The Natalee Holloway Mystery Solved- A MOTHER'S FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

HER 18-YEAR-OLD VANISHED ON A TRIP TO ARUBA IN 2005. NOW, AFTER 18 YEARS OF SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS, BETH HOLLOWAY FINALLY KNOWS THE TRUTH ABOUT HER CHILD'S MURDER

- EMILY PALMER

Clutching a pen and notepad, Beth Holloway entered the cream-colored Shelby County Sheriff's Office in Columbiana, Ala., on Oct. 3, ready to hear her daughter's killer confess to his crimes.

Eighteen years had passed since teenager Natalee Holloway went missing on a high school graduation trip to Aruba in 2005. Beth had boarded a plane to the Caribbean island that same day, spearheading a nearly two-decades-long search for her daughter-first in the hope of finding Natalee alive; then in a desperate attempt to bring her body home; and, finally, after picking through every shred of evidence and running down every potential witness, to know what had happened to her beloved child in the early-morning hours of May 30, 2005. "It was just something I've waited on for 18 years, so that comes with a lot of anxiety, a lot of trepidation," says Beth, 63. "You can't prepare yourself, because you don't know what is to come. You just hunker down and listen."

 On Oct. 3 longtime suspect Joran van der Sloot, 36, seated in a small bare room and hooked up to a polygraph machine, finally uttered his sputtering, hours-long admission. He explained how, at age 17, he had become enraged when Natalee refused his sexual advances after a night of socializing at a bar on the beach. He detailed how he then picked up a cinder block on the sand and smashed it into her head and dragged her limp body into the surf. "Even though such a brutal confession just blisters and burns your soul," explains Beth, who says she was overcome with a feeling of peace and resolution, "the not knowing is more torturous. I needed to know what happened."

Natalee, 18, had stuffed her schedule with