Holloway suspect sought in Peru murder

AP – In this Friday, Dec. 7, 2007 file photo Joran van der Sloot, sits in a car after being released released …
Slideshow:Joran van der Sloot sought in Peru murder
By FRANKLIN BRICENO, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 4 mins ago
LIMA, Peru – A young Dutchman previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway is the prime suspect in a weekend murder of a Peruvian woman, police said Wednesday.
Joran van der Sloot is being sought in the Sunday killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, Criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told a news conference. He said the suspect fled the country the next day by land to Chile.
The Dutch government said Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Van der Sloot.
Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman, who was in the country for a poker tournament, appears with the young woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday.
The victim's father, Ricardo Flores, told reporters she was killed about 8 a.m. in a hotel room in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood that was splattered with blood, indicating a struggle.
The killing occurred exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island.
Van der Sloot left Peru on Monday, Guardia said, according to immigration registry. He had been staying at the hotel since May 14 and checked out on Sunday four hours after he arrived there with the victim, the police general added.
"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," said Guardia.

Video courtesy of ABC News. For more visit ABC News.com

Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Van der Sloot, Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht told The Associated Press in The Netherlands.
He cited as his sources Peruvian police and the Dutch Embassy in Lima. The embassy's head of consular affairs, Angela Lowe, told the AP she could not comment on the case.
An attorney for Van der Sloot in New York City, Joe Tacopina, said he did not know his client's whereabouts and has not been in touch with him since the Peru allegations emerged.
Tacopina cautioned against a rush to judgment.
"Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull's-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play," Tacopina said.
Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway, who was on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island.
No trace of her has been found and van der Sloot remains the main suspect in the case, said Ann Angela, spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor's office.
"What's happening now is incredible," she said. "At this moment we don't have anything to do with it, but we are following the case with great interest and if Peruvian authorities would need us, we are here."
Van der Sloot's late father was a prominent judge in Aruba.
The mystery of Holloway's disappearance has garnered wide attention on television and in newspapers in Europe and the United States.
Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of Van der Sloot saying he was with Holloway when she collapsed on a beach, drunk.
He said believed she was dead and asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.
Judges subsequently refused to arrest van der Sloot on the basis of the tape.
A spokeswoman for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty of Mountain Brook, Alabama, told the AP the family was aware of the development in Peru but would have no comment.
___
Associated Press writers Carla Salazar in Lima, Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, Michael Melia in San Juan and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

Holloway Suspect Sought in Peru Murder
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 2, 2010


Filed at 5:06 p.m. ET

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- A young Dutchman previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway is the prime suspect in a weekend murder of a Peruvian woman, police said Wednesday.

Joran van der Sloot is being sought in the Sunday killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, Criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told a news conference. He said the suspect fled the country the next day by land to Chile.

The Dutch government said Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Van der Sloot.

Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman, who was in the country for a poker tournament, appears with the young woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday.

The victim's father, Ricardo Flores, told reporters she was killed about 8 a.m. in a hotel room in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood that was splattered with blood, indicating a struggle.

The killing occurred exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island.

Van der Sloot left Peru on Monday, Guardia said, according to immigration registry. He had been staying at the hotel since May 14 and checked out on Sunday four hours after he arrived there with the victim, the police general added.

''We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room,'' said Guardia.

Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Van der Sloot, Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht told The Associated Press in The Netherlands.

He cited as his sources Peruvian police and the Dutch Embassy in Lima. The embassy's head of consular affairs, Angela Lowe, told the AP she could not comment on the case.

An attorney for Van der Sloot in New York City, Joe Tacopina, said he did not know his client's whereabouts and has not been in touch with him since the Peru allegations emerged.

Tacopina cautioned against a rush to judgment.

''Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull's-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play,'' Tacopina said.

Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway, who was on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island.

No trace of her has been found and van der Sloot remains the main suspect in the case, said Ann Angela, spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor's office.

''What's happening now is incredible,'' she said. ''At this moment we don't have anything to do with it, but we are following the case with great interest and if Peruvian authorities would need us, we are here.''

Van der Sloot's late father was a prominent judge in Aruba.

The mystery of Holloway's disappearance has garnered wide attention on television and in newspapers in Europe and the United States.

Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of Van der Sloot saying he was with Holloway when she collapsed on a beach, drunk.

