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Dutch national Joran van der Sloot is driven in a police vehicle from a maximum-security criminal to an airport to be extradited to the United States on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, on June 8. A Dutchman who recently confessed to killing a senior U. S. official. High school student Natalee Holloway in 2005 in Aruba was sent back to Peru today to serve the remainder of her criminal sentence for the murder of a Peruvian woman.
LIMA, Peru >> A Dutchman who recently confessed to killing top American student Natalee Holloway in 2005 in Aruba was sent back to Peru today to serve the remainder of his criminal sentence for the murder of a Peruvian woman.
Joran van der Sloot arrived in Lima in police custody. The South American country’s government agreed in June to extradite him to the United States to stand trial on charges of extortion and cord fraud.
Van der Sloot has long been the prime suspect in Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba, the Dutch Caribbean island’s government has never prosecuted him. Then, in an interview with his lawyer in the United States after his extradition, he admitted to beating the young woman to death on a beach after she rejected his advances. He said he threw her body into the sea.
Van der Sloot, 36, is accused in the United States of asking for a quarter of a million dollars to tell Holloway’s relatives the location of his remains. A plea deal in exchange for a 20-year sentence required him to provide all the information he knew about Holloway’s disappearance, allowed his parents to listen to his conversation with authorities in real time, and he submitted to a polygraph test.
A video shared on social media through Peru’s National Police shows van der Sloot, with his hands and feet handcuffed, walking on the tarmac flanked by two Interpol agents, each grabbing his arm. He was wearing a pink short-sleeved shirt, jeans, sneakers and a bulletproof vest that identified him as an Interpol detainee.
His extortion conviction will be in addition to the criminal sentence he is serving for homicide in Peru, where he pleaded guilty in 2012 to the murder of Stephany Flores, a 21-year-old business student from a prominent Peruvian family. 2010, five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.
Van der Sloot was transferred among Peruvian criminals while serving his 28-year sentence in reaction to reports that he granted privileges such as television, internet access and a cellphone and allegations that he threatened to kill a director. Before being extradited to the United States, he imprisoned a criminal in a remote domain of the Andes, called Challapalca, 4,600 meters (about 15,090 feet) above sea level.
Holloway disappeared on a high school graduation trip. She was last seen on May 30, 2005, leaving a bar with van der Sloot. A trial eventually declared him dead, but his body was never found.
Holloway’s family has long searched for answers about her disappearance, and van der Sloot has given conflicting accounts over the years. At one point, he claimed that Holloway had been buried in gravel under the foundation of a house, but later admitted this to be FALSE.
Five years after the murder, an FBI investigation recorded the extortion attempt in which van der Sloot asked Beth Holloway to pay him $250,000 to tell him where to locate his daughter’s body. He agreed to settle for $25,000 to reveal the location and asked for the rest. $225,000 once the remains are found.
Before being arrested in the extortion case, van der Sloot fled Aruba for Peru.
After his recent confession about Holloway’s killing became public, Aruban prosecutors asked the U. S. Department of Justice for documents on whether action would be taken against van der Sloot.
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