October 3, 2007

Chris Cuomo: It's time now for Part 2 of our interview with Beth Holloway. You will remember that her 18 year old daughter, Natalee, disappeared without a trace while on vacation in Aruba.
 
More than 2 years later Beth sat down to talk to me about her new book, Loving Natalee: A Mother's Testament of Hope and Faith. She explains how she coped with her daughter's disappearance and gave us a rare look at Natalee's journal entries as well as never before seen video of her daughter as a little girl.
 
As a child, as we see her in the video footage, what memories does it bring up of your daughter?

Beth: Just an average, typical little girl enjoying life.

Chris: Was she a princess girl, you know was she "I want to ride ponies" girl, what was she?

Beth: She was a dancer Chris. Since she's 3 years old, she's been dancing, that's what I remember the most about Natalee.

Chris: This book is filled with an appraisal and a journey of faith and spirituality. How did you steel yourself with faith?

Beth: It's easy to have faith when things are going good but the true test is when everything has gone wrong and I wanted to share with readers how my faith sustained me and I wanted to share with them the message of hope

Chris: Reading in the book here, one of the passages: you're in a car, taxi cab, you said 'take me to a church', can't find a church. Then you find one cross and then there's a row and you go from cross to cross praying and at the end, the fifth cross, the answer to the prayers come:
 
'complete peace blankets me and I am still, it's a familiar feeling yet unknown to me like this before now. Why?

Beth: My heart began to feel what my mind cannot comprehend and my heart began to feel the peace. At that moment that's when I began to form (inaudible) this trust agreement with God. He entrusted me to Natalee's care for 18 years and now that she is not in my care, I must now entrust God to care for Natalee

Chris: A more difficult situation to deal with, the van der Sloot family, they wanted to meet, they wanted to give you some sense of closure. Do you believe their representations that they want to help?

Beth: Oh, I wish I could, um but you know, really there's nothing now that can be offered except the truth and we haven't heard that yet. I would love to talk to them but I just need the truth and it hasn't been told yet.

Chris: Do you still ponder the possibilities about Natalee? Is she somewhere, is she nowhere, do you need to know? Do you think about it?

Beth: Ummm, what I know to be true is that Natalee is not on this earth and like I said, but I truly believe I will get answers one day.

Chris: When you came back from Aruba you found some of Natalee's writings in her closet. What did you find in there that meant something to you at that time?
 
Beth: Well, I found a journal and uh kept by Natalee during her 11th grade year. Gosh, it was such an insight to me into who Natalee really was. This one entry that she wrote, the entry was "If you could have any superhuman power, what would it be?" And Natalee responded:
 
"If I had any superhuman power it would be to predict the future. Sometimes I have a really tough time making decisions because I don't know what the results will be in the future. I wish I had the ability to predict the future so that I would know how decisions I make affect me."

Chris: When you read that and think about what happened, what do you take from it?

Beth: What I take from it is what I tell the students around the United States when I'm giving the Safe Travels message, yes it is, it's all about making decisions and it's all about choices and when I read that I think about decisions that were made and I've said Chris that I can bare the pain of losing Natalee if I can save one life. If my message can save lives, then I want to do it.

Chris: Thank you for sharing "Loving Natalee" with us, I really appreciate it.

Beth: Thank you so much Chris.

This transcript was taken from poster Heli at Refugees Unleashed as the original was no longer available on line. Heli's transcripts are very close to being accurate.