Joran van der Sloot confesses to killing U.S. teen Natalee Holloway
The chief suspect in Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba admitted he killed her and disposed of her remains, and has agreed to plead guilty to charges he tried to extort money from the teen’s mother years later, a U.S. judge said Wednesday,
The disclosure came during a plea and sentencing hearing for Joran van der Sloot, 36, in a federal courtroom in Alabama — just a few miles from the Birmingham suburb where Holloway used to live.
“You changed the course of our lives and you turned them upside down,” her mother Beth Holloway said in court, standing a few feet from van der Sloot. “You are a killer.”
Van der Sloot is not charged in Holloway’s death. The Dutch citizen was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for extortion and wire fraud, but as part of his plea agreement, that sentence will run concurrently with his sentence in Peru, where he’s serving a 28-year prison sentence for killing Stephany Flores in 2010.
U.S. Judge Anna Manasco said she considered van der Sloot’s confession to Holloway’s murder and the destruction of her remains as part of the sentencing decision.
“You have brutally murdered, in separate instances years apart, two young women who refused your sexual advances,” the judge said.
Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip with classmates. She was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot. He was questioned in the disappearance but was never prosecuted. A judge declared Holloway dead, but her body has never been found.
Manasco said the plea deal required van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalie Holloway’s disappearance.
The case has captivated the public’s attention for nearly two decades, spawning extensive news coverage, books, movies and
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