He said believed she was dead and asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.

Judges subsequently refused to arrest van der Sloot on the basis of the tape.

A spokeswoman for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty of Mountain Brook, Alabama, told the AP the family was aware of the development in Peru but would have no comment.

Natalee Holloway Suspect Joran Van Der Sloot Sought in Peru Murder
Dutch National Last to Be Seen with Murdered Woman, on the Lam in South America

June 2, 2010

Joran van der Sloot, the 22-year-old Dutch playboy twice arrested in the mysterious disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway, has been named the prime suspect in the death of a young Peruvian woman found dead over the weekend in a Lima hotel.


The man linked to the Natalee Holloway case is sought in a Peru murder.
Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramirez, 21, was found at the Miraflores Hotel Tac in Lima, Peru on Sunday in room registered to van der Sloot, who was arrested and released in connection with the disappearance of Holloway , an 18-year-old American student who went missing in Aruba five years ago this week.

Officials believe Flores was killed exactly five years after Holloway's May 30, 2005, disappearance.

Related
WATCH: Van Der Sloot on TapeFormer Holloway Suspect: 'I Know What Happened': She's DeadWATCH: Van Der Sloot Confronts Reporter
Flores was found beaten and stabbed to death in a room booked in van der Sloot's name, police said. A hotel employee told police that Flores entered the hotel early Sunday morning with van der Sloot.

"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," Peruvian police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told reporters today.


The woman's father told reporters that the she was killed about 8 a.m. Sunday morning and the room was covered in blood, indicating a struggle had taken place.

Authorities believe van der Sloot fled Peru, passing through customs into Chile, and is on his way to Argentina. Peruvian officials have issued an international arrest warrant for the Dutchman.

Van der Sloot reportedly entered Peru on May 14 and left either May 30 or May 31. He initially entered the country to play in a poker tournament, Guardia said.

Flores left a friend's home Wednesday morning and was last seen that evening leaving a casino with Van der Sloot, according local media quoting to the woman's father, Ricardo Flores, a Peruvian businessman and racecar driver. Surveillance cameras caught the pair leaving the casino together.

A funeral for Flores will be held Thursday, her father told ABC News.

Pretty creepy if true. Too bad. If the Aruban authorities had done their job a life would have been saved.

Natalee Holloway suspect detained in Chile in Peruvian woman's death
Five years after Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba, one of the prime suspects in the case -- a young Dutch poker player -- is being accused of murdering a 21-year-old woman in Peru.

Related Content
Holloway suspect sought in Peru murder
JWYSS@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Five years to the day Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba, the prime suspect emerged at the center of a grisly murder in Lima, Peru.
Peruvian Criminal Police Chief Gen. César Guardia told reporters Wednesday that they've launched an international manhunt for Joran van der Sloot, 22, in the Sunday slaying of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel.
Van der Sloot was captured on video leaving a casino in the Miraflores district of Lima early Sunday with the young woman, Guardia said. Workers also saw him check into his hotel with Flores, Guardia added.
Van der Sloot checked out Sunday, four hours after he arrived with Flores, and fled overland to Chile on Monday, Guardia said.
According to the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, Flores' body was found stabbed and wrapped in a blanket in a hotel room registered under van der Sloot's name.
Peruvian police have asked Chilean authorities to be on the lookout for van der Sloot. Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for him.
The killing occurred exactly five years after the disappearance in Aruba of Holloway. That case sparked an international search for the Alabama teen -- who is presumed dead -- and has been tabloid and television fodder ever since.
``I was surprised and shocked when I heard the news,'' Aruba's chief prosecutor, Peter Blanken told The Miami Herald.
Blanken, who is leading the Holloway investigation, said it was too soon to tell how the latest developments would affect the case.
`MORE PROOF'
The Peruvian case appears more solid, he said, because there is significant evidence.
``There is more proof,'' he said. ``There is a body, and in Aruba we never found a body.''
Flores' slaying on the fifth anniversary of Holloway's disappearance is ``a dreadful coincidence,'' said Ann Angela, a spokeswoman for the Aruban prosecutor's office.
Holloway was vacationing with several high school classmates in Aruba when she disappeared on May 30, 2005, after accepting a ride from van der Sloot when the bar they were in -- Carlos' n Charlie's -- closed for the night.
Initially, Aruba had closed the case against van der Sloot due to lack of evidence, Angela said.
It was reopened after a Dutch journalist secretly videotaped van der Sloot admitting that Holloway had died in front of him on an Aruban beach and that he had disposed of her body.
Angela said van der Sloot told several versions of what happened to Holloway the night she disappeared, including the latest in which he describes throwing her over a balcony.
Speaking to reporters in Lima, Stephany Flores' father said he was convinced van der Sloot was guilty.
``No other parents should have to feel the pain we are suffering,'' Ricardo Flores said. ``We must keep this man from killing again.''
A spokeswoman for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty of Mountain Brook, Ala., said that the family was aware of the development in Peru but would have no comment.
Authorities in Aruba said van der Sloot had been there as recently as three or four weeks ago.
Van der Sloot, who had been studying in Holland, arrived back in Aruba after his father, Paulus, died in February, according to local reports.
POKER WORLD
Harold Faro, assistant editor of Bon Dia Aruba, confirmed that van der Sloot left Aruba last week, traveling to Colombia, Argentina and Peru, where the Latin American Poker Tour is hosting a tournament.
``He's a poker player,'' Faro said. ``He goes to a lot of poker tournaments, and in Peru they had a big poker tournament.''
Van der Sloot also met Holloway for the first time five years ago while playing poker at a hotel in Aruba.
Blanken, the prosecutor in Aruba, said he hopes Holloway's family will ultimately have some closure.
``It's the biggest case that has drawn more attention than any case in Aruba,'' he said. ``I would like to solve the case of Natalee Holloway so that her family knows what happened.''


