Poker Player Joran van der Sloot Sentenced to 20 Years for Murder

18:00
22 Oct

Joran van der Sloot has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after agreeing a plea deal in an Alabama court. The Dutchman pleaded guilty to the 2005 murder of American teenager Natalee Holloway on the Caribbean island of Aruba, as well as charges of extortion and wire fraud.

Van der Sloot is currently serving a 28-year sentence in Peru for the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores and will be returned to the country to serve both sentences concurrently.

Chilling Confession

The case of Natalee Holloway's disappearance in Aruba in 2005 has captured the nation’s attention for almost two decades.

Thankfully, on October 18, 2023, Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect, finally admitted to killing the Alabama teen giving her family some closure on the heart-wrenching case.

Van der Sloot made the confession as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors that included charges of extortion and wire fraud.

Holloway was visiting Aruba on a high school graduation trip when she vanished in May 2005. She was last seen leaving a nightclub with van der Sloot and two other men.

Local police arrested and released van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe multiple times in connection with Holloway’s disappearance. Eventually, in 2007, the Aruban Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that there was insufficient evidence to charge any of the suspects.

The statute of limitations has now expired, meaning that van der Sloot will never face justice in an Aruban prison.

Van der Sloot's confession revealed that he killed Holloway with a cinder block on an Aruban beach after she rejected his advances. He said he then dragged her body out to sea, explaining why no corpse was ever found. In 2012, an Alabama judge signed an order declaring Holloway legally dead.

We also learned that five years after Holloway was murdered, van der Sloot contacted her family to ask for $250,000 for him to reveal the location of her body.

The FBI recorded a conversation where van der Sloot agreed to take a $25,000 payment on the understanding a further $225,000 would be paid once he disclosed the location.

A transcription of van der Sloot’s confession has been published across the mainstream media, including the following excerpts.

“She asked to go back to her hotel but I was just trying to get dropped off a little bit further away from her hotel so we could walk back and I might still get a chance to be with her.

“That's what I was hoping for.

“She ends up kneeing me in the crotch. When she knees me in the crotch, I get up and I kick her extremely hard in the face.

“She's lying down unconscious, possibly even dead, but definitely unconscious. And I see right next to her there's a huge cinderblock laying on the beach.

“Afterwards, I don't exactly know, I'm scared. I don't know what to do. I decide to put her into the ocean. So I grab her and I half pull and half walk with her into the ocean. I push her off. I walk up to about my knees into the ocean and I push her off into the sea. After that, I get out. I walk home.”

Why Wasn’t van der Sloot Brought to Justice Earlier?

Many commentators have been asking why van der Sloot wasn’t brought to justice earlier. In 2016, it was revealed that he had admitted to the murder in a secretly-recorded interview.

"I always lied to the police. I made up so many stories against the police. Also, when I was younger, I never told everything. The police just never knew what they had to ask me. I think it was one of the worst police investigations that ever took place."

The reporter then checked if he was referring to the Holloway murder.

"Yes, yes... yes. This is also where I am guilty, and I accept everything that I have done."