Dutch poker player Joran van der Sloot has revealed in a hidden-camera interview with a reporter that he committed the murder of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in 2005. He is currently serving time in Peru after being convicted in a separate murder case in Peru.
Natalee Holloway was only eighteen years when she disappeared on a trip to Aruba with her classmates from Mountain Brook High School to celebrate their graduation.
Van der Sloot, a Dutch native living in Aruba at that time, was a prime suspect as she was seen with him in a casino and later witnessed to have left a bar with him and two of his friends Deepak Kalpoe and Satish Kalpoe.
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All three were arrested as suspects in the case on two occasions but were released after an extensive investigation involving officials from U.S, Aruba and Netherlands could find no conclusive evidence of their involvement. The case was subsequently closed by Aruban authorities. A judge declared Holloway dead in 2012 although her body was never found.
Van der Sloot was again a key suspect in 2010, 5 years after Holloway’s disappearance, when Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramírez, a 21-year-old student was found murdered in the Peruvian city of Lima. She was found in a hotel room which was registered in his name and was also seen entering the hotel room with him. Van der Sloot had told authorities that he had arrived in Peru through Columbia to play in the Latin American Poker Tour.
Van der Sloot was sentenced to 28 years in prison after he pled guilty to charges of murder and robbery of Flores. The recent admission of his guilt in the Holloway case came in a secretly-taped interview at the prison in Peru where he is serving his sentence. In the interview, he has stated that he had consistently lied to the police at that time and called the police investigation in the case as one of the worst ever since the investigating team never asked him the right questions.
While van der Sloot likes to portray himself as a poker player he has gained international notoriety for these two crimes and very little recognition for his achievement on the poker circuit. He has no documented live tournament winnings, with HendonMob showing no records for him. He is however known to be a member of PocketFives, an online poker community which states that van der Sloot has won $1,949 in online payouts. He is expected to be released only in 2038.
