Natalee Holloway's Mom Says 'She Would Be a Doctor by Now'

Natalee Holloway would have turned 37 on Saturday.

Instead, it’s been nearly two decades since the 18-year-old was killed while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba in 2005. While she was legally declared dead in 2012, her body has never been found.

Natalee graduated from Mountain Brook High School, where she was a straight-A student.

Natalee’s high school accomplishments led to her receiving a full scholarship to the University of Alabama. She had plans to study pre-med and also hoped to rush a sorority, ABC News reported in 2005.

But, her life was cut short when she and her classmates went on a five-day graduation trip to Aruba. On May 30, 2005, the final day of her trip, Natalee did not make the flight back home to Alabama and was never seen again. 

In a new interview with Newsmax, Natalee’s mother Beth Holloway says she thinks if her daughter was still alive today, she would have reached her career goal.

“I think that she would be a doctor by now,” Beth tells Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren. “I believe that.”

Beth adds she thinks Natalee would have had children and lived a great life.

This week marks the first time Beth has received answers and some form of justice in connection with her daughter's disappearance, which had been unsolved for 18 years.

On Wednesday, Joran van der Sloot admitted to killing Natalee after pleading guilty to extortion and wire fraud charges for extorting Beth in 2010. He was sentenced to 20 years.

Natalee was last seen leaving a nightclub around 1:30 a.m. with van der Sloot, then 17, and two other men. Van der Sloot was a Dutch national attending the International School of Aruba.

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Van der Sloot recently admitted to law enforcement officials that he bludgeoned Natalee with a cinder block after she declined his sexual advances, Beth’s lawyer, John Q. Kelly exclusively told PEOPLE. He then threw her body in the water, Natalee’s mother told reporters after Wednesday's hearing.

However, van der Sloot likely cannot be prosecuted in Aruba since the statute of limitations for murder is 12 years.

Van der Sloot had long been considered a suspect in Natalee’s disappearance, and was even arrested a few times during the investigation, but never charged.

According to a 2010 grand jury indictment previously obtained by PEOPLE, prosecutors said van der Sloot had tried to extort about $250,000 from Beth by promising to share information about the location of her daughter’s remains and the circumstances of her death. He took some $25,000 of the grieving mother's money, but never gave her answers.

Van der Sloot’s guilty plea in the extortion and wire fraud crimes on Wednesday came five months after the Peruvian government issued a decree allowing van der Sloot to be handed over to U.S. authorities to face charges in connection with the case.

He had been serving a 28 year prison sentence for the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramírez in Lima, Peru.

The American sentence will run concurrently with his Peruvian one, but if officials there release him early, he will serve the remainder of the 20 years in the U.S.

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