jan van der Straeten, a Dutch police superintendent who had also been assigned to the case. Julia Renfro recalled an altercation with him during the search. She said, Van der Straeten walks up to me and tells me, You can't do this. I said, Yes, I can. I'm going to find this girl. He told me she wasn't even considered missing for 48 hours. In fact, he told me just to go to Ladies Night at Carlos & Charlie's that night and that she would probably show up there.

The amount of people telling anybody trying to help our actual family members and loved ones, in this case, to go to Carlos and Charlie's, the last place.

And just go chill out.

I don't understand. No, I don't get that. That mindset. I don't know if I'm just a crazy American girly, but that would piss.

I don't get it.

I can't imagine somebody looking at me telling me to go to the last place that my loved one was, not to go find clues, but just to go wait for them to show up. Just go chill.

Just go relax. They'll show back up there. Just go to a lady's night. Yeah, because she'll show back up.

How do you not just look at that person in the face and just go, Fuck you? Yeah, I would- Fuck you.

I would lose it, personally.

But it's fair to say from the moment they arrived on the island and began looking for their daughter, the Twitty and Holloway families did get on the wrong side of local law enforcement. Jerold Dombig later said, Jugg and his Alabama friends, they basically came out and said they would bring hell to our island if Natalie wasn't found. Burn it down were the exact words. But again, I understand a little bit why you would have that viewpoint if you felt like you weren't getting helped. But then on the same side of things, I can see why law enforcement was pissed off that they're like, You're coming to our peaceful island and saying you're going to burn it down.

Yeah, you can see all the sides. But I got to say, I can't fault this family for having extreme bursts of like, Well, then burn it the fuck down. You know what I mean? You would move the whole fucking solar system for your You would. You just would. And if you wouldn't look deeply at that. Because it's like, that's the feeling. I can't blame them for anything that comes out of their mouth at this point. Again, you're panicked. It's a thing I I didn't even imagine living through. So I really, I can't. I can't. I would probably be yelling shit that I would regret later, too.

A hundred %. I think this is your worst of days. You're going to say shit. You're going to say crazy shit.

And to judge people on the worst suffering they could have imagined, the worst days of their entire lives.

It's not fair.

That's not right.

But again, I stress that this is going on to highlight that the The attitudes surrounding the case quickly set that combative tone. That would eventually just completely take over the story. And Natalie really got lost in all of that. And it was because of the way the media really highlighted the intentions versus Natalie missing. You know what I mean? By June fourth, just four days after she had gone missing, even the local authorities actually started to reconsider their original stance that Natalie would just show up after a few days of youthful irrespons. Even Jan van der Strauten, now in charge of the investigation, reluctantly told reporters, After four or five days, you are afraid a crime has been committed. In the four days that they'd been on the island, Natalie's family had a sufficient amount of noise that the FBI and the US State Department had gotten involved in the case, and a reward of $50,000 was now being offered for any information leading to a discovery of Natalie. Now taking the case seriously, the Aruba's Coast Guard started searching the waters and the beaches while uniformed police officers searched the urban center and resorts around the island.

Still, no sign of Natalie. Under pressure to solve the case, or at least show some evidence of real progress, On June eighth, local police arrested nick, John, and Abram Jones, two hotel workers suspected of involvement in Natalie's disappearance. There appears to have been little reason to suspect either man, but a judge ruled there was sufficient cause to hold both of them on, possible murder and kidnapping charges in the disappearance. What? The arrest was based on the fact that when they were first interviewed, all three boys, meaning Yoren and his two friends there, claimed that when they dropped Natalie back at the hotel, they saw her being approached by two dark security guards as they drove away. So they literally just pinned this on two random ass people.

And the police were like, okay.

But again, these two men who worked at the hotel were arrested on the heard of these three boys who said they dropped Natalie back off at the hotel. But let me remind you, there's no evidence that they ever dropped Natalie back off at the hotel.

They lied like liars.

There's surveillance of her leaving the hotel, never coming back. What? The arrest, you would think in some circumstances, might have been encouraging for the family. But immediately after learning of the arrest, Beth contacted one of the lead investigators and insisted that they were arresting the wrong men. Not getting the response that she was looking for, though, Beth turned to the press in an interview on major cable news shows. She accused the Aruben government of Stonewalling the investigation in order to protect the Vandersloots, Because they were a prominent family. Which they were. Yorin's father was a judge on a local circuit. Yep. Based on Beth's comments, American journalists and news outlets started talking of a cover-up, which essentially forced the hands of local investigators who did cave to Beth's demands and announced that they had arrested Yoren, Deepak, and Satesh. The lead investigator said, Under normal circumstances, we would have taken much more time to monitor them. We would have had much more evidence had we waited. It's like, I don't know that you would have.

No.

Because she's been missing for a long time at this point, and you just arrested two random hotel employees.

Yeah, it's like so- I don't think you had any evidence. It didn't seem like there was a lot of evidence there. No.

