Joran’s Confession: My Thoughts

Many people have asked me over the past week to comment on Joran’s confession. While I have many thoughts on it, I must say that since Joran spoke in Dutch, it isn’t as easy for me to make concrete comments about Joran’s words or behavior because it is essential for me to hear and understand the words Joran speaks verbatim which I am unable to do here.

Furthermore, seeing Joran’s facial expressions when each word is spoken assists me in understanding him as well, and while I can correlate the main gist of things, I don’t get the deep understanding I normally do by watching words and expressions together like I do when English is the spoken language.

But I do believe the overall message of Joran’s words are still telling. Do know that I am depending on the translated meaning, and if that translation is in any way inaccurate, I retract my thought processes below.

Read more A translation of Joran’s confession is online here. I do not know anything about its source, or the validity of it, but from what I saw on ABC’s television special about Joran’s confession, it appears to be remarkably similar so I will work from it. If you find anything more reliable, please let me know.


I do not believe that Joran’s confession is an outright lie. His claim of this makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever. Here is a guy who has been thrown in jail several times, and has had his entire life turned upside down by the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. If he is innocent, he should be mad at the injustices done to him, and he should be putting up a fight to stop it by seeking the truth–not going out and joking he did it with people.

People who are wrongly accused of a crime or made a suspect only want the truth to surface. That is their main goal. They do not have the time, energy, or any remote desire to implicate themselves for the fun of it. It’s pure rubbish. It defies logic.

There are aspects of his story that I believe he may “take to the grave” with him.

Joran wants us to believe here that Natalee out-of the-blue convulsed on the beach, and he panicked, and disposed of her. This raises a serious red flag because we are missing the reason as to why.

If it were only a fear-based reaction as Joran wants us to believe, we would expect Joran to run for help, or at worst, flee the situation and leave Natalee on the beach to her own fate. Fear wouldn’t cause him to go this extra mile for no reason. The disposal of her body is very suggestive that something happened that was illegal. People don’t just dispose of someone without a reason. It’s illogical.

One can only speculate about what illegal activity may have happened, but one potential could be the use of a date rape drug. If Natalee had an illegal drug in her system such as this, the implications to Joran could be devastating, and fleeing wouldn’t do him any good. This speculative situation could cause someone to dispose of a body.

Add into the mix what Joran says…

Joran: So they know if they bring the case to court now, it’s done. Even if they find that girl dead with my sperm in her…

Joran doesn’t says he had sex with her, so why is he talking about “sperm”? It shows Joran is still contradicting himself which is a red flag. With that, we are left to add up the pieces of the puzzle to see what is plausible and what makes sense. People behave in predictable patterns. If there was a date rape drug used here, sperm, again would make sense.

Furthermore, I find it strange that Joran says he will take his friend’s name to the “grave with him”, and then he volunteers a name at another time. It’s another oddity. Joran makes such a strong statement, that is believable, and then he retracts it and gives us a name. Sometimes, when people aren’t telling the truth, they waffle like this, and tell us lies in an attempt to cover themselves.

On top of that, when Joran makes this comment, it raises my eyebrows:

J: They’ve always been good to me, and I’ve always been good to them. So yes, I know who it is, but I’m not going to tell you his name. But it isn’t my parents or anything, but someone who’s a really good friend of mine.

If it was a friend who did this for you, would your parents even enter into your mind? You wouldn’t even think to say it wasn’t them, would you? This raises my eyebrows. To my knowledge, no on has even accused the parents of any wrong doing for Joran to defend them. Why is he defending them? It makes me strongly question, if perhaps his dad was involved. Was his subconscious mind affecting his speech here? It sure makes you wonder.

Another oddity is that his friend was such an incredible person. His friend was willing to step in and be a super hero to Joran. He was willing to take the body, live or dead, and dispose of it even though he supposedly had nothing to do with the situation. His friend was willing to risk his freedom, his reputation, his life just for Joran. This is exceptionally bizarre. Most people will help a friend, but not at the expense of their own life unless there is a payoff of sorts. But at Joran’s young age, I am not sure he could provide a payoff big enough. It’s highly questionable behavior.

Joran’s friend was even concerned for Joran more than himself–telling Joran to go home.

Most friends don’t want any involvement in illegal activities forget about disposing of a body. And then for this “friend” to be willing to dispose of the body without Joran is beyond strange. Normal human behavior, if you do find a friend to help you dispose of a body, is the expectation that you, too, will assist in the disposal. But this friend seems to be abnormal again. It’s another red flag.

P: But where the fuck is she, Joran?

J: She’ll never be found. Where exactly, I don’t even know myself.

I believe Joran here. I believe he doesn’t know exactly where Natalee ended up, or how it happened in the end. Someone shielded him–we can be certain about that, but who would be motivated to do that? A friend? Family?

Add this into the mix:

J: So I went and called the guy, not with my mobile, I walked over to the pay phone. I called him, and I told him, “Well… this is what happened. Please come help me. Please don’t call the police.” He says, “No, I won’t call the police, I’m coming to you now.” And then he arrived.


But she did not look normal, you know. He said. “This is not possible. You have to go home. I say “No, I can’t ask you to take responsibility for this.” He said, “You’re going home. I’ll arrange the rest.” I went home then.

Several things about this statement are interesting. First, Joran’s details are really sketchy. He doesn’t really give any indication about what he said to the “friend” on the phone. Second, I have to wonder did Joran’s friend tell him to go home as we see in the translation? Was it that direct, like a parent telling a child what to do? I’d need a translation expert here, but this raises my eyebrows again. Friends don’t usually tell other friends what to do like this. This person was taking charge, telling him what to do. If it accurately translates, who would talk like that to Joran?

Also, was Joran’s friend thinking in legal terms? Did he believe Joran needed to go home to have an alibi, to create an implausible time line for the disposal of the body? Who would think like this?

Joran then says that he had no problems sleeping that night. This is another huge red flag for me, and I think suggestive of who may be involved.

If you shared such a serious life-altering secret with someone, and you and him are the only two people to know this secret in the world, wouldn’t you be paranoid for a while about the fact that someone might have heard something, your friend could talk, people could be on to you? Wouldn’t it keep you up at night?

But strangely, Joran wasn’t nervous. Who could give Joran such confidence in the situation that he could sleep at night?

I think the general gist of Joran’s words are painting a picture here. Do you see what I see?