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/02/1660850/natalee-holloway-suspect-wanted.html#ixzz0po9PpQCk

Van der Sloot arrested in Chile, police say
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 3, 2010 -- Updated 1754 GMT (0154 HKT)

Joran van der Sloot, once tied to the Natalee Holloway case, is a suspect in a killing in Peru, officials say.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Joran van der Sloot considered a previous suspect in Alabama teenager's disappearance
Documents show van der Sloot crossed from Peru to Chile on Wednesday, Chile says
Peruvian woman's body discovered in van der Sloot's hotel room, police say

(CNN) -- Joran van der Sloot, the suspect in a young woman's slaying this week in Peru and previously considered a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, was captured Thursday in Santiago, Chile, authorities said.
Peruvian authorities investigating the slaying were working with officials from Interpol, Chile, Argentina and Colombia in the search for van der Sloot, the Peruvian justice minister said Thursday.
Van der Sloot, who is Dutch, is the main suspect in this week's slaying of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez, who was found Wednesday in a Lima, Peru, hotel room that had been rented by van der Sloot. Chilean police told CNN that paperwork showed van der Sloot entered Chile on Wednesday.
Peruvian Justice Minister Octavio Salazar Miranda said Thursday that Peru had made the arrangements with Interpol to extradite van der Sloot once captured.

Suspect in U.S. Teenager’s Disappearance Is Held in Chile
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 3, 2010


LIMA, Peru (AP) — A Dutchman who has long been a suspect in the disappearance of an Alabama teenager in Aruba five years ago was arrested Thursday in connection with the murder of a young woman in Peru.

The woman, Stephany Flores, 21, was killed in a Lima hotel on Sunday, five years to the day after the Alabama teenager, Natalee Holloway, disappeared.

The suspect, Joran van der Sloot, was escorted by three police officers as he entered a police station in Santiago, Chile, on Thursday. He did not comment as he entered, walking calmly and without handcuffs as reporters shouted his name.

Mr. van der Sloot, 22, was detained while traveling in a taxi toward the Chilean coast, said Prefect Alfredo Espinosa, chief national spokesman for Chile’s investigative police.

The Chilean police are awaiting instructions from their counterparts in Peru, Mr. Espinosa said.

General César Guardia of the Lima police said that Ms. Flores, who had been seen with Mr. van der Sloot early Sunday, had been found on Wednesday lying facedown on the floor of his hotel room. Her neck had been broken, and she was fully clothed with no signs of having been sexually abused, he said.

Ms. Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school trip in Aruba, a Dutch island in the Caribbean where Mr. van der Sloot’s late father had been a prominent judge.