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Fum is giving listeners of the show 10% off when they use my code morbid to help make starting the good habit that much easier. A blood bath tonight in the rural town of Chinook. Everyone here is hiding a secret. Four more victims found scattered. Some, worse than others. I came as fast as I could. I'm Deputy Ruth Vogel. And soon, my quiet life will never be the same. You can listen to Chinook exclusively on WNDYRY Plus. Join WNDYRY Plus on the WNDYRY app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify Podcasts. In an article for Vanity Fair, Brian Burrow wrote, Dutch criminal investigators investigation, excuse me, differ from American ones in small but important ways. By and large, Dutch detectives do not speak to journalists on or off the record, nor do they release information to the public before they're ready. That is likely the reason for the Holloway's family's frustration in the wake of Natalie's disappearance. The lead investigator later claimed that they had, in fact, been focused on Yoren and his friends all along, but they didn't want to compromise their investigation by going public with that fact or making an arrest too soon. Just giving you both sides.

I don't know. Yeah? I don't know.

Despite acting sooner than expected, though, the arrest and subsequent interrogations didn't help convince authorities that Yoren and his friends were innocent. For one thing, Yoren had now changed his story, and this time told investigators that the brothers had dropped him and Natalie off near the local Marriott, and they walked down to the beach to have sex. But he said realizing Natalie was too drunk, he left her on the beach walked home, and they never engaged in sex. And this time he walked home and left her on the beach.

Okay, so now we're completely changing the story. That's not at all suspicious.

Which I wonder if they were like, is that why? I'm like, Because there was no evidence of her ever being dropped off? Is that why your fucking story is changing? The Calpo brothers backed up Yoren's story, but one of them casually commented that, quote, something bad had happened to Natalie.

And that's a horrifying.

And insinuated, in fact, that she had been killed. So So what?

Come on, guys.

What are you not saying? It definitely wasn't a confession, but the comment was suspicious, to say the least, and was sufficient for a local judge to rule that the three boys could be held on suspicion of murder and capital kidnappings. Stepping. Now, the disappearance of Natalie Hollowey was a tragedy deserving of attention in and of itself. But while the case should have always been focused on finding Natalie, as soon as it got to the news outlets, it quickly, like we've been saying this whole time, took a life of its own and became a global story. In a place like Aruba, which relies really heavily on American tourism, bad press, and especially that which suggests that tourists aren't safe, could have had an incredible impact on the local economy. Jerold Dombig, one of the lead investigators, said, The Aruba government is very image-conscious. America is basically our bread and butter. This fact was not lost on the Hollowway family, though, who frustrated with how locals were handling the case, started going to the media more and more and more knowing that that pressure would get the locals to act. I think that if I knew that, I would probably do the same thing.

Exactly. You know where their weak spot is? Yeah. If you're going to hit it and make them move. That's the thing. To find your daughter. I keep saying it's the tension between the government and the family and the media. But everybody's forgetting that it was to find their daughter. It wasn't just to be assholes. I'm not saying they were being assholes, but some people do say that. Yeah. But it's to find their fucking daughter.

Yeah. That's what I can't get past.

Right.

I can't get past that. I can only speculate how I would act. And this appears This appears, this seems to me pretty close to what I would do.

I think so. I wrote right here.

Who can say?

Who can say? It's not hard to understand how Beth and the rest of Natalie's family were reacting to this situation. It's not for me, and I know it's not for you.

Yeah, no, definitely not.

Their daughter had mysteriously disappeared and was likely the victim of violence who wouldn't go to similar lengths to leverage every single resource to find them. But in the months that followed, the increasingly bitter relationship between the families and the Dutch and Arubin authorities spread on national cable news programs and talk shows, and it became an international story with Americans on one side of the issue and Dutch and Arubin on the other side of the issue. At one point, the case actually became so prominent that Alabama governor Bob Braille went as far as to call for a nationwide boycott on all US travel to Aruba.

Damn.

It's crazy.

Yeah, that went hard.

That went a little hard, yeah. Aruben businessman Charlie Crowes told Brian Burrow in 2006, They're killing Aruba. This is a wild quote. He said, That girl, Natalie, I wish she'd stay home. I hope she's found alive there because no one would care. No one. The kid is just not worth all that trouble, this heartache.

Yeah, see, that's fucked up on levels that I can't even I can really dig into because my brain doesn't go to those depths.

If I was the mother of Natalie, if I was Beth reading that, I would go scorched earth. Scorched fucking earth.

Yeah, That's really unthinkable for someone to let come out of their fucking face, to be quite honest. That's really fucking unthinkable. If you are trying to garner any support or sympathy there, that wasn't the way to do it. That wasn't the move. The crazy thing is- That was not the move.

Is that he had actually once been an ally to the family. When they first arrived on the island, he acted as an intermediary between the Twitties and the Vandersloots before the police actively got involved. But because of the way that everything was being, I think, intensified, too, by the media, Crowes felt personally betrayed by Beth, Jugg, and the hallway family. A couple other people who had been their allies at one point, but who had lived in Aruba were feeling the same way. They felt, and this is their feeling, that the hallways were slandering Aruba in the American press.

Listen, I understand you have loyalty for your place. Absolutely. You know what I mean? That's your place. That's your home. That's your home. That's where your business is. And they rely on tourism.

So it's like- They literally said it's like their bread and butter.

