Main Suspect in Natalee Holloway Case to be Extradited to United States

The prime suspect in the 2005 case of Natalee Holloway, a high school student who disappeared on a high school graduation trip to Aruba, is being extradited from Peru to the U.S. to face charges from 2010 that he extorted the missing woman’s family. 

Holloway was declared dead in 2012, but her remains have never been found and the details of her disappearance remain unknown. Her disappearance on the eve of her high school graduation prompted years of media coverage as the case remained unsolved.

The Peruvian Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement on Wednesday that Joran van der Sloot, who was spotted getting into a car with Holloway the night she went missing, would be temporarily handed over to the U.S. for prosecution, according to the New York Times.

Gustavo Meza-Cuadra, Peru’s ambassador to the U.S., said in a statement, “We hope that this action will enable a process that will help to bring peace to Mrs. Holloway and to her family, who are grieving in the same way that the Flores family in Peru is grieving for the loss of their daughter, Stephany.” 

Beth Holloway issued a statement to CBS 42 on Wednesday, where she thanked multiple agencies for working to get van der Sloot extradited. “I was blessed to have had Natalee in my life for 18 years, and as of this month, I have been without her for exactly 18 years,” the statement read in part. “She would be 36 years old now. It has been a very long and painful journey, but the persistence of many is going to pay off. Together, we are finally getting justice for Natalee.”

Since 2012, Van der Sloot has been in jail for the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, who was found dead in his hotel room in 2010. It is unclear what prompted van der Sloot’s extradition now, since it was not expected to happen until he’d completed his 28-year prison sentence in Peru.

Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, while she was on a trip to Aruba with more than 100 members of her Alabama high school class. Earlier, on the evening of the May 29, she and some classmates had been out at a bar in Oranjestad (the drinking age is 18 in Aruba). According to the FBI, she was last seen around 1:30 a.m., leaving the area of the bar in a silver Honda with three people: van der Sloot, who was also a teenager at the time, and two brothers, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. The next morning, Holloway didn’t show up in the hotel lobby to leave with her classmates for the airport. Her belongings were found in her hotel room. 

A massive search effort — and media frenzy — ensued. Within hours, Holloway’s parents were on a private jet to Aruba to look for their daughter. They gave frequent interviews to the press to push for answers in the case. Authorities quickly zeroed in on van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers. The three suspects initially told police they’d taken Holloway to the beach because she wanted to see sharks. Their stories changed several times over the years, but police never found evidence to charge anyone with Holloway’s death. 

In early 2010, according to court records, van der Sloot contacted Holloway’s mother, Beth, promising to show her where Holloway’s remains were if Beth paid $250,000. Prosecutors allege she gave him $25,000 in advance with the understanding she’d pay him the rest of the money once the remains were recovered. He led Beth to a house on the island where he said Holloway was buried, but later admitted to lying about the location, saying in an email that the information he’d provided Beth about Holloway had been “worthless.” By that point he’d moved to Peru. In June 2010, he was indicted by a grand jury on wire fraud and extortion charges for his alleged efforts to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Holloways. 

The same day van der Sloot was indicted, he was arrested in Peru for the murder of Flores, a business student. His lawyer in that case claimed he regretted the killing and that his actions  had been triggered by trauma from being the prime suspect in the Holloway case. At his 2012 sentencing, a court clerk described how he had elbowed Flores in the face, beat her, and then strangled her with his bloodied shirt. He got 28 years for what the court clerk defined as “first-degree murder with aggravating factors of ferocity and great cruelty,” according to the AP. Due to time served, he was expected to be released in 2038. 

Van der Sloot’s extradition to the U.S. doesn’t mark the end of his sentence for the Flores case. The Peruvian attorney general’s office said in a statement to CBS News that he will return to Peru “immediately following the proceedings.”