Holloway Suspect: 'I Know What Happened'

Feb. 3, 2008 — -- Joran van der Sloot, a former suspect in the disappearance of American teen Natalee Holloway, said on surveillance recordings aired on a Dutch TV special this evening that Holloway appeared to be lifeless on an Aruban beach three years ago during a romantic tryst, and "she'll never be found."

"I know what happened to that girl," van der Sloot announced during 20 hours of private conversations secretly recorded by crime reporter Peter R. de Vries.

Her body, van der Sloot said, had been dumped in the ocean by a friend with a boat.

"We're on the beach," he said on the recordings, according to the Dutch TV show. "Suddenly, she wasn't moving any more."

Nowhere on the recordings does van der Sloot display any emotion about the young woman he said he disposed of that night on the beach so far from home.

"I didn't even feel bad about it," he said at one point. "I didn't lose a night of sleep over it. I thought, 'I have to go on.'"

Since Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, according to the surveillance recordings, van der Sloot has lied to authorities, laughed at police and prosecutors, thrown a glass of wine in DeVries' face and boasted about his antics and alleged deceptions in conversations he thought were private. Van der Sloot even said he is pressing for financial compensation from the Aruban government for his ordeal as a suspect in the case.

Van der Sloot now claims he was lying in the secretly recorded conversations with Patrick van der Eem, a person he thought was a friend, but who was secretly working undercover for de Vries and his team of Dutch crime reporters.

The tale van der Sloot told on the tapes clearly contradicted his original story that he left the apparently intoxicated Holloway sleeping on the beach and did not know what happened to her after that.

In one taped conversation, van der Sloot told van der Eem that Holloway visibly convulsed "like a movie," that she was shaking "a lot."

"Did you try CPR on her?" asked van der Eem.

"Of course, I tried everything," van der Sloot said. "I tried to shake her. I was shaking the bitch. I was like, 'What is wrong with you, man?' I almost wanted to cry. Why does this s*** have to happen to me?"

He admitted his first call wasn't to the hospital or to the police -- but to a friend to help dispose of the body.

"And I told him, 'Well, this is what happened; come, come, come, come help me. And please don't call the police.' He says, 'No, I won't call the police. I'm coming to you now.'"