Joran van der Sloot changed his plea to guilty to charges of extortion and wire fraud tied to the 2005 disappearance of Alabama high schooler Natalee Holloway on Wednesday, according to CNN.
John Q. Kelly, the lawyer for Holloway’s family, told NBC’s Today that a condition of the plea deal would include van der Sloot revealing how the teen died and what happened to her body. “There won’t be any further investigation or search … for Natalee’s remains,” the attorney said. Holloway’s mother, Beth, will hold a press conference to reveal what van der Sloot tells the FBI.
Back in June, van der Sloot was extradited from Peru — where he was serving 28 years for killing a Peruvian woman — to the United States to finally face charges tied to Holloway’s disappearance. He pleaded not guilty to federal extortion and wire count charges, first filed in 2010.
Holloway disappeared on a high school graduation trip to Aruba in May 2005. Though she was declared dead in 2012, her remains were never found, and many of the details surrounding her disappearance remain unknown. Van der Sloot, however, was always among the top suspects: The night Holloway disappeared, he was reportedly one of the last people seen with her, leaving a bar around 1:30 a.m. and getting into a car with van der Sloot and two brothers, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.
Authorities quickly zeroed in on van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers as suspects. The trio first claimed they took Holloway to the beach because she wanted to see the sharks, but their stories reportedly changed over the years. Even still, police never found enough evidence to formally charge anyone with Holloway’s death.
In 2010, van der Sloot allegedly contacted Holloway’s mother, Beth, and promised to show her where Holloway’s remains were if she paid him $250,000. Beth gave van der Sloot an advance of $25,000 and promised to pay him the rest once the remains were recovered. But no remains were discovered at the location van der Sloot allegedly provided Beth. And by the time he admitted to lying about the information in an email sent to Beth, van der Sloot had moved to Peru. In June 2010, a grand jury indicted him on wire fraud and extortion charges.
Coincidentally, the same day van der Sloot was charged in the United States, he was arrested in Peru for murdering 21-year-old Stephany Flores. In 2012, he was sentenced to 28 years in prison, and with time served, he was expected to be released in 2038.
Van der Sloot’s extradition to the U.S. earlier this summer does not mean his sentence in Peru will be curtailed. He is expected to return to Peru to finish his sentence, at which point, he will be extradited back to the United States to serve whatever punishment will be handed down in the extortion case.