Dave Holloway, who has been searching for his daughter Natalee since she disappeared without a trace in Aruba in May 2005, says he’s finally getting some closure.
“The more you talk about it, the more you come to a realization that this part of the closure process,” he told E! News.
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Dave has been involved with the new Oxygen true-crime series The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, and says what’s revealed on the show is helping to bring him closure, even more so than when Natalee was declared deceased in 2012 or when her assumed murderer, Joran van der Sloot, was convicted to 28 years in a Peruvian prison for the murder of a different woman who was killed five years to the day Natalee went missing.
“Even though we did have some sort of closure back in 2010 when Joran was arrested for the murder of another young lady…and then we had Natalee declared deceased in 2012,” Dave told E! News. “And things were good for a few years until some new leads popped up.”
The Holloway family’s longtime private investigator, T.J. Ward, appears alongside Dave in the series and says that thanks to the show, more research has been done than ever before, following new leads and looking into every possible explanation.
“There’s a lot of new information. We have to research, as we did from 2005, every little tidbit that comes up…we have to follow the lead until we discredit…It’s been like a soap opera,” Ward said.
“That’s why it’s captured the attention of the world…Now it’s coming down to the wire and we’re now targeting and closing in on certain individuals…But now it’s the waiting game, trying to find the end result.”
Dave even says that human remains have been found and tested for DNA.
“It may be coming to a close because we have found human remains and we had those tested,” he said. “And they tested positive for um, I’m not going to give you any details, but they tested positive for human remains.”
Dave’s statements come a week after news broke that the investigation is reportedly working with an informant who said that Joran van der Sloot drugged, killed and buried Holloway in 2005, later paying someone to dig up and incinerate her body.
“Twelve years and we still have nothing, until now,” Dave said. “This is the most credible lead I’ve ever seen.”
Dave and Ward say their investigation has brought them closer than ever to finding evidence that will lead to van der Sloot’s conviction.
“Justice will be served,” Dave told In Touch Weekly.
The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway premieres Saturday, August 19 at 7 and 9 p.m. on Oxygen.
