On May 30, 2005, Natalee Holloway went missing while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba. Twelve years later, the case remains unsolved, but a new Oxygen series, The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, resurfaces a trove of lingering questions. Chief among them: Were Natalee Holloway's remains ever found?
To this day, the whereabouts of Natalee — or her body — remain unknown, but her father, Dave Holloway, hopes a new break will finally return some answers. In a recent interview with Today, he and the family's longtime private investigator, T.J. Ward, announced that an 18-month investigation has led them to discover human remains that may be Natalee's; They're currently DNA testing to confirm, which Dave said will take several weeks. "I know there's a possibility this could be someone else, and I'm just trying to wait and see," he said while on the show. "We've chased a lot of leads and this one is by far the most credible lead I've seen in the last 12 years."
Both Dave and Ward claim that Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch man Natalee was last seen with outside a popular tourist bar, is responsible for her disappearance. In the years since, he's given various and shifting accounts of what he knows, and has at times denied any involvement. Van der Sloot was arrested twice in connection with the case, but was released both times without charges. He's currently serving a 28-year sentence in a Peruvian prison after pleading guilty to the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores. No one has ever been charged for Natalee's disappearance.
The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway will chronicle the events of Natalee's case thus far, following Dave on his search to find the truth about what happened to his then-18-year-old daughter. In the trailer for the show, he claims a man cam forward with an alleged firsthand account that led them to Natalee's alleged burial site in Aruba — a potential turning point in the long-cold investigation.
"This lead, we have a person who states he was directly involved in disposing of Natalee's remains," Holloway explains in the clip. "What concerns me is [that] he knows information that is not known to the public ... this could be it."
The six-part series, one of many in Oxygen's recent push for true crime programming, is billed as Holloway's "last chance" at finally finding justice for Natalee and closure for his family. See how it unfolds when The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway premieres Aug. 19 at 9 p.m. ET.
