
The long-awaited confession of Joran van der Sloot, confessing to the murder of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005, has only now come to fruition after painstaking years of thorough investigation and the approval from Holloway’s mother of a correspondingly aligned plea agreement.
The disclosure of van der Sloot’s confession surfaced in recent court documents, in the aftermath of his guilty plea in an Alabama federal court to the charges of extorting and defrauding the Holloway family. The confession was delivered in the early days of October, as confirmed by law enforcement authorities.
The day which bore witness to Holloway’s killer confessing was recalled by an FBI spokesperson who said, “Our meeting was facilitated by a shared understanding of why we were there and what outcomes we sought to achieve.”
Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch national, provided detailed insights into the commission of the crime as part of a plea deal obtained during the extortion and fraud case. He chillingly recounted the rejection of his sexual advances by 18-year-old Holloway on an Aruba beach, leading to her brutal end with a cinder block before her body was cast into the ocean.
The heavily anticipated plea agreement was the result of weeks of intensive communication and coordination between the FBI and Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother. Beth, having never ceased her relentless pursuit of justice for her daughter two decades after her disappearance, granted her assent before the plea deal’s finalization, said John Q. Kelly, the Holloway family attorney.
Speaking of the relief granted to Beth by the sentencing, Kelly said, “Beth has finally been able to breathe easy with the closure this sentence has provided.”
Van der Sloot was extradited to the US from Peru in June to face allegations of extorting Holloway’s family through a scheme offering fallacious information about the location of Natalee’s remains.
Currently serving a 28-year prison term in Peru following a conviction for the murder of Peruvian woman Stephany Flores in 2010, van der Sloot’s 20-year sentence in the US on the extortion charges will be concurrently served with his Peruvian term.
The question of whether van der Sloot could face additional charges remains a point of contention. Although Aruba’s statute of limitations for murder prosecutions – 12 years – has lapsed, the case remains open pending a request this month by the Aruba prosecutor’s office to the US Justice Department for pertinent investigative documents.
The decision on “procedural steps” against van der Sloot will be determined once the documents have been scrutinized by Aruban authorities, indicated Ann Angela, a spokesperson for the Aruba prosecutor’s office.