WASHINGTON — The FBI thought it was closing in on Joran van der Sloot in the notorious Natalee Holloway missing-teenager case, and he was videotaped and paid $25,000 in a sting operation.
But when the agency delayed his arrest to help build a criminal case, he took the money and headed for Peru, where authorities say he now has confessed to killing a different young woman.
The investigation of van der Sloot in the Alabama teenager’s case simply was not far enough along to have him arrested, the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Birmingham said Wednesday.
Eighteen-year-old Holloway disappeared on the island of Aruba on May 30, 2005. Van der Sloot is being held in Peru in connection with the killing, exactly five years later, of 21-year-old business student Stephany Flores. Flores was found beaten to death, her neck broken, in the 22-year-old Dutchman’s hotel room. Police said the two met playing poker at a casino.
In his hotel room, van der Sloot strangled Flores with his two hands and smashed her in the face with an elbow, the chief of Peru’s criminal police said Wednesday. He said van der Sloot will likely be charged today.
Federal law enforcement officials and a private investigator said the work on Holloway’s disappearance was revived in April when van der Sloot reached out to a lawyer for Holloway’s mother and requested $250,000 in exchange for disclosing the location of the young woman’s body on the island of Aruba.
He got $25,000, and the private investigator said the suspect was taped saying he pushed her down, she hit her head and died.
The statement from the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office said the law enforcement probe “was not sufficiently developed to bring charges prior to the time van der Sloot left Aruba.”
The $25,000 came from private funds, the FBI said.
Van der Sloot has told investigators in Aruba that he left the 18-year-old Holloway on a beach, drunk. He was arrested but has been released twice because of a lack of evidence.
Peru’s chief police spokesman said Monday that van der Sloot had confessed to killing Flores last week.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
