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
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN and CHRISTINE BROUWER
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.
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.
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.
Holloway similarly disappeared after being last seen with Van der Sloot outside an Aruban night club on May 30, 2005. Van der Sloot was initially arrested in Holloway's disappearance in June of that year. He was released and arrested again in 2007, when he was detained for questioning but never charged.
In 2008, Dutch journalist Peter de Vries claimed he solved the case when Van der Sloot confessed to an undercover reporter to being with Holloway when she died and dumping her body in the Caribbean Sea.
In February 2010, a Dutch tabloid published a supposed confession by Van Der Sloot in which he said Holloway got drunk and fell from a balcony.
The Justice Department in Aruba was quick to dismiss the details of van der Sloot's latest alleged confession, telling ABC News, "We have been aware of the existence of this interview since August of last year. We investigated the claims made. The Aruban police investigated, with help from specialists with the Dutch police.
Spokeswoman for the Aruban Justice Department, Ann Angela continued to say that their "conclusion was that the statements made by Joran van der Sloot are entirely unbelievable."
Chief Prosecutor in Aruba, Peter Blanken told ABC News, "It's a story that in and of itself does fit in terms of timing. But all the other things that could be investigated, and that means the story about the witnesses, the house, the height of the balcony, all those types of things don't add up in Joran van der Sloot's statement."
Holloway's body has never been found.
Sharon Stevenson, in Peru, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.