Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Van der Sloot confesses; cops plan to visit crime site

LIMA, Peru - Peruvian police plan to escort Joran van der Sloot, who allegedly has confessed to last week's killing of a 21-year-old business student in Lima, to the hotel where the crime occurred, officials said.

LIMA, Peru - Peruvian police plan to escort Joran van der Sloot, who allegedly has confessed to last week's killing of a 21-year-old business student in Lima, to the hotel where the crime occurred, officials said.

They also said yesterday that police have until the weekend to file criminal charges against the Dutchman for the May 30 killing of Stephany Flores.

The beating death occurred exactly five years after U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba - an assumed death in which Van der Sloot has long been considered the prime suspect by authorities on the Dutch island in the Caribbean.

Peru's chief police spokesman, Col. Abel Gamarra, said late Monday that Van der Sloot confessed earlier in the day.

Several Peruvian media outlets reported that he admitted killing Flores in a rage after learning she had looked up information about his past on his laptop.

La Republica said van der Sloot tearfully had confessed, in the presence of a prosecutor and a state-appointed attorney, to grabbing Flores by the neck and hitting her because she had viewed images about the Aruba case on his computer while he was out buying coffee.

Gamarra, senior police officials and prosecutors would not provide details of the alleged confession, which came on van der Sloot's third full day in Peruvian custody at police headquarters.

Meanwhile the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant quoted the suspect's attorney in the Netherlands as suggesting that the confession may have been coerced.

"Joran told his mother crying Monday that he was being interrogated under reasonably barbaric conditions," the paper quoted Bert De Rooij saying. "He said the police were trying to force him to confess."

Flores, daughter of a Peruvian circus impresario and former race-car driver, was found beaten to death, her neck broken, in the 22-year-old Dutchman's hotel room. Police said the two had met playing poker at a casino.

The chief of Peru's criminal police, Gen. Cesar Guardia, said the crime-scene visit at the TAC hotel would most likely occur today. A psychological exam of the suspect is also required before a judge can decide whether he should stand trial.

Murder convictions carry a maximum of 35 years in prison in Peru, and it was not immediately clear if a confession could lead to a reduced sentence.

Van der Sloot remains the key suspect in Aruba for the disappearance of Holloway, an 18-year-old from Alabama who was on the resort island celebrating her high school graduation. He was arrested twice in the case - and gave a number of conflicting confessions, some in TV interviews - but was freed for lack of evidence.