Prosecutors said that Mr. van der Sloot was still their main suspect in the case, even though he had not been charged.

Mr. van der Sloot was in Peru for a poker tournament and a video taken at a casino in Lima shows him with Ms. Flores early on Sunday, General Guardia said. The two were later seen entering the hotel by one of its employees around 5 a.m., and Mr. van der Sloot departed alone about four hours later, he said.

Joran van der Sloot The Downard Spiral

by Barbie Latza Nadeau

Joran van der Sloot is facing charges for a new killing that's similar to Natalee Holloway's. A family friend tells Barbie Latza Nadeau about his recent strange behavior.
Even before Joran van der Sloot’s arrest yesterday in Chile, the walls were starting to close in around him. He was no longer an official suspect in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005, but in many people’s minds, he was still very much at the center of the allegations, try as he might to shake them. Holloway’s body has never been found, and without it, Van der Sloot’s influential father, an Aruban judge, always argued that there was no case against his son. He was Joran’s protector and ensured he had the best legal counsel available.
The known details of both cases are hauntingly similar, right down to the date each woman disappeared: May 30, exactly five years apart.
But four months ago, Joran’s safety net began to unravel. In February, his father Paulus, age 57, died suddenly on the tennis court, sending the younger Van der Sloot into a downward spiral of depression. In March, things got worse when a vacationing Pennsylvania couple, snorkeling off the coast where the young American girl disappeared five years ago, took a picture with their underwater camera of what appeared to be a human skeleton adrift on the sea floor. Could it be Natalee? Suddenly, divers were searching the turquoise waters again, and all eyes were once more on Van der Sloot. The idea that Holloway’s body might be found was surely a terrifying prospect for her alleged killer. “That was a turning point,” says a source close to the Van der Sloot family, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “First his father died, and then suddenly someone spotted what could be Natalee’s body.”
In April, Van der Sloot became reclusive, nervous, and angry, says the family friend. Then, on May 10, the 22-year-old Dutchman cracked. He allegedly attempted to extort $250,000 in exchange for providing Holloway’s mother with “the location of Natalee Holloway’s remains in Aruba and information regarding the circumstances of her death.” He accepted a down payment of $15,000, according to a criminal complaint filed in Birmingham, Alabama on June 3. Sources close to the case say he used that money to fund a trip to Peru, where he had signed up to play in an international poker tournament with a top payout of $1 million. He got to Peru on May 14. Two weeks later, he met 21-year-old Stephany Flores and, authorities believe, killed her in his hotel room.
Van der Sloot’s arrest in the Peru murder doesn’t necessarily mean that he had anything to do with Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba. Nor does the extortion case in Alabama—Van der Sloot has famously sold secrets of Holloway’s disappearance before, and even Holloway’s mother doubts he was selling the truth. Joseph Tacopina, the American lawyer who represented Van der Sloot in Aruba and got him out of jail twice there, told The Daily Beast that implication in one case “does not create evidence in another.”
But authorities in Aruba think that it might. They believe that any evidence against Van der Sloot that emerges in Peru could shed light on how Holloway might have died, if in fact she is dead and he is the killer. Details like the murder weapon and whether Flores was strangled, suffocated, or sexually assaulted might provide useful leads in the Holloway case. The known details of both cases are hauntingly similar, right down to the date each woman disappeared: May 30, exactly five years apart. In both cases, Van der Sloot was caught on surveillance tape leaving a nightclub casino with the girls. Hotel workers in Peru told investigators that Flores went to his hotel room with him willingly. In Aruba, Van der Sloot and Holloway were also caught on tape leaving a nightclub together without any sign of struggle.
Van der Sloot has not said anything publicly about the Peru murder yet, but over the years he has offered a multitude of possible scenarios about Holloway’s disappearance. The most telling was a confession on hidden tape commissioned by a Dutch journalist in which he described Holloway’s convulsions on the beach and how he and his friends dumped her at sea. He then changed that story several times, including once on the Dutch television program RTL when he said he dumped Holloway’s corpse in a swamp. He told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News that he sold her to sex traffickers for $10,000. In a book he wrote called De Zaak Natalee Holloway, Mijn Eigen Verhaal (The Natalee Holloway Case, My Own Words) he paints the Aruba scene as one of wild sexual debauchery in which girls like Natalee were easy prey.
Holloway’s own parents, each of whom have written books about the case themselves, firmly believe that Van der Sloot was involved in their daughter’s death and that the authorities in Aruba badly botched the investigation. Beth Holloway says that she believes that Van der Sloot sexually assaulted her daughter as she came in and out of consciousness and that she either suffocated or was unconscious when he disposed of her body. They have conducted their own investigation, including digging up landfills and swamps across the Caribbean island. "He has always placed himself as the last person seen with Natalee alive,” Holloway’s mother said in a television interview just days before Flores’ body was found. “That is our one continuous thread."
Now there is new hope for the Holloways to finally find out what happened to their daughter. Whether the tragedy of Stephany Flores will help bring peace to the family of Natalee Holloway is a question on everyone’s minds.

