Natalee Holloway’s confessed killer returns to Peru to serve out sentence in another murder

LIMA, Peru (AP) — A Dutchman who recently confessed to killing American high school student Natalee Holloway in 2005 in Aruba was returned to Peru on Tuesday (Oct. 31, 2023) to serve the remainder of his prison sentence for murdering a Peruvian woman.

Joran van der Sloot arrived in Lima in the custody of law enforcement. The South American country’s government agreed in June to temporarily extradite him to the U.S. to face trial on extortion and wire fraud charges.

Van der Sloot was long the chief suspect in Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba, though authorities in the Dutch Caribbean island never prosecuted him. Then in an interview with his attorney conducted in the U.S. after his extradition, he admitted to beating the young woman to death on a beach after she refused his advances. He said he dumped her body into the sea.

Van der Sloot, 36, was charged in the U.S. for seeking a quarter of a million dollars to tell Holloway’s family the location of her remains. A plea deal in exchange for a 20-year sentence required him to provide all the information he knew about Holloway’s disappearance, allow her parents to hear in real time his discussion with law enforcement and take a polygraph test.

Video shared on social media by Peru’s National Police shows van der Sloot, hands and feet shackled, walking on the tarmac flanked by two Interpol agents, each grabbing one of his arms. He wore a pink short-sleeved shirt, jeans, tennis shoes and a bulletproof vest that identified him as an Interpol detainee.

The video also showed him doing paperwork at the airport, where he also underwent a health exam. Col. Aldo Avila, head of Interpol in Peru, said van der Sloot would be taken to a prison in the northern Lima, the capital.

About two hours after van der Sloot’s arrival, three police patrol cars and three police motorcycles left the airport escorting a black vehicle with tinted windows.

His sentence for extortion will run concurrently with prison time he is serving for murder in Peru, where he pleaded guilty in 2012 to killing 21-year-old Stephany Flores, a business student from a prominent Peruvian family. She was killed in 2010 five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.

Van der Sloot has been transferred among Peruvian prisons while serving his 28-year sentence in response to reports that he enjoyed privileges such as television, internet access and a cellphone and accusations that he threatened to kill a warden. Before he was extradited to the U.S., he was housed in a prison in a remote area of the Andes, called Challapalca, at 4,600 meters (about 15,090 feet) above sea level.

Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip. She was last seen May 30, 2005, leaving a bar with van der Sloot. A judge eventually declared her dead, but her body was never found.

The Holloway family has long sought answers about her disappearance, and van der Sloot has given shifting accounts over the years. At one point, he said Holloway was buried in gravel under the foundation of a house but later admitted that was untrue.

Five years after the killing, an FBI sting recorded the extortion attempt in which van der Sloot asked Beth Holloway to pay him $250,000 so he would tell her where to find her daughter’s body. He agreed to accept $25,000 to disclose the location and asked for the other $225,000 once the remains were recovered.

Before he could be arrested in the extortion case, van der Sloot slipped away by moving from Aruba to Peru.

After his recent confession to killing Holloway became public, prosecutors in Aruba asked the U.S. Justice Department for documents to determine if any measures will be taken against van der Sloot.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A U.S. judge says the chief suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway has admitted he killed her and disposed of her remains. The admission comes as part of a plea deal with prosecutors on extortion charges. Joran Van Der Sloot pleaded guilty Wednesday (Oct. 18, 2023) to trying to extort money from Holloway’s mother in exchange for revealing the location of her daughter’s body. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for extortion and wire fraud but is not charged in Holloway’s death or disappearance. U.S. Judge Anna Manasco said she considered van der Sloot’s confession to Holloway’s murder and destruction of her remains in her sentencing decision.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Natalee Holloway was beaten to death on a beach in Aruba and her body pushed out to sea after refusing the advances of the chief suspect in the 2005 killing, who admitted to the murder before pleading guilty Wednesday to extorting money from the missing teen’s mother.

Although Joran van der Sloot isn’t charged in Holloway’s death, his confession may finally resolve a case that has captivated the public’s attention for nearly two decades, spawning extensive news coverage, books, movies and podcasts.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother, told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Alabama. “Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect and my daughter’s murder. He is a killer.”

Natalee Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip with classmates. She was last seen on May 30, 2005, leaving a bar with van der Sloot, a Dutch citizen and student at an international school on the Caribbean island where he grew up. He was questioned in the disappearance but never prosecuted. A judge declared Holloway dead, but her body was never found.

Van der Sloot, now 36, pleaded guilty to the extortion and fraud charges in exchange for a 20-year sentence. That prison term will run concurrently with a 28-year sentence he’s serving in Peru for killing Stephany Flores in 2010.

U.S. Judge Anna Manasco said the details of his confession factored into her sentencing decision.

“You have brutally murdered — in separate instances years apart — two young women who refused your sexual advances,” she said.

Shackled and wearing an orange jail uniform, van der Sloot told the crowded courtroom he hoped the confession provides closure.

“I would like the chance to apologize to the Holloway family, my own family,” he said, later adding, “I am no longer the person I was back then.”

The judge said the plea deal required van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalie Holloway’s disappearance, allow her parents to hear in “real time” his discussion with law enforcement, and take a polygraph test.

After the hearing, Beth Holloway told reporters she was “absolutely confident” that they finally got the truth from van der Sloot after years of lies.

Court documents offer a transcript of his confession.

In an interview conducted by his attorney, he says he and Holloway were lying on the beach kissing. She started to resist, but he kept touching her, so she kneed him between the legs. He stood up and kicked her “extremely hard” in the face while she was still lying down.

At that point, he said, she was “unconscious, possibly even uh, even dead, but definitely unconscious.” He said he picked up a nearby cinderblock and brought it down on her face.

Frightened and unsure what to do, he said he dragged her body until he was knee-deep in the waves, then pushed her out to sea.

The Holloway family has long sought answers about the disappearance, and van der Sloot has given different accounts over the years, at one point saying Holloway was buried in gravel under the foundation of a house but later admitting that was untrue.

Five years after the killing, an FBI sting recorded the extortion attempt in which van der Sloot asked for $250,000 from Beth Holloway to reveal the location of her daughter’s remains. He agreed to accept $25,000 to disclose the location, and asked for the other $225,000 once the remains were recovered.

Van der Sloot chose “greed over Beth Holloway’s grief,” prosecutor Lloyd Peeples told the judge Wednesday (Oct. 18, 2023).

Van der Sloot moved from Aruba to Peru before he could be arrested in the extortion case. The government of Peru agreed to temporarily extradite him to face trial on the extortion charge, and he will return to Peruvian custody after his case is concluded.

While giving her impact statement Wednesday, Beth Holloway turned to stare directly at her daughter’s killer, sitting just a few feet away in court.

“You look like hell, Joran,” she said.