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Van der Sloot on video: No sleep lost over Holloway's dumped body

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  • Suspect says on hidden camera Holloway appeared to have died on beach
  • Lawyer: Facts disprove client's videotaped story of Natalee Holloway's death
  • Holloway's mom says video leaves no doubt about daughter's death
  • Report: Hidden camera captures suspect saying Holloway's body was dumped
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(CNN) -- On video, Joran van der Sloot says he "didn't lose a minute of sleep" over knowing Natalee Holloway's motionless body had been taken out to sea and dumped.

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Joran van der Sloot awaits transfer from the Netherlands to Aruba in November. He later was released.

In the video that aired Sunday on Dutch television, van der Sloot, a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway, told a man he was with the Alabama teen on an Aruban beach when she apparently died and that a friend of his with a boat disposed of Holloway's body.

"He went out to sea and then he threw her out, like an old rag," van der Sloot told Aruban businessman Patrick van der Eem January 16.

Van der Eem recorded their conversations on hidden cameras installed in the Range Rover he was driving, according to the Dutch TV report. Video Watch van der Sloot on hidden camera »

On the tapes, van der Sloot also says that he wasn't certain Holloway was dead before his friend dumped her body in the ocean.

"No, but it didn't look good," he said, when van der Eem asked him if he checked her pulse or other vital signs. "I wasn't [expletive] sure, but from the time it happened to the time he came, she wasn't doing anything any more."

Aruba's chief prosecutor, Hans Mos, called the account that aired "very impressive" and announced he was reopening the investigation.

Van der Sloot later said the statements were lies, and on Monday his attorney said the video contains "no admission of a crime."

In the video, van der Sloot says Holloway and her friends begged him to go out with them the night of May 29, 2005.

The Dutch student said he and two friends -- brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe -- met the women at a bar in Oranjestad.

When they arrived, he said, the women appeared to have been drinking heavily and some were using cocaine.

Holloway was in Aruba with about 100 classmates celebrating their graduation from Mountain Brook High School in suburban Birmingham, Alabama.

After declining an invitation from Holloway to dance on stage with her, he agreed to drink a shot of liquor from her navel as she lay on the bar, he said.

About 1 a.m. May 30, he said, she left the bar with him and the Kalpoes, telling her friends she would meet them at their hotel before their planned return flight the next day to the United States, he said.

The three men previously told authorities they then drove to the beach with Holloway, leaving her there when she told them she wanted to stay.

But van der Sloot gave a different account in the hidden-camera footage. He said he wanted to have sex with Holloway, but she told him she did not want to go to her hotel. Instead, she said, she wanted to see sharks, he told the informant.

The two brothers then used their car to drive van der Sloot and Holloway to the beach by the hotel and left them, van der Sloot said.

He and Holloway then had sex, he said. But as they were caressing each other, she started shaking, then said nothing, he said.

"All of a sudden, what she did was like in a movie," he said. "She was shaking, it was awful. ... I prodded her, there was nothing."

He said he panicked and, when she did not appear to be alive, shook her but was unable to resuscitate her. He said he carried her body to a stand of trees, walked to a pay phone near the pool of the hotel and, instead of using his cell phone, called a friend who owned a boat that was tied up at a nearby dock.

Upon the friend's arrival, the two men carried Holloway's body to the boat, and the friend told van der Sloot to go home, he said. The student then walked back to his house, where his father was asleep when he arrived about 15 minutes later, he recounted. He estimated the time at 2:30 or 3 a.m.

Van der Sloot said the boat owner showed up at his house later in the morning and told him he had taken the body out less than a mile from land and dumped it overboard.

He added that the incident with the woman has not bothered him.

"I didn't lose a minute of sleep over it," he said.

The video footage shows van der Sloot is "not innocent," Holloway's mother said Monday.

"Once people see the video, there are no more questions; there is no one that could walk away from this believing that he is innocent," Beth Twitty told ABC.

Twitty described the video as a source of "comfort," saying "it means everything."

"I felt that it put an end to my nightmare," she said. "The nightmare is not knowing, and I feel as if now, I can begin the mourning and the healing process for losing a child."

She added, "Not knowing is the absolute cruelest thing that a person can endure."

Van der Sloot's attorney, Joe Tacopina, told ABC Monday that "there's no confession, there's no admission of a crime by Joran on any of these tapes."

He said much of what was in the video is "easily disprovable based on corroborative evidence. ... The fact of the matter is he still is not responsible. The evidence, not Joran, the evidence, says he's not responsible for Natalee's death."

Tacopina added, "I'm certainly not asking at this point for anyone to believe Joran. ... Clearly his credibility is zero."

Last week, van der Sloot called the Dutch television program "Pauw & Witteman" and acknowledged having made the comments but said they were lies.

"That is what he wanted to hear, so I told him what he wanted to hear," van der Sloot said.

A judge denied a prosecution request that van der Sloot, the son of a lawyer, be detained in the Netherlands, where he is a student. The judge did determine that sufficient reason exists to reopen the inquiry against van der Sloot. Video Watch CNN's Frederik Pleitgen report on the new video »

Mos said that on Tuesday he will appeal the judge's decision barring Van der Sloot's arrest and said that a three-judge panel will have eight days to rule on it.

In a statement, the Office of the Public Prosecutor on Sunday cautioned the report does not necessarily solve the case.

"There is a big difference between the reality of a courtroom and the reality of a television screen," it said. Video Watch a CNN legal analyst discuss the Holloway case »

On Monday, Tacopina said at least two points of his client's story could be disproved. He said the Aruban coast guard had checked the pay phone where van der Sloot said he had called his friend, and the records show that "there's no such call."

Also, Tacopina said, the friend whom his client names in the video met van der Sloot two months ago, and the friend wasn't in Aruba in May 2005. He also has never owned a boat, the attorney said.

Van der Eem told ABC he befriended van der Sloot by pretending to be a gangster after meeting him in a casino.

"Why did I want this? It's obvious. Everybody was looking for the truth. For her mother," he said.

In the interview with ABC, van der Eem became emotional himself while saying that van der Sloot talked about Holloway's death "without any emotions."

Van der Eem, who ABC reported once spent a year in prison on drug charges, said he and van der Sloot smoked marijuana on long car rides over the course of several months. Van der Eem told the network he pretended to invite van der Sloot into a drug operation to gain his trust.

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He approached reporter Peter R. de Vries' television show, telling them he had gained van der Sloot's trust, and the program outfitted an SUV with hidden video cameras.

Van der Eem has been paid about $35,000 by the show -- which has a format similar to the U.S. show "America's Most Wanted." E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

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