The chief suspect in the disappearance of a teenage student 15 years ago offered to sell her remains to her mum, it is claimed.
Natalee Holloway was just 18 when she vanished during a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba in May 2005.
Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot, 32, is suspected of killing Natalee - who was last seen with him and another man - and dumping her body, which has never been found.
In a new interview, Natalee's grief-stricken mum, Beth Holloway, said van der Sloot once claimed to her that he had the teen's remains and he would sell them to her.
Appearing on The Dr Oz Show, a daytime TV chat show in the US, Mrs Holloway said: “He promised that he would give me to sell Natalee's remains.
"That he had Natalee's remains and that he wanted to sell them to me.”
In a clip released before the full interview aired on Tuesday, the programme's host, Dr Mehmet Oz, responds: “My goodness, that's terrible. He never fought up in any capacity.”
Mrs Holloway adds: “Well, of course, it was all a lie. I knew when I stepped into this with Joran, I think everyone knows, we all know when his lips are moving, he's lying.”
Natalee, from Mountain Brook, Alabama, was declared legally dead by a judge in January 2012.
Van der Sloot, whose father was a judge in Aruba, a Dutch territory, never faced prosecution for her disappearance or death, but reportedly later confessed to murdering her during a secret recording.
It is said that he made the confession while in prison for the May 2010 murder of his girlfriend, Stephany Flores, in Lima, Peru.
Stephany was killed five years to the day of Natalee's disappearance.
During the same episode of The Dr Oz Show, TV presenter Nancy Grace, host of Justice Nation: Crime Stops Here, was asked if the timeline was a coincidence.
She said: “Because it was with such accuracy in many cases, I would say it was planned. But Joran van der Sloot does not plan anything.
"It's like asking a wolf, or a coyote, ‘Did you plan to murder that gazelle one year from the day you did it last year?’
"No, no. He's a killer. He's a killing machine, and I very, very rarely say, ‘I told you'.
"Because nobody wants to hear that when you're talking about violent crime, ‘I told you’.
"But I recall when the Aruban officials, the government in Aruba, remember, his dad was a judge in Aruba, very, very prestigious job.
"I think he covered for Joran van der Sloot, he got out of jail down there, and at that time, I said, ‘I don't know how, I don't know where, I don't know when, but van der Sloot will kill somebody again'."
Mrs Holloway has been in touch with Stephany's family and takes comfort knowing that van der Sloot has been jailed for her murder.
She said: “I've only gotten to speak with her brother when I was in Lima, and because we share the same, I mean, our daughters died at the same killer's hands.
"So, I felt that was good for me and I wanted to do that, I wanted to go there, and to just extend myself to them because of what had happened.
"Closure, it's such a hard word to use, but I look at for them I think justice is being served for Stephany Flores' murder, so I take comfort in that. And we have our perpetrator, our loved one's perpetrator in prison.”
Van der Sloot was sentenced to 28 years in prison after he confessed to strangling, beating and suffocating the 21-year-old Peruvian business student.
Peru has said it will extradite van der Sloot to the United States for questioning about the Holloway case after he finishes his jail term in the South American country.
