Alabama teen Natalee Holloway
Chile to expel Holloway suspect, Joran Van der Sloot, to Peru
June 3, 2010: Police say the prime suspect in the disappearance of Alabama teen Natalie Holloway is being held in the stabbing death of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman.
Sad anniversary for Natalee Holloway’s mom
May 30: It’s been five years since Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared while on school trip to Aruba. Beth Holloway, her mother, tells TODAY she isn’t giving up on her quest to find out what happened to her daughter.
Van der Sloot arrested in Chile
Joran van der Sloot has been arrested in Chile for a possible link to the death of a Peruvian woman. Vander Sloot had been previously investigated for ties to the death of American Natalee Holloway.
‘The Scoop’ on van der Sloot, Coleman, Sheen
Peru slay suspect linked to Holloway case
SANTIAGO, Chile - Chile is poised to expel a Dutch man linked to the mysterious 2005 disappearance of a U.S. student in Aruba and who is now the prime suspect in a new Peru murder probe, police sources said Thursday. Chile's government has decided to force Joran Van der Sloot to walk back across the border into Peru Friday, police sources said. Peruvian police have linked Van der Sloot to the murder of Stephany Flores, 21, killed in a Lima hotel on Sunday, five years to the day after Natalee Holloway disappeared. Van der Sloot was stopped by police Thursday in central Chile after traveling hundreds of miles south from the border.
Van der Sloot was taken in a dark vehicle to a police office in downtown Santiago. He made no comment as he entered, walking calmly and without handcuffs as journalists shouted his name. Van der Sloot was detained while traveling in a taxi, about halfway to the coast on Route 68, said Fernando Ovalle, deputy spokesman of Chile's national investigative police. The suspect did not resist and has been calm under detention, Ovalle said.
Late Thursday, a Chilean police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department policy, said van der Sloot would be flown to the Peruvian border Friday morning. Officials said Van der Sloot will walk back across the border into Peru. Flores, who had been seen with van der Sloot early Sunday, was found Wednesday lying face down on the floor of the suspect's hotel room in Lima, with her neck broken, Peruvian police Gen. Cesar Guardia told The Associated Press. She was fully clothed, with no signs of having been sexually abused. Authorities found no potential murder weapons in the room, Garcia said.
Flores was killed exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway during a high school trip in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island where van der Sloot's late father was a prominent judge. Prosecutors said van der Sloot is still their main suspect in the case even though he was never charged.
U.S. authorities charged him with extortion.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Birmingham, Ala., on Thursday filed a criminal complaint accusing van der Sloot of wire fraud and extortion for allegedly trying to solicit $250,000 from an unnamed person in Alabama in exchange for information on the whereabouts of Holloway's body. The person wired a partial payment of $15,000 to a financial institution in the Netherlands on May 10, according to the complaint. The information that van der Sloot provided to that person was false, federal authorities said. “We are committed to protecting citizens from unscrupulous individuals who attempt to financially exploit a person’s deepest fears and greatest loss,” U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said. The maximum sentence on the extortion count is 20 years in prison. Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman was in Peru for a poker tournament and appears with the dead woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday. The two were later seen entering the hotel by one of its employees about 5 a.m. and the Dutchman departed alone about four hours later, he said.
Stephany Flores
Associated Press
Stephany Flores was found dead in a Lima hotel.
"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," said Guardia. The victim's father, Ricardo Flores, 48, is a former president of the Peruvian Automobile Club who won the "Caminos del Inca" rally in 1991 and brings circuses and foreign entertainers to Peru. He ran for vice president in 2001 and for president five years later on fringe tickets. "My daughter would be happy to know that this murderer has been detained at last," Flores said. "Parents around the world can now breathe more easily knowing that he will pay for what he has done. The full weight of justice will fall on him, something that did not happen in Aruba." A lawyer for van der Sloot in New York, Joe Tacopina, cautioned against a rush to judgment. "Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull's-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play," Tacopina said.
Timeline: Unanswered questions — The Natalee Holloway case
Twice arrested
Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway in Aruba. No trace of her has been found and van der Sloot remains the main suspect in the case, Ann Angela, spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor's office, said Wednesday.
Natalee Holloway disappeared while on a graduation trip to Aruba.
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"What's happening now is incredible," she said. "At this moment we don't have anything to do with it, but we are following the case with great interest and if Peruvian authorities would need us, we are here." The mystery of Holloway's disappearance garnered wide attention on television and in newspapers in Europe and the United States. Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of van der Sloot saying he was with Holloway when she collapsed on a beach from being drunk. He said he believed she was dead and asked a friend to dump her body in the sea. Judges subsequently refused to arrest van der Sloot on the basis of the tape.
A spokeswoman for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty of Mountain Brook, Ala., told the AP the family was aware of the development in Peru but would have no comment.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37492667/ns/world_news-americas/?GT1=43001
Update: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37492667/ns/world_news-americas