I get why this was a very tricky situation and why it got out of hand very quickly. I can understand why that would be frustrating because, all of Aruba isn't responsible for this one piece of shit. No, no way. He's not even Aruben. And that's the thing. So it's like, I get why that is wholly infuriating and frustrating. Again, I have never been in this position that they were in, so I can only speculate from my very outside point of view, so I can see that. But you can't be saying shit like You just can't. About somebody's daughter. No. About somebody's whole world. That's reckless. You can't say that. Express your anger. Say, I'm angry that Aruba is being held accountable for this one piece of shit. But don't put it on the family. But that would have been much more of a, let's get on board with that idea. Let's not sour the whole bunch of apples because of this little prick. He's not even one of us. Exactly. Fuck this guy. That's what you said. That would have been like, Hell, yeah. I think everybody would have been like, Yeah, fuck that guy.

Now he's trying to ruin Aruba. Fuck that guy.

Yeah, go after him. Go after the real villain here.

Fuck that guy because he's the one fucking with Aruba. I think it just got out of hand.

It got so out of hand.

People shot off at the mouth real quick, and it wasn't a good look. Because that's not a good look. I'm sorry, no matter how mad you are, talking about someone's missing child like that, it's pretty reprehensible.

Right, exactly. But the media love loved that part of it because it sensationalized everything.

That's so fucked up. That shouldn't have been the fucking focus.

No, it shouldn't have been. It shouldn't have become this.

I don't think that's what anybody wanted. No. And ultimately- They wanted to find Natalie.

That's the thing. Ultimately, it did nothing to find Natalie. No.

It just muddied the waters.

It muddied the waters completely, and it didn't help build a case against the young men who had, after months of investigation, been believed by many people to be responsible for her disappearance. No one was focusing really on that. It was That was mentioned, obviously, that they were arrested and yada, yada, yada. But that wasn't the prime focus of the storytelling in the media.

It never felt like... Because from somebody who watched it all play out, I remember it very vividly.

You were like a teenager.

Yeah, I remember that the focus wasn't on... You knew. You saw this Yoran Van der Sloot, and we were all pretty sure, I think that guy did it. It seems like that guy did it. It's like, so what the fuck? Why aren't they finding her? What's going on? What happened to her? It It wasn't so much about that. It was all this mess. It was like, but no, I want to know what's happening.

What's happening in the investigation?

Do they have anything? Any leads? Do they know where she is? Has anyone seen her? Has he talked? What's going on? Is anyone surveilling him? That's the questions everybody had, and they answered it every once in a while in the media, but the media was way more focused on the mess. That's the problem with everything now. Everybody focuses on the mess instead of real information gathering.

It's sad because the family, I think, got really vilified in this case for turning to the media. But it wasn't the family who turned this story into what it got turned to. It was the media. It was Yorin Van der Sloot, It would have been the real focus here.

Yeah, absolutely.

But the Iruben authorities had arrested and held Yoren and the Calpo brothers on suspicion of kidnapping and murder. But the judge's ruling did require that authorities would need to show some evidence of their involvement if they were going to continue on with this. The lead investigator and all of them involved strongly suspected that Yoren and the Calpos had something to do with Natalie's disappearance and most likely her murder, but they didn't have any evidence whatsoever. Without that evidence of any crime having been committed, they literally had no choice but to release them. Now, with the suspects released from custody and no other leads on hand, the families return to their desperate search of the island, while local investigators, with assistance from the FBI chased down every lead that came in, no matter how small. In July, two months after Natalie had disappeared, a slew of new leads came from individuals who believed that they had seen her in the hours after she went missing. A man dropping off trash at a local landfill in the early hours of May 30th said he saw several young men burying a body. The fuck? Then he said they left in a light-colored Jeep.

An investigator told reporters he said he saw a face, blonde hair, and a woman's chest, and that body was dumped and covered, but that he said he never got a good look at them in. That landfill that he claimed to have seen all of that go down at was searched several times, but nobody was ever found.

What the fuck? Because I'm like, What was that?

I do wonder if... I don't know if I believe Yoren's confession entirely. I believe that he did what he did to kill Natalie and how he said he did it. But how he disposed of her. But I think there's a lot missing in the story of how he disposed of her.

I wouldn't be shocked. He's a liar.

He's a liar. I think it is entirely possible that maybe he did bury her somewhere and had help with that, whether it be the Calpo brothers or somebody else, and then decided when the investigation got hot, I don't know if they're going to find her if we buried her. So maybe we should put her out to sea. I don't know.

I don't know because it feels like...

People saw weird shit.

Yeah.

But again, people They'll make up weird shit.

Exactly. They think they see things that they didn't...

That's the other thing. This is one potentially false lead. I mean, it didn't end up finding Natalie, so it didn't pan out. But this poor family, and I'm sure you remember it, watching the leads pour in, they were fed so many leads that just went nowhere.

And they were just built up and then smacked back down.

I can't imagine that feeling because you say that, built up and smacked down. That's the perfect way to describe it. But I can't imagine how that would feel if you were looking for your daughter, getting all this hope.

You think maybe you're getting something.

And really, at this point, you're like, it's just hope to find her body.

Yeah, so we can just bring her home.

We just want to bring her home. That's all. It's so important to stress that these people never got to bring their daughter home.

