CRIMINAL MIND > FORENSICS & INVESTIGATION

Paradise Lost

A New Story

Under intense police questioning, Joran told a different story than the one he'd told Beth and Jug Twitty while standing in his driveway. The change to the story was the first of several he would make as he reshaped the telling of his time with Natalee.

Joran said he met Natalee at Carlos 'N Charlie's Sunday night, May 30. She wanted him to dance with her, he said, but he declined her offer. According to Joran, Natalee kept pursuing him.

"She was like, come on, we'll go take a jelly shot," Joran said during an ABC News television interview. "So she took me by the hand and she took me to the bar. And she jumped on the bar and laid down and told the bartender to, to give me a jelly shot to put in her bellybutton and take a jelly shot off her."

Natalee Holloway

After Joran sucked the shot of rum from Natalee's navel, the two of them piled into Deepak's Honda and headed to the beach. Deepak dropped them off near the Marriott Hotel and then he and his brother went home.

Joran said he and Natalee kissed and fooled around some on the beach.

"As I remember it," Joran said during the same interview, "she was laying on top of me kissing (me) and we were touching each other. And I ended up-—she put her hands in my pants, and I put my hands in her pants and—that's as far as it went."

They didn't have sex, Joran said. Natalee wanted to but he refused because he didn't have protection. "I won't have sex with a girl without a condom."

After a while, Joran said he got tired. He had school in just a few hours. He claimed Natalee begged him to stay on the beach with her for the rest of the night. Teasing, he picked her up and tried to carry off the beach, but she insisted he put her down. Eventually, again according to Joran, he left Natalee on the beach. He placed a cell phone call to Deepak, who came and picked him up. The last time he saw Natalee she was sitting in the sand facing the ocean.

Joran said he lied about taking Natalee back to her hotel because he was scared. "I didn't want anyone to know," he told ABC News. "I didn't want anyone to know I left her at the beach. I lied because, yeah, I was scared. I had a girlfriend at the time. I didn't want my dad to think bad of me. I didn't want my friends to think bad of me."