Natalee Holloway “fought like hell” in the moments before Joran Van Der Sloot brutally murdered her and dragged her body into the sea nearly 20 years ago, the American teen’s mother said in a new interview.

“Yes, I said, ‘That’s her. She fought like hell,” Beth Holloway recalled of the moment Van Der Sloot confessed to lashing out at Natalee after she kneed him between the legs while resisting his sexual advances.  

“I think she fought like hell with her killer. She stood her ground,” Beth told CBS news.

Natalee Holloway was 18 years old when she vanished on the final night of her senior class trip to Aruba on May 30, 2005. 

The Alabama native was last seen leaving a bar with van Der Sloot, who subsequently became the prime suspect in her disappearance.

Earlier this month, van der Sloot – who is now 36 and serving 28 years behind bars in Peru for the murder of another young woman in 2010 – finally confessed that he kicked Natalee in the head and then smashed her face with a cinder block after she rebuffed him on a beach not far from her hotel.

“It’s just blistering to your soul, and it hurts so deeply,” Beth said of listening to van der Sloot describe how he dragged her daughter’s mutilated body into the ocean.

 “But you know that you’re there in a functionality role because this is the moment where I’ve been searching for for 18 years. Even as hard as it is to hear, it still not as torturous as the not knowing. It was time for me to know,” she explained.

“She was killed just by standing her ground,” Beth added to CBS.

“I was so proud of her.”

Van der Sloot’s bombshell confession was part of a plea agreement he made with US prosecutors related to a case for attempting to extort $250,000 from Natalee’s family in exchange for information about the location of her body.

In the end, he led the family’s investigator on a wild goose chase before decamping to Peru to avoid authorities, where he murdered Stephany Flores five years to the day Natalee disappeared.

As part of the deal in the Holloway case, van der Sloot agreed to let the teen’s family hear his account of Natalee’s death in “real time.”

The family accepted the deal in order to “finally get the answers we’ve been seeking for all these years,” Beth said.

Van der Sloot formally pleaded guilty to the extortion charges on Wednesday – three days before what would have been Natalee’s 37th birthday, and just a few miles from the high school she graduated from a few days before her death.

“You are a murderer!” Beth told van der Sloot in her victim impact statement.

“Remember that every time that jail door slams shut. You are a killer. You didn’t get what you wanted from Natalee — sexual satisfaction — so you brutally killed her.”

Natalee’s father, Dave Holloway, called his daughter’s killer “evil personified,” CBS reported.

Van der Sloot’s 20-year extortion sentence will now run concurrently with his existing murder rap in Peru, where he will return to serve the remainder of his time in prison.

Despite his confession, van der Sloot will not face charges in Aruba for Natalee’s killing, because the statute of limitations for murder charges on the island expires after just 12 years, CBS noted.

A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office in Aruba said the investigation into the Holloway case is still open, and the authorities “will follow up on any serious leads.”

During he formal plea, van der Sloot offered an apology to Natalee’s family, and claimed that he was a changed man since becoming a born-again Christian.

But Natalee’s younger half-sister, Kaitlyn Holloway, told The Post that she thinks the killer’s words were “some BS.”

“I don’t think it was a sincere apology considering all the damage he has done,” the 20-year-old scoffed.

Speaking to CBS News after the court proceedings, Beth Holloway seemed mournful but optimistic now that she can consider her daughter’s case solved.

“I have peace,” she said. 

“It felt very victorious.”

With Post wires