No, they never saw her again.

She left for a celebratory trip, and they never got to see her again.

They never saw her. Again, they still, to this day, have no idea truly what happened to her body. And where she is.

And where she is. They never got to really say goodbye.

Obviously, they have his confession and what they can infer and take from it. Which is horrific.

But even they know he's a liar. He's a liar. How many times throughout this, he's a liar. It must be so hard to take that for the full 100% truth. But it's awful. The false lead about the dump, though, like I just said, was one of many disappointments that the family faced in the early period. Other leads about Natalie having been dumped in a lake or left in various other locations proved to be untrue. At the same time, though, the strongest lead in the case, several blonde hairs found a large piece of duck tape that had been discovered by a park ranger. That gave them a lot of hope. That also fell apart. The tape had been handed over to the FBI for testing. But a few weeks later, the crime lab in Quantico announced that the results were negative. That must have been a huge one. But also it's like, what was that?

What was that exactly? It's a thing. I'm like, what's going on here?

This was always the biggest and most frustrating aspect of the Natalie Holloway case. Investigators had three very strong suspects who they pretty much knew in their bones had killed Natalie, at least one of them. But with no evidence of a crime, they couldn't do anything. In the absence of new leads or tips, the family turned their attention back to the press. And in the year or two that followed, because remember, this spanned years.

Oh, yeah.

The Natalie Holloway case just seemed to unfold entirely on nightly news programs with no real progress being made.

Honestly, it felt like it was never going to even inch forward. No. At times you were like, What's going on here?

And it's crazy that only recently did it. Did we get anything? It was a huge break. So in late August, when it became clear that authorities had literally nothing on Vandersloot, Beth went to the Vandersloot's home, actually, intent on speaking with Jorn's parents. In a meeting that lasted nearly an hour and a half, she learned that Jorn was a senior at the Dutch International School in Aruba. He was actually a good student and a really popular athlete on the school's football and tennis teams, which no Knowing what we know about him now, it's wild that he was just someone's teammate and somebody's good student. That's so chilling to think about.

Just playing alongside this guy.

The Vanders Absolutely spent the first half of the meeting praising their son and denying that he would have anything to do with Natalie's disappearance, which you can understand why they would think that their son wouldn't have anything to do with this and hope that they wouldn't. But at a certain point, his mother, Anita did mention that though he had been an easy child in his early childhood years, Yoren had become more difficult when he reached his teen years. And very recently, she said that he had been seeing a psychiatrist. Beth said she was saying that they were beginning to have trouble with Yoren for a defiant attitude. The father acknowledged they could not control him. He would sneak out, go gambling in the pre-dawn hours. They had no control over him. That's not good. So sensing that the couple was still holding back a little bit, Beth decided to a little bit harder. She said, I told Paulus Van der Sloot that he was responsible for Aruba being trapped in hell. Until he came forward, I told him, his country would continue to be trapped in perpetual hell. According to Beth, Paulus started at that point, sweating profusely, to the point that his sweat was pooling on the table and Anita had to go to the kitchen to get him a towel.

So at that point, it became pretty clear to Beth that they knew something or at the very least, suspected that their son was capable of having admitted this crime.

It definitely does.

But unfortunately, the meeting ultimately came to nothing. A few weeks later, Beth attempted to get information from Deepak Kalpo, showing up at his workplace and demanding some answer, but unfortunately, that was also unsuccessful. A few months later, in February 2006, as the press desperately sought new interviewees and information on the hallway case, Yoren himself decided to capitalize on the moment, and he agreed to do interviews with actually several major news outlets. In an interview with Chris Cuomo on ABC's Primetime, he claimed he had met Natalie at the casino and planned to have sex with her after they left the bar. He told Cuomo, We were planning on going to my house because she said she wanted to go to my house. My intention was to take her to the house to have sex with her. It's so clear what his motive was here.

Absolutely.

He's saying it. He is solely focused on sleeping with Natalie. In previous accounts, though, he claimed he decided... On some accounts, he did sleep sleep with her. Other accounts, he decided not to because she was too drunk. But this time, the story changed yet again, and he claimed, I didn't have a condom with me, though, in my wallet, and I won't have sex with a girl without a condom.

Oh, wow. What a beacon of honor.

It's like you already claimed that you did have sex with her. Then you said you started to and you decided not to. Then you said, no, you never did. And then you said, no, I didn't actually. And there's a reason why.

And it's like, why are you allowed to say these hundred different stories? Yeah. And everyone just has to sit there and go, okay. Why?

It's so frustrating. To talk about a missing girl like this, that one, you knew what you did to her. And You knew why you did it because she didn't want to have sex with you.

Exactly. And it's like, you sit there and say that, well, she wanted to.

That's just smearing her good name.

She didn't. Awful.

No, she very much didn't.

She knew what a pig you were. But another difference in this version of events was that Yoren claimed Natalie had been drinking.

Previously, he had said that. But now all of a sudden, he said he actually didn't think she was drunk. He claimed instead, She seemed like she drank a lot. But there's a difference between somebody being absolutely drunk and someone actually having had a couple drinks. So before he, if you remember, said she was so drunk to the point where she was falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep. And in that version of events, he claimed he did sleep with her, which is like, wow. And now you're saying, I didn't sleep with her. Actually, she wasn't even drunk. No. Actually, I think she drank so much that a couple of drinks didn't do anything to her.