Joran Van der Sloot, suspected of killing 2 women 5 years apart, likely a 'serial killer': official


Saturday, June 5th 2010, 4:00 AM


Navarro/AP
Dutch national Joran Van der Sloot is suspected of killing two women, Natalee Holloway and
Van der Sloot charged with Natalee Holloway extortion plot
Joran van der Sloot in Peru to face charges in Flores murder
Playboy manhunt: Chile searches for Joran van der Sloot
Joran Van der Sloot nabbed for murder in Peru
Suspect in Natalee Holloway's murder on lam for ANOTHER murder
A top Peruvian official suspects the Dutch playboy linked to two high-profile murders committed precisely five years apart is a serial killer.

"We are probably talking about a serial killer," said Interior Minister Octavio Salazar as Joran Van der Sloot was returned Friday to face murder charges in Peru.

The suspect arrived aboard a Chilean police Cessna 310, with authorities grabbing him at the border town of Tacna.

Van der Sloot was arrested a day earlier in Chile while fleeing to a seaside resort. He had been on the lam for five days.

The suspect ignored shouted questions from reporters before he was led away. He told investigators in Chile that he did not kill Stephany Flores.

The 22-year-old is suspected of snapping the woman's neck inside his Lima hotel room on Sunday - the fifth anniversary of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway's disappearance in Aruba.

In both cases, the women were last seen alive late at night in Van der Sloot's company.

His flight was possibly funded by $5,000 in casino winnings stolen from Flores, South American authorities said. He paid $620 for a cab ride from Lima to neighboring Chile.

The Dutch national was carrying two bags of luggage and chain-smoking as he departed the morning after the Flores killing, his cabbie said yesterday.

The father of the latest victim echoed Salazar's concerns about Van der Sloot's appetite for violence.

"This isn't a coincidence; this is murder," said Ricardo Flores, a former racecar driver. "There's a matter pending in Aruba, and we don't know how many more remain unpunished."

Flores, 21, was beaten so brutally that her neck was broken, and her battered body bore multiple bruises and scratches. No weapon was found, indicating the killer used his bare hands.

While Van der Sloot was in custody, Alabama prosecutors accused him of promising to provide the location of the long-missing teen's body for a $250,000 payoff.

Court papers didn't identify the target of the extortion plot, but did charge Van der Sloot collected $15,000. Holloway's family hails from Mountain Brook, Ala.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/06/05/2010-06-05_van_der_sloot_likely_serial_killer__official.html#ixzz0q0ydRVvX

Official: Van der Sloot confesses to Peru slaying
'I did not want to do it,' paper quotes Natalee Holloway suspect as saying
NBC News and news services
updated 2:25 a.m. ET June 8, 2010
LIMA, Peru - Joran van der Sloot confessed to the slaying of a 21-year-old woman in a Lima hotel room, a high-ranking Peruvian government official told NBC News on Monday.

According to La Republica newspaper, van der Sloot said he broke Stephany Flores' neck after she grabbed his laptop without his permission and found out that he was involved in the disappearance of an American woman.

The paper quoted van der Sloot as saying, "I did not want to do it. The girl intruded into my private life... she didn't have any right.

"I went to her and I hit her. She was scared, we argued and she tried to escape. I grabbed her by the neck and hit her."

NBC News reported that a lawmaker confirmed that van der Sloot confessed to a police officer during interrogation. However, the source did not know the circumstances under which the confession was allegedly obtained.

