Joran van der Sloot Admits to Killing Natalee Holloway, Pleads Guilty to Extorting Her Mother

Joran van der Sloot has confessed to killing Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005. Nearly 20 years after the 18-year-old was last seen leaving an Aruban bar with van der Sloot on May 30, 2005, van der Sloot, who has long been suspected in the disappearance, admitted to killing Holloway in a confession that was revealed publicly Wednesday as he pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud in a connected federal case.

“Today, I can tell you with certainty after eighteen years, that as far as I’m concerned, Natalee’s case is solved. It is over. Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder. He is the killer,” Natalee’s mother Beth Holloway said in a statement, per WVTM 13. “It has been a very long and painful journey, but we finally got the answers we’ve been searching for all these years. We finally got justice for Natalee.”

According to Beth, van der Sloot “gave a proffer in which he finally confessed to killing Natalee.” Per CNN,in a proffer, a defendant offers information they know about a crime,often as part of a plea deal. Van der Sloot, now 36, admitted to killingHolloway, who was visiting Aruba on a graduation trip,with a cinder block on an Aruban beach after she rejected his sexualadvances, according to a transcript of an interview with his attorney.Van der Sloot confessed that after Holloway kneed him in the crotchafter he tried “feeling her up,” he kicked her “extremely hard” in theface. He then bludgeoned her to death with a cinder block and moved herbody into the ocean until the water was up to his knees, at which pointhe decided to “push her off” into the ocean. Holloway’s body has neverbeen found. In 2012, an Alabama judge signed an order declaring herlegally dead.

Van der Sloot was arrested several times in connection to the 18-year-old’s disappearance but never charged. Due to a 12-year statute of limitations in Aruba, van der Sloot cannot be charged with murder.

Speaking outside the courthouse, Holloway’s mother said, “This confession means we have finally reached the end of this never ending nightmare.” In a statement, the teen’s father, Dave Holloway, said, “What I have come to realize is the impossibility of having what this man took from us restored, and over time I have found some level of peace and acceptance of that reality.” In his victim impact statement, according to CBS News, Dave added that his daughter’s murder was intentional because she “dared to stand up for her own body…[Holloway] defended herself against his unwanted sexual advances. Protecting herself enraged an aggressive predator to the point of murder. He murdered Natalee, and then tortured and extorted those who loved her most.” Dave said van der Sloot “is evil personified.”

During Wednesday’s hearing, Van der Sloot, who was previously sentenced to 28 years in prison for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores, was sentenced by Judge Anna Manasco to 20 years on federal charges of extortion and wire fraud after he was accused of trying to sell information about the location of Holloway’s remains to her mother in exchange for $250,000.