Yeah, no, she was just tired.

It's like, you met this girl one time. You don't know shit all about her.

And it's almost like he's trying to prove and see how much he can get away with just fucking around. He's just in the media saying a hundred different stories, not keeping his shit straight. A hundred %. And being like, But no one will do anything. I I can do this.

I think he enjoyed fucking around.

I think he liked doing it.

For the most part, he tried to use the interview to make himself seem remorseful and like an unfortunate victim in the story. I don't really know how well that worked out for him. On his first time meeting Beth, He said, All she said to me, she screamed at me was, 'Tell me where my daughter is. ' I told her that I don't know.

' I'm sorry that the mother of the girl that you killed wanted to know where she was.

One question as to why he lied when he was first questioned, He said he was scared and he felt ashamed. He said, I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want anyone to know that I left her at the beach. I lied because, yeah, I was scared. I had a girlfriend at the time. I didn't want my dad to think bad of me. I didn't want my friends to think bad of me. Maybe.

A lot of people think bad of you.

We all think the worst about you and beyond the worst about you.

You got a reputation that precedes you because somebody already told Beth that you have a reputation for preying on young Taurus who are blonde. Yeah.

Good luck with that reputation, of course.

I don't think that was going to absolve you.

Nancy's love story could have been ripped right out of the pages of one of her own novels. She was a romance mystery writer who happens to be married to a chef. But this story didn't end with a happily ever after.

When I stepped into the kitchen, I could see that Chef Brophy was on the ground, and I heard somebody say, Call 911.

As writers, we'd written our share of murder mysteries. So when suspicion turned to Dan's wife, Nancy, we weren't that surprised. The first person they looked at would be the spouse. We understand that's usually the way they do it. But we began to wonder, had Nancy gotten so wrapped up in her own novels? There are murders in all of the books.

That she was playing them out in real life? You can listen to Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy, early and ad-free right now by joining WNDYRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcasts.

But in the years that followed, he continued making appearances on more talk shows in the US and internationally, too. For all the talking that was being done about the Natalie Hollowey case, there was, again, very little information or evidence in the case, but the suspicion around Yoren continued. The suspicion really never went away, and it's probably due to the fact that his story about the night in question just kept changing over and over and over. At various points, he even confessed to having something to do with this and then would retract those confessions, just devastating this family.

I remember that, too. I remember that happening over and over again where it was like, Oh, my God, it's happening. Like, finally. And then it was like, just kidding.

Actually, no.

Like a true sick, evil individual.

That's sadistic. The series of confessions and retractions came to a head in late March of 2010 when Lauren supposedly contacted Beth's lawyer and offered to reveal the location of Natalie's body and to provide the details of her death in exchange for $250,000.

Just straight up extortion.

This is awful. Yeah. The lawyer went so far as to meet Yoren in Aruba, and he actually provided a payment of $10,000, followed then by a bank transfer of $15,000 to an account in the Netherlands. In exchange, Jorn gave the lawyer an address of a house where they could find the body, he said. Unfortunately, when local officials looked into the address that Jorn had provided, it was determined that the house hadn't even been built when Natalie was missing. That house didn't even fucking exist.

She's the fucking worst.

So the extortion was reported to Interpaul, who confronted Jorn with this information in the spring of that year. And that's when he admitted he lied in an effort to extort money from the family.

And it's like, so we're not looking at that as if you're capable of that?

Like, what else are you capable of?

Maybe we should look into you a little further.

Nuts.

Because if you're capable of that, what aren't you capable of?

This motherfucker is capable of absolutely anything, as we'll find out. We know he confesses to killing Natalie, for real, says what probably happened. He extorted money from Beth Holloway. And then, as we'll see, that's not the end of it. Because given how long the public had been fascinated with Natalie's disappearance, the story probably would have been big news, the fact that he had extorted all this money from the Holloways. But by Then, Yoren was locked up in a Peruvian jail cell and was facing far more serious charges. The war of words between Natalie's family and Arubin officials, as well as the fights with the Vandersloots and several other officials, dragged on in the public eye for years with little to show other than bitterness. But then on May 30th, 2010, exactly, exactly five years after Natalie's disappearance in Aruba, 21-year-old Stephanie Flores Ramirez, a business student, went missing in Lima, Peru. Three days later, her beaten and bloodied body was found in a Lima hotel room, registered to on your invadersluit. Five years to the exact day that Natalie went missing.

It's like, how? That can't be a coincidence.

No, not at all. On June 3, 2010, Yoren was arrested near Santiago, Chile, and extradited back to Peru for questioning. When police asked how it was that Stephanie wound up with a broken neck in his hotel room, he was very evasive but insisted, I've been framed.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Wow, what bad luck you have.

Truly. This is where it gets really outrageous. According to him, the entire thing was a sting operation organized by the FBI in order to capture him and bring him back to the US to face extortion charges. They planted a woman's dead body in your hotel room in Peru to get you back to the US?

This guy is beyond.

