Joran van der Sloot is on his way to the United States after the extradition process started in Peru on Friday evening.
The Dutchman is believed to be the prime suspect in the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in 2005. He will face allegations that he attempted to extort money from Holloway’s family in the wake of her disappearance.
Earlier this week, Van der Sloot’s lawyer confirmed that his client had been badly beaten in the Peruvian prison, where he has been sentenced since his conviction for the murder of 21-year-old student Stephany Flores in 2010.
Peruvian lawyer Maximo Altez said he does not believe his client’s beating is related to the impending extradition. The details and extent of Van der Sloot’s injuries are not yet known.
More likely, he said, it could be related to gang rules at Challapalca Prison, where Van der Sloot is being held.
Van der Sloot, a Dutchman, is serving a 28-year prison sentence in Peru for the 2010 murder of 21-year-old student Stephany Flores. According to his lawyer, he was recently beaten by fellow inmates
Natalee Holloway, 18, went missing in 2005. The teen had been on a graduation trip to Aruba with her high school classmates in Alabama
The prisoner has since been transferred to the medical ward of the institution and his lawyer has requested that he be transferred to another prison as soon as possible.
Natalee Holloway went missing in 2005 when she was just 18 years old. The teen had been on a graduation trip to Aruba with her high school classmates in Alabama.
She was last seen driving off with a group of young men, one of whom was Van der Sloot, who was 17 at the time.
Van der Sloot, 35, insists he did not kill Natalee, who was 18 when she disappeared after leaving a nightclub with him and two friends on the Caribbean island of Aruba in 2005.
Her body was never found and she was declared legally dead in 2012 at the request of her father, Dave Holloway.
Van der Sloot was arrested as a suspect but eventually released. He was then indicted by a federal jury in Alabama in 2010 for allegedly attempting to extort the Holloway family – the charge on which he is now being extradited.
Prosecutors alleged that in March 2010, Van der Sloot contacted Beth Holloway — Natalee’s mother — and said he would reveal the location of the teen’s body for $250,000, $25,000 of which would be paid in advance.
During a sting operation, Holloway’s attorney, John Kelly, met the suspect at a hotel in Aruba and gave him $10,000 in cash, while Holloway transferred another $15,000 to Van der Sloot’s bank account.
Van der Sloot, then in his early twenties, reportedly changed his story about the night he had been with Natalee Holloway.
The convicted killer is currently awaiting extradition to the United States from maximum security Challapalca prison
Van der Sloot, with whom Natalee had been the night of her disappearance, was detained as a suspect in the case, but was eventually released
In 2012, Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to the 2010 murder of a young Peruvian woman
Beth Holloway, mother of Natalee Holloway, speaks at the opening of the Natalee Holloway Resource Center (NHRC) at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in Washington, June 8, 2010
He claimed, according to prosecutors, that he picked her up, but when she demanded to be put down, he threw her to the ground and her head hit a rock, killing her instantly.
Van der Sloot then allegedly took Kelly to a house and said that his father, who had since died, had buried Holloway’s body in the foundation of the building.
Kelly later informed Van der Sloot that the information he had provided was ‘worthless’ and within days the suspect had left Aruba for Peru.
Earlier this month, Peruvian authorities issued an executive order accepting a temporary extradition request from US authorities. No date has yet been set for the extradition.
It was also revealed earlier this month that Van der Sloot is currently in the process of divorcing his wife, mother of his daughter, for a “prettier and younger” girlfriend who is accused of smuggling drugs into him while in prison.
Van der Sloot married accountant Leidy Figueroa, 33, in a private ceremony at Piedras Gordas Prison in July 2014, when Leidy was seven months pregnant with their daughter.
Just months after she tied the knot, she gave an enthusiastic interview to DailyMail.com claiming that her new husband was “gentle, sensitive, kind” and “not a monster.”
The pair met while Leidy was selling candy and cigarettes to inmates at another of Van der Sloot’s former prisons – Miguel Castro Castro, in Lima.
The lax prison rules led Leidy to start visiting him twice a week and the pair exchanged a stream of saccharine love letters.
They even named their daughter Dusha Trudie van der Sloot, 8, after the killer’s grandmother, Trudie.
But their unlikely romance began to fall apart in 2020 after van der Sloot was accused of bringing drugs into prison with a girlfriend, Eva Pacohuanaco, Altez said.
van der Sloot dumps his wife, Leidy Figueroa, 33, (pictured left in 2014 shortly after they got married), because he is now dating Eva Pacohuanaco (right), who was accused of smuggling drugs into prison in Peru
Despite his infidelity, it was van der Sloot who filed for divorce about a year ago because he was now in a relationship with the “prettier and younger” Pacohuanaco, 24, according to Altez.
The killer now has fewer female visitors due to tighter security at his current prison, Challapalca, in Puno, Peru, but he “still writes girls and they send him pictures,” his lawyer said.
Pacohuanaco is accused of helping Van der Sloot smuggle nearly 300 grams of cocaine and 140 grams of marijuana to another prison in Juliaca, according to reports in Peru.
It gave the Dutchman an extra seven years in his sentence for the murder of Flores.
How long it takes for Van der Sloot to be extradited depends on a number of factors, including arranging transportation to fly him to the United States and a US agreement that he will be returned to Peru to serve his sentence. to sit.
After a trial in the US, Van der Sloot was scheduled to be sent back to Peru to complete his sentence for the murder of Flores and a separate drug trafficking charge in prison.