Timeline of Natalee Holloway Case as Joran van der Sloot to Be Extradited

The prime suspect in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway, who vanished while on a high school trip to Aruba in 2005, is finally being extradited to the U.S. to face indictments.

Dutchman Joran van der Sloot —who is currently in a Peruvian prison for murdering a local woman five years after Holloway disappeared—is due to be flown to Birmingham, Alabama, Holloway's mother Beth Holloway revealed on Wednesday.

The 18-year-old was last seen leaving a bar on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba with the then-17-year-old van der Sloot in the early hours of May 30, 2005, at the end of her school's graduation trip. She was reported missing when she failed to show up for her flight home later that same day. The case sparked worldwide media attention, but Holloway was never found and she was eventually declared legally dead in 2012.

But more than 10 years on from that sad formality, there has now been a further development in the case.

Convicted killer van der Sloot, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence for beating and smothering 21-year-old Peruvian Stephany Flores in a hotel room, is once again in investigators' sights. He was previously arrested in connection with Holloway's disappearance but ended up being released because of a lack of evidence.

Holloway's mother revealed that he is now set to be brought to the U.S. for questioning and to "face indictments." Releasing a statement through Newsmax journalist and anchor Greta Van Susteren, who became a close family friend after the covering the tragedy, the mom said she believes her daughter was "abducted and murdered." She added: "Now almost exactly eighteen years later, her perpetrator, Joran van der Sloot, has been extradited to Birmingham to answer for his crimes."

She expressed her gratitude to the government and people of Peru, the family of murder victim Flores, and the FBI. She ended the statement by saying: "I was blessed to have had Natalee in my life for 18 years, and as of this month, I have been without her for exactly 18 years. She would be 36 years old now. It has been a very long and painful journey, but the persistence of many is going to pay off. Together, we are finally getting justice for Natalee."

It is unclear whether new developments led to the extradition, and Newsweek has emailed the PR firm Patriot Strategies, whose contact details were provided in the statement, for further information.

Timeline of Natalee Holloway Case

• 30 May 2005: Natalee Holloway is seen leaving a bar in Aruba with Joran van der Sloot.
• 2005-2007: A massive search is launched in a bid to find Holloway, using high-tech equipment to search under water and even down manhole covers.
• December 2007: Aruban authorities close the case and pronounce that Holloway is presumed dead.
• February 2008: Dutch TV journalist Peter de Vries tells Newsweek how his show secretly recorded van der Sloot confessing to Holloway's murder. The suspect allegedly said the teenager had died in his arms and he panicked and disposed of her body in the sea. But when confronted, van der Sloot claimed he had simply been lying about his involvement in a bid to impress a new friend.
• 30 May 2010: Van der Sloot murders 21-year-old Peruvian woman Stephany Flores. He beat and smothered her in a Lima hotel room after claiming she became angry and distressed after seeing a pop-up message on a computer accusing him of being involved in Holloway's disappearance.
• 13 January 2012: Van der Sloot is sentenced to 28 years in prison for the murder of Flores.
• 10 May 2023: Holloway's mother Beth reveals that van der Sloot is to be temporarily extradited to the U.S. to face indictments.