2023, the year Joran van der Sloot finally stopped lying about Natalee Holloway's disappearance

Joran van der Sloot has pleaded guilty to the charges of extortion and wire fraud in the long-winding, mysterious case of Natalee Holloway. He has to repay Natalee's mother the money he extorted from her, plus a big sum in restitution. In addition, he has told the Holloway family what really happened to their teenage daughter in 2005.

An 18-year-old from Alabama celebrating her high school graduation, Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba in May 2005. The Dutch national Joran van der Sloot has always been a prime suspect because he was the last person seen with Natalee. However, the girl's body was never found and there was no evidence of abduction or murder by Van der Sloot.

Image provided by Holloway family, via Inside Edition

As a spokesperson for the family told People magazine, part of the October 2023 plea deal for Joran van der Sloot was that he would finally tell the family how Natalee Holloway disappeared in 2005. His confession was confirmed by polygraph tests.

As Van der Sloot told the family, he had hit Natalee Holloway in the head with a cinder block after she refused his advances. Subsequently, he had thrown Natalee into the water bordering the Caribbean island, from which she would never be recovered.

Image: Natalee Holloway Resource Center, Facebook

To stand trial in Alabama for extortion, Van der Sloot was extradited to the US from Peru. There, he's been serving a prison sentence for the murder of Peruvian student Stephany Flores. The convict will go back to Peru but with an American 20-year sentence plus a $250,100 restitution fine under his belt.

He will not be prosecuted for the death of Natalee Holloway, because Aruba has a 12-year statute of limitations for murder. However, after hearing about his confession in Alabama, the Aruba prosecutor is going to investigate whether some kind of exception can be made for his case, the Dutch channel NOS reports.

This doesn't mean that he gets away easily, though. Van der Sloot was sentenced to 28 years in a Peruvian jail for killing Flores. His new American sentence of 20 years will run concurrently with those 28 in Peru, AL.com reports. If he is released early in Peru, he will be brought to the US to serve the remainder of his time there.

Image: Peruvian authorities released this mugshot of Joran van der Sloot in 2010.

The charges against Van der Sloot in the United States related to fraud and extortion. According to CNN, the Holloway family paid him money in 2010 in exchange for information leading to her body.

Photo: Beth Holloway, Natalee's mother / ABC News

Van der Sloot took $25,000 in cash from the Holloway family just before leaving for Peru. He promised to give the relatives information about Natalee but failed to do so. The Dutchman also asked for another $225,000 from the family in return for the location of the girl's body.

Image: Sharon McCutcheon / Unsplash

Joran van der Sloot became a familiar figure in crime reporting when Natalee Holloway disappeared in 2005. As police, relatives, and journalists tried to find out what had happened to Natalee Holloway, he made several false statements and benefitted from them.

The Dutch boy grew up in Aruba, a sovereign state within the Kingdom of The Netherlands. As a youngster, he already lied to his parents. The Dutch outlet RTL Nieuws reported that he used to take money from his mother to gamble while he claimed he was playing free poker tournaments. Van der Sloot spent much of his mother's money in these games. When his parents found out, they sent him to a psychiatrist, but this didn't seem to help, RTL adds.

On the evening of Natalee Holloway's disappearance, in May 2005, Van der Sloot was last seen in a car with his friends Deepak and Satish. They claimed they dropped Natalee off at her hotel in Aruba, but security footage did not support their statements.

In 2008, Joran was secretly recorded by an infiltrator who posed as a friend. The recording was an initiative of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries after police had hit a dead end in the case. Joran van der Sloot said on the tapes that he brought Natalee's body out to sea in a boat with the help of a friend. The video went all over the world, but Joran later claimed that he had made up the whole story.

Image: 'Peter R. de Vries, Misdaadverslaggever' / SBS

One of Joran's weirdest lies was his claim that he sold Natalee into slavery to a mysterious man who took her to Venezuela. According to RTL Nieuws, he sold this story to the American channel Fox News in 2008 and earned 100,000 dollars from it. Van der Sloot would later admit that the story was made up.

In an interview with yet another infiltrator, 'Terror' Jaap Amesz in 2010, Joran claimed that Natalee Holloway had fallen from a balcony under the influence of cocaine and that her body was in a swamp. However, according to RTL Nieuws, the Aruban Public Prosecution Service concluded that Joran's statement was incorrect based on discrepancies in the timeline and conflicting witness reports.

Image: Darice de Cuba / Unsplash

In 2010, Joran van der Sloot committed the murder of Peruvian student Stephany Flores. He was caught and sentenced to 28 years in prison. However, even behind bars in a remote Peruvian prison, he continued to engage in deception and manipulation.

Image: CNN

After being transferred to a cold and uncomfortable cell in southern Peru, Joran van der Sloot claimed he had been stabbed by angry fellow prisoners. According to RTL Nieuws, experts and prison authorities refuted his claims. They suggested that he may have inflicted the wounds himself in order to get out of prison.

Image: WNL

In 2014, Joran van der Sloot married Leidy Figueroa. The girl sold cigarettes and sweets in prison in the Peruvian capital of Lima and kept in touch with the convicted criminal after he moved across the country, Dutch newspaper AD reports. After a wedding ceremony in prison, the couple had a daughter named Dusha Trudie, a name referring to Joran's grandmother.

Image: CBS

Together with his wife, Joran came up with a trick to make money. According to RTL Nieuws, they pretended that they got into a heated argument. Then, Leidy called several journalists to offer them information.

The intention was that the journalists would transfer money in exchange for the passwords of Joran's mailboxes. These would contain secret information about Natalee Holloway. None of the journalists would later comment on the scheme.

As often happens with infamous criminals, Joran has always gotten a lot of attention from women. Although fewer women visit Joran in prison these days due to stricter rules, he still writes letters to them and receives photos from women across the world, according to the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf.

According to Joran's lawyer, Máximo Altez, the relationship between Joran and Leidy started to cool off in 2020. Another woman, Eva Pacohuanaco, appeared in his life. According to the Telegraaf, Van der Sloot filed for divorce from Leidy in 2022 because wanted to be with this new, younger woman.

Image: CNN

According to the Telegraaf, Leidy continues to visit Joran faithfully in prison. She declares that she "likes the pain" and cannot live without her husband. Joran supports her financially. So what's the deal with their divorce? Are these two putting on some complicated scheme again?

According to RTL News, Joran van der Sloot's prison sentence for the murder of Stephany Flores is 28 years. He's in the Challapalca prison in the border area of Peru and Bolivia.

Image: WNL

According to RTL Nieuws, the prison is criticized by human rights activists because of the extreme weather conditions. At night, temperatures can drop to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit), and prisoners must wash with cold water.

Due to a treaty between Peru and the United States, suspects in American criminal cases can be temporarily extradited from Peru to be tried there. This means that after the trial in the US, Van der Sloot is sent back to Peru to serve the rest of his sentence.

Image: CNN

Despite his imprisonment, Joran van der Sloot continues to attract attention because of his past and the new stories that continue to pop up. The Holloway family at least has answers about one of the mysteries in his life: the death of their daughter Natalee.

Image: CNN