What fucking sense would that even make?

Zero. The answer is zero. What? Zero sense.

But according to him, according to Van der Sloot, he was contacted by a man who referred to himself as Garcia and offered to cover all his travel expenses, accommodations, and the entrance fee of $10,000 for a poker tournament, but he needed to meet him in Chile. He told a Dutch reporter, Mr. Garcia arranged and paid for everything for me. Looking back, I can't believe I let myself be lured. I hardly knew that guy. It was just an FBI set up.

I love that he's like, I'm smarter than that. It's like, you're not.

What? You're not. Then when a reporter specifically asked about why a dead woman was found in his room, he only said, What happened exactly? I will explain later.

Oh, yeah. Don't worry. Everybody will just hang around while you do that. Don't worry. Take your time.

I thought that you knew what happened. I thought it was all a set up. But why can't you explain that now? You know all of that. You're saying all of that already.

This is a boy who has gotten away with shit his whole life.

He's a pathological liar.

Gets what he wants, gets out of what he wants. Yep.

What he doesn't want.

Proved to the world that he could change his story 100,000 times on broadcast television. Decision, and that nothing could be done about it, that he could just say shit after shit after shit, that he could lure a poor, grieving family on a wild goose chase and extort them for money, and that he gets nothing. So he thinks- He's untouchable.

Yeah.

He'll just change his story 100 times this one, too, and then he'll go somewhere else and he'll do the same thing. I guarantee you this piece of shit was going to keep doing this in every country that he possibly could.

A A hundred %.

Just pop around the world doing this.

But luckily, he was in a Peruvian jail cell because he actually ended up confessing to murdering Stephanie. According to his confession, he met her while playing poker around 05:00 AM on May 30th. They went back to his room, he says, intended to have sex. But then Stephanie realized his connection to the Natalie Hollow case, and he murdered her. He told investigators, The girl intruded into my private life. She had no right. I went to her and I hit her. We argued and she tried to escape. I grabbed her by the neck and I hit her.

That's also not your private life. That's literally- You went on several news station interviews and talked about it.

That's not private anymore. That's not private. You opened that up to the entire world. The entire place of Earth knows. Yeah. But okay. In the months that followed, though, he then flatly rejected this version of events, claiming he only signed the confession under duress. He said, During the original interrogations, I was very frightened and confused, and I wanted to leave. They were telling me all the time, If you sign these papers, you'll be extradited to the Netherlands. In my blind panic, I then signed everything, but I did not even know what was written down. Well, then that's stupid, too.

Yeah, if that is the case, then you're a dumb.

You read things before you sign them.

But I also do not believe you.

I don't believe that. No, not for even a quarter of a millisecond.

I don't believe you at all.

His claims of an FBI sting operation may have been persuasive to some Dutch readers, but it didn't explain why if Stephanie's body had been planted in his hotel room, he was discovered to be in possession of her wallet and national ID card, or why his fingerprints were found in her vehicle.

They planted all that.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah, death. But when it came to those and many other facts, the Peruvian authorities were even less interested in his claims of a set up. After over a year- Good for them. Yeah, exactly. They were like, Fuck right off.

They were like, Fuck this guy.

After over a year spent waiting in a jail cell in Lima, he finally appeared before a judge in January of 2012 to face the charges of murder in the case of Stephanie Flores Ramirez. According to the prosecutor, when Flores discovered Vandersloot's connection to the Holloway case, she hit him in the face and attempted to flee, at which point he hit her in the face with his elbow, knocking her unconscious. And while he was on the floor, he attempted to strangle Stephanie. But when that proved to be too difficult, he suffocated her with her own shirt. This girl. He's a monster.

Found out, figured who she was in a room with. She was like, Get me the fuck out of here. Rightfully so.

Absolutely. She was probably terrified. Yeah. I can't imagine her last moment. It's horrible.

That's awful.

But this time there was no story of a setup. Yoren pleaded guilty to robbing and murdering Stephanie Stephanie Flores, and was sentenced to 28 years in prison and was also ordered to pay a fine of roughly $75,000 to her relatives. At the conclusion of his sentence, he was to be deported from Peru. So rewinding a little bit in between all of that to 2011, Yorin Van der Sloot was sitting in the Peruvian jail cell for being suspected of killing Stephanie Flores, and the American media had really largely moved on from the Natalie Holloway story. Given all that they'd been through, Dave and Beth Holloway reluctantly agreed it was very much time to face the very real possibility that their daughter wasn't going to be found. Yeah.

I mean, what can you do? What do you do?

Yeah. In June, Dave filed a petition with the Alabama Court to have Natalie declared legally dead, which I can't imagine having to go to the court to do that.

Yeah, that's something nobody should ever have to do for their loved one because you don't know what happened to them.

You have no idea what happened. You don't know where they are. You don't have them.

But you just know they're not coming back.

You don't have a place to visit them. But it's horrific. The family obviously still held out hope that Natalie would be found, but they did also believe that this was probably the first step towards some semblance moving on and just putting the seemingly endless searches, heartbreak, and international fights behind them. In January of 2012, actually, just one day after Yoren pleaded guilty to murdering Stephanie Flores Ramirez, Judge Alan King signed the declaration in a closed hearing, and Natalie Holloway was officially pronounced deceased. Which- So sad. The timeline of all of this, the fact that he murdered Stephanie on the five-year anniversary of Natalie being gone, and then that she also was declared dead one day after he was convicted. Just all of that timeline is so bizarre. It's scary.

