Van der Sloot Revisits Aruba Beach, Says Nightmare Doesn't End

Sept. 5, 2006 — -- It's been more than 15 months since Alabama teen Natalee Holloway disappeared on the island of Aruba during a high school graduation trip.

In that time there have been frantic searches, dwindling hopes, and serious missteps in the investigation.

Much of the attention about what happened to Holloway has been focused on one young man, Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch native of Aruba who, according to his own words, was the last known person to be with Holloway.

ABC News' Chris Cuomo recently traveled to Aruba for an exclusive interview with van der Sloot, who said he had not harmed Holloway.

Since that time, investigators have proven nothing different.

Now 19, van der Sloot says that, in a way, the night he met Holloway has never ended.

"All the time, all the time it's going around my head," he told Cuomo.

Still Being Punished

While he is no longer being detained, van der Sloot is still a prisoner of the speculation surrounding the student's disappearance.

"I think for a lot of parts I've been unfairly treated, because I had nothing to do with this, and a lot of people seem to think I do," he said.

That's due in large part to his initial statements about the night the 18-year-old went missing.

At first, van der Sloot and two friends said that they had dropped Holloway off at her hotel at the end of the evening, but later van der Sloot said that he had taken the American teen to the beach.

The lie landed him in jail, but after three months, police could not tie him to any crime.

He was released in September and talked to ABC News in February to explain his deception.

"I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want anyone to know I left her at the beach," he said.

That explanation hasn't stopped the media scrutiny.

"It's goes too far, definitely in the American media," van der Sloot said. "I was here with my girlfriend on vacation, and some tourists filmed us. … And they called me a predator on the beach again, going after a girl, American girl, an American tourist. And I was there on the beach with my girlfriend that I had been with for six months now."

'I Would Have Done a Lot of Things Differently'

Van der Sloot, a Dutch citizen, returned to Holland for college, abandoning his onetime dream of attending school in the United States.

He says life is normal enough there.

He's meeting girls, and making friends is not a problem.

When he comes back to Aruba, though, the past still haunts him.

"Of course it doesn't feel good when like, you saw, people putting the cameras out and screaming, 'Where is she? What did you do with her?' And that doesn't feel good. It doesn't make you feel good," he said.

Van der Sloot says he often thinks about how different life would be if he had gone home earlier that night and had never taken Holloway to the beach.

"And I say, 'Yeah, what if? What if?' But I can't change all those things anymore," he said. "Of course if I would have known all this would have happened, I would have done a lot of things differently."

His concern now is for his future, and van der Sloot says he wants the killer to be caught so he can close that chapter of his life for good.

"That's the worst part, because there's always the 'if' question. What if? You know? You were the last person with her, all these things."

"And if no one knows or no one comes forward or tells or yeah, they don't solve the case, you're always gonna have people saying, you were the last person with her."