While I have posted crime stories off and on since I started blogging in the nineties it was the Natalee Holloway disappearance that really intrigued me and got me interested in crime blogging. It would be a few more years before I would make the switch and write about crime exclusively but Natalee and Joran van der Sloot turned on that little light bulb for me.
Van der Sloot has been in the news and on this site many times over the last five years, most recently when the German news agency RTL managed to get another confession out of him in 2009. He claimed to have dumped Holloway’s body in a marsh. Personally I think he just wanted another payday and that’s all the interview was about.
Anyway, Joran has apparently confessed to murdering 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez in Lima, Peru. According to most of the news sites I’ve come across since MSNBC posted this late last night Flores apparently saw information on his laptop about his involvement in Natalee Holloway’s murder or that tied him to it when she went snooping after he stepped out for coffee. When he was her on his computer Joran became enraged.
Van der Sloot reportedly said “I did not want to do it. The girl intruded into my private life… she didn’t have any right.” I suppose as far as he was concerned that was enough for him to beat Stephany Flores to death and break her neck. Asshole.
Flores was found on June 1st by a receptionist at the hotel. A call had come from someone looking for van der Sloot and after she forwarded it nobody answered. About an hour later the receptionist noticed that he still owed money for two nights and went up to the room. Her knocks went unanswered and the television was blaring.
The receptionist’s boss told her to go back to the room and enter it using the spare key. She made a gruesome discovery at that point, finding Flores dead, clad only in a t-shirt and panties. Van der Sloot was nowhere to be found, having fled the hotel, and the country, about 8:30 that morning.
Van der Sloot was found in Chile on Thursday and arrested. He was returned to Peru on Friday.
He is slated to participate in a reenactment of the murder for the police in Lima today and could also be formally charged today as well.
On June 3, 2010, Van der Sloot was charged in the U.S. District Court of Northern Alabama with wire fraud and extortion for the amount of US$250,000 in exchange for information on the location of Natalee Holloway’s body and the circumstances surrounding her death. The criminal complaint filed with the court reveals that an advance amount of $15,000 had been wired from Alabama to the Netherlands on May 10, 2010. This followed a cash payment on the same day to Van der Sloot of $10,000 that was videotaped by undercover investigators in Aruba. Authorities determined the information that Van der Sloot provided in return turned out to be false. Holloway’s mother, Beth Twitty, notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the extortion plot for the money, which was used by Van der Sloot to finance his trip to Lima, Peru. U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance issued an arrest warrant to go through Interpol in an effort to prosecute Van der Sloot in the United States. On June 4, at the request of the U.S. Justice Department, authorities raided and confiscated items from two homes in the Netherlands, one of them belonging to reporter Jaap Amesz who had previously interviewed Van der Sloot and claimed knowledge of his criminal activities. Police in Aruba are preparing to launch new searches on the island for Holloway’s remains near a hotel where she was last seen and a dam at Monserat.
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