In a confession made public on Wednesday, Joran van der Sloot acknowledged killing Alabama young Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005. This came after he accepted a plea agreement with federal authorities in an extortion case related to the widely publicized disappearance. “Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder,” Beth Holloway, the mother of the victim, declared to reporters outside the federal courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama, following the 36-year-old Dutchman’s plea and sentence hearing. “He is the murderer.”
In a conversation with his counsel, Van der Sloot admitted to killing Natalee Holloway while she was visiting the Caribbean island nation for her high school graduation. As part of a plea agreement on federal charges that van der Sloot attempted to extort a quarter of a million dollars from Beth Holloway in exchange for information regarding her daughter’s death, the interview was turned over to U.S. authorities.
Van der Sloot cannot face charges or a trial in the United States in connection with the death of Natalee Holloway. “He said that after killing her on the beach in Aruba, he put her into the water and that was the last that he ever saw her,” Beth Holloway told reporters. “… I’m satisfied knowing that he did it, he did it alone and he disposed of her alone.”
