Report: Van Der Sloot Says He Lied About Holloway

Feb. 1, 2008 — -- Dutch student Joran van der Sloot now says he was lying when he told someone privately that he'd played a role in the mysterious disappearance of Natalee Holloway.

Van der Sloot spoke out after Dutch journalist Peter R. de Vries claimed that through his private investigation he had solved the Holloway case and that he knows the American teenager is dead.

De Vries said he used a sophisticated network of hidden cameras in what he called an "undercover operation" to obtain evidence that he says "has solved the mystery" of Holloway's disappearance on May 30, 2005.

ABC News has obtained exclusive U.S. rights to this stunning new information caught on tape and will air a 90-minute special edition of "20/20: The Final Hours of Natalee Holloway" Monday at 9:30 p.m. ET, as well as special coverage of the case on "Good Morning America" on Monday.

De Vries' hidden cameras caught Dutch student van der Sloot saying that Holloway died after having sex with him and that he then dumped her body at sea with the help of a friend.

But in a new development, van der Sloot now says that he was lying when he privately told an acquaintance that he was involved in Holloway's disappearance.

"It is true I told someone. Everybody will see it Sunday," Van der Sloot said on the Dutch television show "Pauw & Witteman," according to The Associated Press.

"That is what he wanted to hear, so I told him what he wanted to hear," Van der Sloot said, adding that he never fully trusted the man to whom he'd confessed.

"It is so stupid, it is so stupid, it is really stupid," Van der Sloot said, his voice cracking, the AP reported.

Based on de Vries evidence, the chief prosecutor in Aruba announced Thursday that he is reopening the case.

De Vries also showed his findings to Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty.

"She told me she kind of knew it already that Natalee wasn't alive anymore, but when you get this message it's still, yeah, a kind of relief," de Vries told ABC News.

Twitty admitted as much Friday night in an interview with the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

"I can let her go now and begin mourning," she said. "The 1 percent of hope I had that she was still alive is gone."

De Vries said he would reveal his findings in a special program on Dutch TV Sunday.

"Most of the questions, most important questions will be answered in my show. No doubt about that," he said.

'The Truth Is Surfacing'

The mystery behind the disappearance of the blond teenager has eluded efforts by the Aruba police and even the FBI for more than two years.

De Vries said he showed some of the key pieces of evidence to the Office of the Public Prosecutor of Aruba Jan. 24. Thursday, the island's chief prosecutor, Hans Mos, announced he has "intensified [the] investigation of Natalee Holloway due to recently received information."

Mos had announced publicly last month that he had closed the investigation after an exhausting and often frustrating two-year probe.

"This information may shed a new light on the mode of which Natalee Holloway has died and the method by which her body disappeared," Mos said.

He credited de Vries with uncovering the leads and said, "This information may help considerably in the solution of the mystery of Natalee's disappearance."

De Vries said that he and his team had been conducting an undercover operation for several months.

The only piece of Sunday's program the de Vries would release was a conversation between himself and Mos after he showed police the evidence he had collected.

"Am I sitting opposite a happy man now?" de Vries asked Mos. The prosecutor is shown answering, "Now at least the truth is surfacing, and with that we can at least wrap up this case."

Joran Threw Wine in His Face

The Alabama teenager disappeared after a boozy night in an Aruban nightclub during a high school graduation trip. She was last seen outside Carols 'n Charlies bar with Joran van der Sloot, who is from the Netherlands, and the brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, from Aruba. They have twice been arrested and released because of a lack of evidence. They have all denied any involvement in her disappearance.

After his latest release, Van der Sloot did a television interview with de Vries earlier this month in which the reporter challenged Van der Sloot's honesty. Van der Sloot was calm during the interview, but after the cameras were turned off he threw a glass of wine in de Vries' face.

"I was annoying him. I had questions and I was asking for answers, and he wasn't able to give me answers," de Vries said.

"He doesn't have complete control over his behavior," de Vries said of van der Sloot.

After more than two years, the case continues to captivate and frustrate people around the world.

"It's a strange affair,'' said Rufo Croes, an Aruban taxi driver. "It's been so long but still, everybody wants to know what happened."

Croes said that the who-done-it parlor game is as vibrant and real on the tiny island of Aruba as it is in the New York newspapers, Dutch blogs and Alabama dinner tables. "Everybody still talks about it,'' Croes said. "All the time."

Twitty and Holloway's father, Dave Holloway, have waged a determined publicity campaign in an effort to keep the probe alive and find out what happened to their daughter.

Twitty has published a book about her daughter's disappearance and appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show in January in an effort to keep the search alive.

Police and even army units have combed the island looking for clues to Holloway's disappearance. The most recent search was carried out by oil drilling teams who volunteered their help. They used sonar to search the deep water off of Aruba's coast, but failed to find a trace of Natalee.

Twitty's lawyer, John Kelly, told ABC News that he has little faith that the supposed new evidence will be pivotal to the case and suggested it will be quickly debunked. Twitty is in the Netherlands chasing another lead that Kelly declined to detail.

Andrea Beaumont and Chris Francescani contributed to this report.