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Mom: Teen admits to being alone with girl

Boy's father also arrested as suspect in Aruba case

BREAKING NEWS NBC News and news services

Updated: 6:08 p.m. ET June 23, 2005ORANJESTAD, Aruba - The mother of the Dutch teen being detained in connection with the disappearance of an Alabama high school graduate said Thursday that her son changed the story he initially gave police and now admits to being alone with Natalee Holloway on a beach. Anita van der Sloot made the disclosure hours after her husband also was arrested on "suspicion that he was involved in the disappearance" of Holloway, authorities said.

Joran van der Sloot, 17, and friends Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18, were arrested 10 days after Holloway disappeared. They first told police that they dropped off Holloway at the Holiday Inn where she was staying.

But Joran's mother, Anita van der Sloot, told The Associated Press on Thursday that her son now says the story is not true, that he and Holloway, 18, were in fact alone together on the beach. But he insisted that he left her there and that she was OK when he left, van der Sloot said.

"He says, 'Mom, I dropped the girl at the beach. I walked with her. I left her there because she wanted to stay there. I left and I don't know what happened. There my statement ends.'"

Earlier Thursday, Joran's father, Paul van der Sloot, a Dutch attorney who was training to be a judge on the island, was taken into custody as a fifth suspect in the 3-week-old case, authorities said.

His wife called the AP to report the arrest as police picked him up at their home. "My husband was just picked up by police," Anita van der Sloot said. "I don't know what to think."

Anita van der Sloot insisted her husband had done nothing wrong and said Aruban authorities had arrested him because they were under pressure from the U.S. government and the news media to produce results.

"My husband is a man of integrity who has been working in the justice system 15 years and was taken without evidence," Anita van der Sloot said. "How can this happen? This is not about Natalee anymore. It's about enormous pressure from the states and the media."

Authorities did not immediately respond to van der Sloot's allegation.

Mariaine Croes, a police spokesperson, told MSNBC that Paul van der Sloot would be held for at least six hours while prosecutors question him about the case. After that time, Croes said, the chief prosecutor will decide whether to hold him for up to 48 hours, as is allowed in Aruba, which is a Dutch protectorate. No further details were available.

Paul van der Sloot had earlier been barred from seeing his son, Joran, because police fear it could harm the investigation. He was also interrogated by police for seven hours over Saturday and Sunday.

Son: ‘I don't know anything’

Earlier Thursday, the Dutch teen's mother told NBC News on Thursday that she's convinced her son is telling the truth when he says he knows nothing about her disappearance.

She said at that time that she believed her son was innocent and that he was receiving unfavorable treatment in jail.

"My son didn't do anything," she said. "I don't understand what is happening" with the case.

In an interview following her husband's arrest, Anita van der Sloot said her son has insisted to her that he and his friends dropped Holloway off at her hotel.

She quoted the 17-year-old him as saying, "Mom, we went to the beach with that girl and then dropped her off."

She also said Joran can't remember many of the details that police have been asking him.

She said she had spoken to her son several times in jail and that he was going through "mental torture." She said he is often interrogated for more than 10 hours a day, and she also accused authorities of turning up the air conditioning to high levels to increase the pressure on him.

"If there was anything he did wrong he would be broken by now," she said.

She said her son is well-grounded and had plans to study law in the United States. "Why would a boy who has friends, who has a normal life going on ... do something to a girl he just met?" Anita van der Sloot asked. "For me that's just unacceptable, it's unbelievable."

She said authorities sometimes denied her access to her son, including as recently as Wednesday.

"I feel like Joran is being treated differently than other people and I don't know why," she said. "And I feel a very heavy anger."

Holloway vanished on May 30. Police say Joran van der Sloot met Holloway at a casino two days earlier. They say the three young men originally testified that they took her from a popular restaurant to a beach, where the Dutch boy and Holloway were kissing in the back of the car, then dropped her at the Holiday Inn where she was staying around 2 a.m.

Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, has insisted that the three know what happened to her daughter and that police should press them harder to tell the truth. She has asked why the three were initially released after only a couple of hours of questioning, and arrested more than a week later.

At one point before the Dutch teen's arrest, Beth Holloway Twitty confronted him in front of his home and said the teen was arrogant, saying "What do you want me to do about it?"

Anita van der Sloot said he was "under pressure at that moment." He's tall and self-confident, she added, but "he doesn't have an arrogant attitude."

Anita van der Sloot told Fox News on Wednesday that her son has been interrogated for sometimes hours at a time, with authorities “calling him psychopath, murderer.”

Girl’s dad ‘optimistic’

Holloway’s father, meanwhile, said Wednesday he was confident that the investigation into her disappearance was close to being resolved. But dozens of searches by officials and volunteers have failed to turn up any trace.

His daughter disappeared on the last day of a five-day trip to celebrate her high school graduation with other students. Her passport and packed bags were found in her room.

“I’m optimistic,” Dave Holloway told Associated Press Television News. “The FBI indicated to me that the (Aruban) police are very adequate and doing a good job.”

Anita van der Sloot said she sympathized with the anguish of Holloway's family.

"The Holloway family needs all the help it can get," she said. "They are desperate and I understand that."

Dave Holloway said he also believed the three young men held the key to his daughter’s disappearance. “These three guys cannot commit a perfect crime,” he said.

A fourth man detained in the case, 26-year-old party boat disc jockey Steve Gregory Croes, said he knew one of the two Surinamese brothers arrested with Joran van der Sloot from an Internet cafe, his boss, Marcus Wiggins, has said. Wiggins’ boat, the Tattoo, docks near the Holiday Inn.

Anita van der Sloot said that the intense local and international coverage of the case has been trying for her family. She said the news media are "trying to trap us."

"We are not clever people," she said. "We are just normal people trying to live our lives. ... It's incredible what's happening in Aruba. This is not the Aruba I know or love."