Joran van der Sloot, known as a prime suspect in the unexplained disappearance of Alabama teenager, Natalee Holloway in 2005, is presumed to submit a guilty plea to federal charges during a hearing scheduled for the coming Wednesday, according to the Holloway family’s legal representative.
The specific charges van der Sloot might plead guilty to, in relation to the extortion case, and the impending sentence he might face are still mired in uncertainty.
Van der Sloot’s connection to the Holloway case originates from being one of the last individuals to see the 18-year-old alive before her eerie disappearance. A federal indictment charged him in 2010 with both extortion and wire fraud, alleging his involvement in a scheme concocted to sell information concerning Holloway’s remains in return for $250,000; all of this unfolded in the Northern District of Alabama.
John Q. Kelly, Holloway’s family attorney, validated to a media outlet that Van der Sloot plans to plead guilty in the implicated case. Kelly further shared on a television show that the plea agreement necessitates van der Sloot to disclose the specifics of Holloway’s demise and the subsequent disposal of her body.
Following the hearing, Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway, will conduct a news presser to publicly declare what van der Sloot revealed to the FBI authorities.
Van der Sloot’s journey to the United States originated from a transfer in June from a Peruvian prison, where he was sentenced to 28 years behind bars for the murder of Stephany Flores, 21, committed in 2010 in a Lima hotel room.
As per the consensus between Peru and the US, van der Sloot is expected to first complete his sentence for Flores’s murder in Peru before being extradited back to the US to serve any further sentence pertaining to US-based charges.
As stated in the aforementioned indictment, $15,000 wired by Holloway’s mother to a bank account owned by van der Sloot in the Netherlands along with an additional sum of $10,000, delivered in person via an attorney, amounted to an upfront payment of $25,000. Utilizing this sum, van der Sloot led the attorney, Kelly, to the purported burial spot of Natalee Holloway’s remains, yet later confessed through an email that the provided information was “worthless”.
The last sighting of the teenager 18 years ago depicted her leaving a nightclub with van der Sloot, and two other men in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island. Despite having been arrested and subsequently released multiple times in 2005 and 2007 in connection with Holloway’s disappearance, van der Sloot along with the Kalpoe brothers, Deepak and Satish, maintained their innocence throughout, finally receiving acquittal due to a lack of substantial evidence. A subsequent order passed by an Alabama judge five years later led to Holloway being declared legally deceased.
