Natalee Holloway's dad follows new lead in Aruba
Eyewitness claims he saw Joran van der Sloot carrying missing teen's body 10 years ago
Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba, is dismissing an account recently brought up by a self-proclaimed witness.
“Joran knows him,” his lawyer in Perú, Maximo Altez, told Fox News Latino. “Joran tells me this man is someone who sold drugs in Aruba to all of his friends.”
Altez said Van der Sloot urges Natalee Holloway parents to disregard de Jong’s account.
“He is playing with their pain,” he said. “Joran is not worried [by de Jong's story], he advises them to look into his background.”
De Jong told Inside Edition the Alabama teen, whose body was never found, is buried beneath a crawl space at the Marriott Hotel in Aruba.
"I saw Natalee Holloway on the last night she was alive. I was the eyewitness," said de Jong, a Dutch citizen who resides in Aruba. "I saw that Joran was chasing Natalee into a small building under construction. In about five minutes he came out with Natalee in his arms, and slammed the body of Natalee on the floor, and then he made an opening in a crawl space … I knew she was dead."
De Jong said at that time he regularly visited that construction site, a Marriott Hotel near the Holiday Inn where Holloway was staying with her classmates for a graduation trip. He admitted he was involved in illegal activities, which is why he did not come forward right away.
“I was between a rock and a hard place,” de Jong told Inside Edition. “I saw a crime passing before my eyes but I also was at that moment busy with illegal activities, so I didn't know what to do.”
Van der Sloot said through his lawyer he is not concerned by the new development.
“Joran says everything that man says is a lie,” Altez told FNL. “This is nothing new, and all this man wants is money.”
Van der Sloot told his lawyer de Jong was a well-known provider of marijuana and cocaine in that part of the island. “He sold drugs to Joran and all his friends,” Altez said.
Back in 2005, Altez said, De Jong came to his client and told him he had seen him bury Natalie. He threatened to go to police unless Van der Sloot gave him money.
“Joran always laughed at him,” the lawyer said. “Joran never gave him anything, he always took it as a joke.”
Last week Natalee’s father, Dave Holloway, traveled to Aruba with a private investigator and a cadaver dog to follow the new lead, but he was not allowed near the site because he lacked the paperwork.
"We were unable to search the entire area," he told Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson. "It was all restricted..."
Van der Sloot was arrested twice for Holloway’s murder but never charged.
Aruba's prosecutor Eric Olthof told Inside Edition his office is investigating de Jong’s claims.
Van der Sloot, who was 17 when Holloway disappeared, is serving a 28-year sentence in Peru for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel room. He is eligible for parole in 2019.
Once his sentence ends, he is to be extradited to the United States to face trial on charges he extorted and defrauded Holloway's mother shortly before traveling to Peru in 2010.
He allegedly took $25,000 from the mother, promising to lead her to Holloway's body.