The man long suspected of killing Alabama teen Natalee Holloway said he bludgeoned her to death after she rejected his sexual advances and then threw her body in the ocean.
Joran van der Sloot, 36, told prosecutors as part of a plea agreement that Holloway had asked to be taken back to her hotel the night she disappeared, ABC News reported, citing a partial transcript of van der Sloot’s confession. Instead of taking her directly to the hotel, however, he arranged for the pair 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.”
The two walked along the beach, van der Sloot said, and he “laid her down,” and the two began kissing. Holloway told him to stop, but he kept trying. He said she “knees me in the crotch,” he added, which enraged him.
“When she knees me in the crotch I get up on the beach and I kick her extremely hard in the face,” he continued, according to the outlet.
Holloway was then “laying down unconscious, possibly even dead,” so he found a cinderblock on the beach and “smashed” her head with it. He said he then carried Natalee’s body into the ocean until the water was up to his knees and pushed her out into the tide.
Holloway’s mother, Beth, was in court on Wednesday when van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud in a plea agreement that required him to say how he killed Natalee.
“Joran, for 18 years you denied killing my daughter,” and now “you have finally admitted that you, in fact, have murdered her,” Beth said in court.
“You are a killer. I want you to remember that every time that jail door slams,” she added.
Outside the courthouse, Beth held a press conference in which she said, “This confession means we have finally reached the end of this never ending nightmare.”
John Q. Kelly, a legal representative for Beth, said the “hands-on vicious, unprovoked execution” of Natalee by van der Sloot seemed to be an “instinctive act” for a man who would kill two women by the age of 22.
Earlier this year, van der Sloot was extradited to the U.S. from Peru, where he was serving 28 years for the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores. An additional 18 years was added to his sentence this January for trafficking cocaine while in prison.
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But two months before he murdered Flores, van der Sloot contacted a legal representative of Holloway’s mother, Beth. Van der Sloot said he would tell Beth where her daughter’s body was and what led to her death if she paid him $25,000 upfront and an additional $225,000 later. Kelly, the legal representative, went to Aruba to meet with van der Sloot and gave him $100, after which Kelly reported the encounter to the FBI. A sting operation was set up to catch van der Sloot, who accepted a $15,000 wire transfer to his bank account and a cash payment of $10,000, all of which was recorded by undercover investigators.
In exchange for the money, van der Sloot told Kelly that his father – a judge – buried Holloway’s body in the foundation of a house. When authorities checked his story, they learned the house hadn’t even been built when Holloway disappeared. Van der Sloot eventually emailed Kelly to admit that he lied.
Instead of arresting van der Sloot then, the FBI allowed him to take the $25,000 and leave for Bogotá, Colombia. He wouldn’t be indicted on the charges for another month, and it wouldn’t be until 2014 that the Peruvian government announced van der Sloot would be extradited to the U.S. to face those charges – in 2023.
Holloway’s body has never been found.