The Dutchman, who is also the prime suspect in U.S. teen Natalee Holloway's 2005 disappearance in Aruba, is being held in a seventh-floor cell with a bunk bed and blanket and gets three hot meals a day, said Maj. Jose Gamboa, spokesman for the Peruvian national police.

On Tuesday, police planned to take van der Sloot back to the hotel where Flores' body was found to participate in a reconstruction of the events leading to her slaying, Col. Abel Gamarra, head of the Information Directorate of Police, told The Associated Press.

Members of van der Sloot's family, including his mother, were planning to travel to Lima on Tuesday, a lawmaker told NBC News.

Poker
Van der Sloot is suspected in the May 30 killing — five years to the day after Holloway's disappearance — of Flores, a business student who police say he met playing poker at a casino.

On Saturday, police released video taken by security cameras at the hotel where van der Sloot had been staying since arriving from Colombia on May 14. It shows the two entering van der Sloot's room together and the Dutchman leaving alone four hours later.

The woman's battered body was found on the hotel room's floor more than two days later, her neck broken. Van der Sloot had by then crossed into Chile, where he was arrested Thursday.

In video taken of the husky 22-year-old Dutchman that was broadcast Sunday by a TV channel, Peruvian police search van der Sloot's belongings in his presence.

They pull out of his backpack a laptop, a business-card holder and 15 bills in foreign currency. Van der Sloot tells police the money includes Thai, Cambodian and Bolivian currency. He is asked for credit cards and documents and appears to say — his Spanish is very rudimentary — that they are in a hotel room back in Chile.

Earlier denial
Earlier, Peru's chief homicide investigator, Col. Miguel Canlla, would neither confirm nor deny a Sunday report in the Lima newspaper El Comercio that van der Sloot told his Peruvian questioners he was innocent of the Flores killing.

"I don't know where that information came from," Canlla told The Associated Press. "We are still in the investigative stage."

Chilean police had said that van der Sloot declared himself innocent in the Lima slaying but acknowledged having met Flores.

Van der Sloot was represented by a state-appointed lawyer during Saturday's questioning.

Until he hires his own counsel, "the guys prosecuting him will decide which attorney he's going to get," van der Sloot's U.S. attorney, Joseph Tacopina, told the AP.

Tacopina said the suspect's family "is trying to find competent counsel."


Dutch Embassy chief consular officer Angela Lowe said her government was providing van der Sloot with "regular consular assistance, which means an occasional consular visit, and we will make sure he is being treated decently, just like any other inmate."

She said Peruvian authorities have assured the Dutch government they are treating him well. "They are taking this case very seriously," she added. "The world is watching."

The suspect spoke to his mother by telephone for the first time Saturday, Lowe said.

Van der Sloot's father, a former judge and attorney on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, died in February. The suspect has two brothers.

After a 17-hour journey up the Pan-American Highway from Chile in a police caravan Saturday, the young Dutchman was paraded, sheathed in bulletproof vest and handcuffed, before reporters at criminal police headquarters in Lima.

He was then submitted to an initial interrogation. A judge subsequently granted prosecutors' request to extend van der Sloot's preliminary detention order seven more days, said Gamboa, the national police spokesman.

If tried and convicted of murder, van der Sloot faces a potential prison term of 35 years.

He remains, meanwhile, the prime suspect in the disappearance in Aruba of Holloway, an Alabama teen who hasn't been seen since May 30, 2005. He was arrested and released in that case, and faces no charges.

Extortion charge
Van der Sloot was charged Thursday in the United States with trying to extort $250,000 from Holloway's family in exchange for disclosing the location of her body and describing how she died.

U.S. prosecutors say $15,000 was transferred to a Dutch bank account in his name. In the Netherlands on Friday, prosecutors raided two homes in the case, seizing computers, cell phones and data-storage devices.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia told reporters Friday that van der Sloot would have to be tried in Flores' death before any extradition request could be considered.

Holloway, 18, was celebrating her high school graduation on Aruba when she disappeared. Van der Sloot told investigators he left her on a beach, drunk. That's the last anyone saw her.

Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of van der Sloot saying that after Holloway collapsed on the beach he asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.

The same journalist, Peter de Vries, reported later in 2008 that van der Sloot was recruiting Thai women in Bangkok for sex work in the Netherlands.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
URL: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37542848/ns/world_news-americas/page/2/


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