MISSING

Holloway Declared Legally Dead

Six years after she disappeared in Aruba.

An Alabama judge declared Natalee Holloway legally dead on Thursday, over six years after she went missing in Aruba. Her father, Dave Holloway, filed the petition to declare the missing 18-year-old dead in June, and a judge ruled in September that Dave Holloway had met the legal presumption of death for his daughter, and it was up to someone else to prove she didn’t die. Holloway called the ruling "tough" but said he hoped it would provide "closure." Natalee's mother, Beth Holloway, has long opposed the motion to declare her daughter dead. The hearing was scheduled before Joran van der Sloot, the last person to see Natalee alive and long a suspect in her disappearance, pled guilty on Wednesday to another woman’s murder.