14 October 2023 , 20:01
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A suspect in the murder of Natalee Holloway is to plead guilty in connection to the extortion case related to the teen's mother.
Joran van der Sloot was the lead police suspect after the teenager disappeared in 2005. And court records show he has indicated he will plead guilty at the extortion trial. Natalee Holloway vanished 18 years ago and the federal case has accused him of attempting to extort cash from the her mum.
A federal judge set an Oct. 18 plea and sentencing hearing for van der Sloot in Birmingham, Alabama. He had previously entered a plea of not guilty in the extortion case.
Emails sent to his attorney and but were reportedly not returned Friday night. He was extradited to Alabama from Peru. There he is serving a 28-year sentence after admitting killing a Peruvian woman in 2010.
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Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot who is to plead guilty in extortion case (AP)The teenager went missing while on a high school graduation trip with classmates to Aruba. She was was last seen with van der Sloot, leaving a bar. Her disappearance prompted acres of news coverage. Van der Sloot was the police's main suspect, but no charges were filed.
Van der Sloot initially pleaded not guilty in June to charges he tried to extort money from the missing teen’s mother in exchange for revealing where to find her daughter’s remains.
He is not on trial for harming Holloway and the extortion and wire fraud charges are the only alleged crimes that link the Dutch citizen to Holloway’s unsolved disappearance on the Caribbean island of Aruba.
Natalee Holloway before she disappeared (Facebook)The 18-year-old went missing during a high school graduation trip with classmates and was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot, a student at an international school on the island where he grew up. The teenager has been declared dead by a judge, but her body has not been found. In 2010, van der Sloot requested money from Beth Holloway to disclose where her daughter's body. was buried. A grand jury indicted him that year.
The Mirror told in June how Van der Sloot was charged with lying to authorities and extorting money from Natalee Holloway's parents. In an FBI sting operation, he accepted a down payment of $25,000 in exchange for information about her disappearance but provided false information, leading to his arrest.
Beth Holloway, the mother of missing teenager Natalie Holloway (AP)In 2012, her pleaded guilty in Peru to killing 21-year-old Stephany Flores, a business student from a prominent family, in 2010.
Van der Sloot married a Peruvian woman in July 2014 in a ceremony at a maximum-security prison. He was shuffled between prisons in response to reports he enjoyed privileges like television, internet access and a cellphone, and accusations he threatened to kill a warden.