It's the timeline. Yeah.

Dave Holloway said, though, We've been dealing with her death for the last six and a half years, we've still got a long way to go to get justice. That justice would still be a long way off, but in time, it would finally come. After years of negotiations between the FBI and Peruvian authorities, Yoren Van der Sloot was extradited to Birmingham, Alabama, to stand trial for his attempted extortion of Beth back in 2010. He maintained that he was innocent of those charges. In his interview with Dutch reporters in 2010, though, he actually admitted to the extortion, saying, I wanted to get back at Natalie's family. Her parents have been making my life tough for five years. When they offered to pay for the girls' location, I thought, Why not?

Why not?

Why not mess with this dead girl's family who I know that I killed?

They've been making my life Oh, your life is tough. Are you joking? You get away with everything.

You just get to walk around on the earth.

You get to do whatever the fuck you want. You get to bullshit everybody.

Knowing exactly where she is.

And they're living in a pit of suffering every second of every day.

But you thought, why not get some money out of this?

But yeah, boohoo for you.

On June ninth, he was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of extortion, to which he pleaded not guilty. According to the original affidavit, Van der Sloot had claimed that he killed Natalie accidentally and that his father helped him dispose of the body. Despite his insistence that he was innocent, though, in October of 2023, Yoren agreed to a plea deal in which he would receive a 20-year sentence for each of the fraud charges to be served concurrent with his sentence for the floor as murder, on the condition that he tell the authorities what happened the night that Natalie went missing. In his statement, which was verified by a polygraph examination, Yoren said he offered Natalie a ride back to her hotel the night that she went missing, as he had originally told authorities. But he said he wanted to spend more time with her. He said she asked to go back to her hotel, but I was just trying to get dropped off a little bit further away from her hotel so we could walk back to her hotel and I might still get a chance to be with her.

He's so disgusting.

What that translates into is she said, I want to go back to my hotel, and he said, No, I want to do something else, and decided to take that advantage. But once they were at the beach, Yoren began groping Natalie, and she resisted his advances because She just wanted to go home. She just wanted to go back to the hotel. This is a little graphic. He said, it's very graphic. He said, I started feeling her up, and she tells me no. She tells me she doesn't want me to feel her up. He said, Then Natalie need him in the crotch, sending him into a blind rage, which good for her. That's what you fucking do when somebody's touching you and you don't want to be touched. Fuck that guy. He continued, When she needs me in the crotch, I get up on the beach and I kick her extremely hard in the face. She's laying down unconscious, possibly even dead, but definitely unconscious. Still angry over the rejection, he then grabbed a large cinder block that was laying on the ground nearby and hit Natalie in the face with it several times. He told the prosecutor, This is very graphic, trigger warning, her face basically collapses in.

Even though it's dark, I can still see her face is collapsed in.

He's so fucking disgusting.

Just to say that so matter of fact that her face collapsed in because she didn't want to have sex with you or she didn't want you even to touch her in that way. It's so foul. You don't get to do whatever the fuck you want to do. You don't get to touch girls that don't want to be touched.

But he thinks he can.

Who the fuck are you?

And he's had ample time and ample evidence around him to think that he can do whatever the fuck he wants.

He can do whatever he wants, exactly.

And it's so gross.

I don't understand that thought process of just thinking you get to do whatever the fuck you want to do.

He definitely added in that note of, I kicked her extremely hard in the face, and maybe she died. I'm like, you didn't... No. No. You know that was him trying to... He thinks he's macho here for this whole thing. No. And it's like, you're disgusting.

He's a demented string bean.

Exactly.

Once he was convinced that Natalie was dead, though, he said he then dragged her body out into the water and pushed her into the ocean, ensuring that her remains would never be found. I don't know if I believe that. I think probably ultimately, but I don't know. It's so hard to believe anything he says.

It feels like that is probably what he did because it was the simplest solution to his problem. Yeah. And it was right behind him. You're not wrong. I don't see him going through a lot of trouble.

Yeah.

I see him looking behind him, seeing the ocean and being like, well, she'll never be found.

It's just nuts. And she wasn't. It's so sad that she was never found.

It's like it's Aruba, the sharks. All kinds of things. Unfortunately, that is the easiest method of getting rid of- You don't even- That's so stupid.

I didn't even think of sharks. I was like, sharks. I was like, But when Search and Rescue looked like they didn't find a body. No, it's the ocean.

No, she's- I'm sure that was- That's awful. And he knew that. He lived in Aruba. He knows the terrain. He knows the waters. He knows what's in those waters. Yeah. He knew that once she was in there, and I mean, with blood and such, she's... That's it.

That's awful. Yeah. Well, per the terms of the deal he made with the prosecutor, Yoren wouldn't be charged for Natalie's murder, which is awful.

That's such a travesty.

He would never be held legally responsible for her death. But although the statute of limitations for murder in Aruba is 12 years, it had long since passed.

