Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba, admitted to killing the Alabama teenager, Holloway’s mother said Wednesday in court as he entered a plea deal with federal prosecutors, according to the Associated Press.
Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud charges during the hearing in Birmingham, Alabama. He was charged in 2010 with trying to extort a quarter-million dollars from Holloway’s mother Beth Holloway in exchange for information about her missing daughter’s remains, but he wasn’t extradited to the U.S. until earlier this year.
As part of the plea deal, an attorney for Beth Holloway said van der Sloot had to provide details about what happened to Natalee Holloway, whose disappearance received international attention. Before U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco imposed her sentence, Beth Holloway told the court that van der Sloot had said he killed her daughter.
Were Natalee Holloway’s remains ever found?
Holloway was legally declared dead in 2012. Her remains haven’t been found. She was last seen with van der Sloot on the Caribbean island nation during a high school graduation trip in May 2005.
The extortion case dates back to 2010, when Holloway had been missing for nearly five years. According to a grand jury indictment, van der Sloot contacted Beth Holloway’s attorney John Q. Kelly and offered to give him details about how Natalee Holloway died and about the location of her remains in Aruba for an initial payment of $25,000.
In the next part of the scheme, when the remains were confirmed to be Holloway’s, her mother would then pay van der Sloot an additional $225,000, according to the indictment.
Van der Sloot took Kelly to a site in Aruba, but after securing the initial $25,000 payment, van der Sloot said in an email that the information he provided was “worthless,” according to the indictment.
Ernesto Benavides/AFP via Getty Images
Van der Sloot hasn’t been charged in Natalee Holloway’s disappearance.
In June, van der Sloot was extradited to the U.S. from Peru, where he has been serving a 28-year prison sentence since he pleaded guilty in 2012 to killing 21-year-old college student Stephany Flores.
Beth Holloway said she was “overcome with mixed emotions” by van der Sloot’s extradition.
“I am hopeful that some small semblance of justice may finally be realized, even though no act of justice will heal the pain we’ve endured,” she said in a statement.
Natalee Holloway’s father Dave Holloway called the extradition “an important step toward accountability and hopefully, justice.”
U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona said van der Sloot would be returned to Peru after the case concludes.