Suspect in Natalee Holloway case to plead guilty to extorting Holloway's mother

[October 18, 2023]  (Reuters) - Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch man suspected in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to U.S. charges of extorting Holloway's mother, according to court records and a lawyer for the Holloway family.  

Van der Sloot, 36, was extradited to Alabama in June from a prison in Peru, where he has been serving a 28-year sentence for murdering another woman in Lima.

Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot, who was serving a 28-year sentence in Peru after confessing to killing a 21-year-old Peruvian woman, is escorted to the airport to be extradited to the U.S., to face charges of extortion and wire fraud against the family of Natalee Holloway, in a case linked to his alleged involvement in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005, in Lima, Peru June 8, 2023. REUTERS/Sebastian Castaneda/File Photo

He initially pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Birmingham to two federal charges of extortion and fraud, accused of conspiring to get Holloway's mother, Beth Holloway, to pay him $250,000 in 2010 in exchange for his telling her where her daughter's remains were buried.

Holloway, an 18-year-old from a Birmingham suburb, went missing in 2005 during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, a Dutch territory in the Caribbean. Eyewitnesses said she was last seen leaving a bar in a car with van der Sloot on the night of her disappearance. While her remains have not been discovered, an Alabama judge declared her legally dead in 2012.

Van der Sloot has reached a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors that require him to also truthfully disclose what happened to Natalee Holloway, according to John Q. Kelly, a lawyer for the Holloway family.

A public defender representing van der Sloot and a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office did not respond to questions about a plea deal.

Working with the FBI in a sting operation, Holloway's family wired a portion of the demanded money to van der Sloot in 2010, but he then provided false information about where Holloway's remains were buried, prosecutors say.

In 2012, van der Sloot was convicted in Peru after he confessed to beating, strangling and suffocating Stephany Flores, a 21-year-old Peruvian business student, in May 2010.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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