Longtime suspect admits to killing Holloway after she spurned him
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The chief suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway has admitted he beat the young Alabama woman to death on a beach in Aruba after she refused his advances. New details in the killing emerged Wednesday as Joran Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extorting Holloway’s mother, resolving a case that has captivated the public’s attention for nearly 20 years.
Although van der Sloot isn’t charged in Holloway’s death, his attempt to squeeze a quarter million dollars from the slain teen’s mother gave investigators a crucial link to the 2005 killing. And after finally seeing him in a U.S. courtroom, the family said they’re putting years of doubt and uncertainty behind them.
“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 in my daughter’s murder. He is the 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 said in his confession that he pushed her body into the sea.
Now 36, he has pleaded guilty to one count each of extortion and wire fraud 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.”
Mark White, an attorney for Holloway’s father Dave Holloway, said it his understanding that van der Sloot could not be prosecuted in Aruba — even with his confession — because the statute of limitations has expired.
The judge said the plea deal required van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalie Holloway’s disappearance 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.