How is there a statute of limitations on murder? I don't get that.

Yeah, I don't understand that.

That one doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense for me either. But even though the statute of limitations had long since passed, the Aruba authorities did release a statement saying that they were going to keep the investigation open and asked US officials for copies of documents pertaining to Van der Sloot's confession. Well, that's good. In their statement, a spokesperson for the Aruba's prosecutor's office said they would review and analyze the materials, before deciding on procedural steps. For Dave and Beth Holloway, Yoren's confession was bitter sweet, I guess you could say. Beth said, Even with this confession, he can't be tried for Natalie's murder, but I am satisfied knowing he did it. He did it alone, and he disposed of her alone. But still, the hearing meant that finally, after 18 years of uncertainty, the Holloway's pursuit of justice had finally come to an end. In her victim impact statement, Beth addressed Yoren saying, You finally admitted that, in fact, you murdered her. You terminated her dreams, her potential, her possibilities when you bludgeoned her to death in 2005. You didn't get what you wanted from Natalie, your sexual satisfaction, so you brutally killed her. You You are the one in Aruba no one wants to be, the black mark on the island.

Which is- That was a great statement.

It gives me chills all the way down to my legs.

Because that's what it goes back to. It's not Aruba.

It's not Aruba. It's you. It's you. You're the problem. She said that.

You're the problem.

And that's what- She said that. In her statement to the press following the hearing, Beth gave a statement about the confession on behalf of the family saying, It's just blistering to your soul, and it hurts so deeply. But you know you're there in a functionality role because this the moment that I've been searching for for 18 years. Even as hard as it is to hear, it's still not as torturous as the not knowing. It was time for me to know.

Yeah. I mean, the not knowing torturous- Because then your mind fills in the blanks. Torturous must be a perfect way to describe it because The unknown is way worse.

Exactly.

But then you hear this.

And then you're like, is it?

But even that, even the is it, you're like, you hear this and you're like, that's what my child's last less moments were? Yeah. I'm sure that opened up a whole other flood of grief. Absolutely. That you weren't even sure existed. Absolutely. Because now you've got these horrific details.

And then you have to heal from that. First, you have to- Now, you have to heal from that. I'm sure you never actually heal, but you have to work on the process of somehow coming to terms with the fact that this happened in your life and this happened to your child. And the fact that she's missing, that you don't know what happened, and then you find out what happened, and then you have to come to terms with that.

Yeah. I mean, I don't wish that on my worst enemy. No. That's an awful, awful sentence to have to endure in life.

It is. On November first, 2023, Yorin Van der Sloot was returned to Peru to finish serving his sentence for the murder of Stephanie Flores Ramirez. He's actually set to be released from Peruvian prison in 2043, when he will be 56 years old, at which point he will be deported from Peru. In the event that he's released before that projected date, he will be sent to Alabama to finish his sentence for the extortion on Beth Hollowway, per that plea deal that he made with US authorities. But still, if he gets out of prison at 56 years old, that's scary.

And that's wild.

That's young. That's still very much capable of inflicting even more pain on even more families.

And he's killed two women.

How is he just getting away with killing two women? And he admitted to killing Natalie, but will never be legally held responsible for that.

None of that makes sense to me.

Unless I don't know. It was a little confusing what Aruba would do because the statute of limitations is, what did I say, 15 years. But they said they were going to keep the case open, so I don't- So maybe they're making a special...

I don't know how that works.

Yeah, I'm not sure if maybe he could face charges there at some point. It's a little unclear.

Why doesn't everybody just throw some charges at him?

Honestly. Keep him in there. Who's going to... Hopefully he just like, something happens in a prison. I don't want him to get out of person.

I don't want him to get out of there either. I just don't want him to be able to exist outside of those walls.

What country is going to be like, Yeah, you can live here. Yeah, come on in. I remember we covered a case once where somebody did get out of prison for doing something awful. And I think they went to Florida. And Florida was like, No, you can't stay here. Yeah.

Florida was like, Get out. Yeah. So I could see that happening. Yeah.

I wonder how that all works, but hopefully we never have to find out.

Yeah, seriously.

And I just, I really feel for this family for all that they went through. But like I said, definitely check out that documentary that I mentioned at the top. It's on Peacock, and that will most likely be our next episode as a follow-up. Lots of information. Yes.

He's going to be an interesting person to talk to.

Exactly. Yeah. So with that being said, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you...

Keep it... Weird. But never, ever as weird as Lauren Van der Sloot, because that's not weird, that's deranged. Fuck that. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery. Com/survey. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run dark. In this new crime thriller, Religion and Crime Collide, when this small Montana community is rocked by a gruesome murder. As the town is whipped into a frenzy, everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager. But local Deputy Ruth Vogal isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent Vee B. Laro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. She and Ruth form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone's watching Ruth. With an all-star cast led by Emmy Award nominee, Santa Leighton, and Star Wars, Kelly Marie Tran, Chinook plungees listeners into the dark underbelly of a small town where the lines between truth and deception are blurred, and even the most devout are not who they seem.

Chinook is available to listen to now exclusively with your WNDRI+ subscription. You can subscribe to WNDRI+ on the WNDRI app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.