Credit: Netflix

Natalee Holloway went to Aruba for a graduation blowout, not to become the face of a disappearance that would haunt America for decades. She was 18 when she vanished in May 2005. What followed was a nightmare: years of dead-end investigations and no answers. And now, a new Netflix documentary revisits the case.

The ensuing media frenzy turned her disappearance into a national obsession, but spare a thought for her mother, Beth, whose anguish played out in public. While Beth grieved and desperately searched for answers, she also had to watch strangers pick apart her daughter’s disappearance as though it were some whodunnit.

Then came the bombshell in 2023: Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch man suspected in her disappearance, confessed to killing her, 18 years after she went missing. Netflix’s Taken: Natalee Holloway revisits the harrowing ordeal through Beth’s eyes, putting the focus back on the family who lived through it.

The closing credits will leave you floored, but if you want to explore more disappearances that captured the world’s attention, these four Netflix documentaries tell you the stories that provoked a similar public obsession. Be warned: none of them makes for cosy viewing.

Four documentaries to watch after Taken: Natalee Holloway:

Amy Bradley Is Missing (2025)

In March 1998, Amy Bradley vanished from a Caribbean cruise ship packed with passengers, and nobody has been able to explain how. That’s the baffling mystery surrounding the 23-year-old Bradley, who disappeared from the Rhapsody of the Seas, leaving her family scrambling for answers as the vessel approached Curaçao.

Amy Bradley Is Missing on Netflix explores the competing theories surrounding her disappearance, including claims of sightings that suggest Bradley may have survived the ordeal. The docuseries gives her family the spotlight as they grapple with an investigation that has produced more questions than answers. And it’s their relentless search, rather than the theories alone, that makes this such a compelling follow-up to the Holloway story.

American Murder: Gabby Petito (2025)

A picture-perfect romance that turned out to be anything but. In 2021, 22-year-old Gabby Petito embarked on a cross-country road trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. The two were documenting their adventures for social media as the couple showcased their exciting van-life dream.

But this was no Instagram fairy tale; things took a sinister turn when Laundrie returned home without Petito. This set off a nationwide search that had America glued to the headlines… just like the Holloway vanishing case did years earlier. Knowing the truth behind those posts makes them all the more horrifying to revisit.

Netflix’s American Murder: Gabby Petito peels back those Instagram posts through police bodycam footage and interviews with Petito’s loved ones. It exposes a disturbing reality and a relationship that ended in her murder. Watching the warning signs leading up to the tragedy, and learning what happened to her makes those moments even more heartbreaking.

Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart (2026)

Elizabeth Smart was taken from her bedroom while the rest of her family was asleep. That’s the stuff of nightmares, except 14-year-old Smart lived through it. In June 2002, she was taken from her Salt Lake City home by Brian David Mitchell, a drifter her family had once hired for odd jobs. What followed was a nine-month-long ordeal that left America desperate to know whether she would make it home.

Netflix’s Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart lets Elizabeth tell her own story, as she recalls her abduction and eventual rescue through interviews and archival footage. What makes the documentary so moving is hearing Smart speak about everything she went through in her own words. And, after everything she endured, watching her take control of her story is incredibly powerful.

The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann (2019)

The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann takes you on a family holiday in Portugal, where a three-year-old girl vanished from a family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3rd, 2007 while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.

That became one of Britain’s most notorious mysteries and the ensuing investigation became a media circus of staggering proportions.

In the Netflix documentary, we see the investigation through archival material and interviews with people connected to the case, examining how a desperate search became engulfed in public scrutiny. The documentary makes for a very uneasy watch as viewers confront the human cost of a mystery that has haunted a family for almost two decades.