Joran van der Sloot biography

Others maintain that Paulus helped hide Holloway's body, and then instructed the boys as to how they would confess to officials. Holloway's family insists that Paulus insinuated his son's guilt in conversations with them, but there remains no hard evidence to conclude that this is true.

In recent years, Joran van der Sloot lived a playboy lifestyle, siphoning off of his late father's inheritance and selling his story about Natalee for money. One of the more outrageous stories,

as covered by the Fox News outlet, was that he sold Holloway into white slavery. He later recanted this testimony. Then in May of 2010, van der Sloot was charged in Alabama with the attempted extortion of $250,000 from Holloway's family, in return for disclosing the location of her body. According to a sworn statement by Hollway's parents, van der Sloot received a down payment of $15,000, which was wired to a Netherlands bank by the Hollways in order to get information about their missing daughter. He then led the Holloways' lawyer to a housing lot, saying that Natalie's body had been buried there with his father's help. This testimony, as in the other confessions, proved to be a hoax.

Murder of Stephany Flores

Van der Sloot would use the money he'd made to fund a gambling trip to South America. On May 30, 2010, exactly five years to the day of Holloway's disappearance, the body of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez was found in a Lima, Peru, hotel room registered under van der Sloot's name. According to Flores' father, the girl had been staying with a girlfriend in Lima when she met van der Sloot. The Dutchman was in town for a poker tournament, and closed circuit television cameras caught the couple leaving a casino in Lima together. A witness later testified that they spotted the couple heading to van der Sloot's room. Stephany Flores was never seen alive again.

Authorities say the hotel room where Flores was found was covered in blood, indicating a struggle. The girl was beaten, her neck broken, and her body wrapped in a hotel sheet. Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile several days later and returned with authorities to Peru, where he reportedly confessed to the murder. Van der Sloot told Lima police that he had left Flores in the hotel room while he went to get them coffee. When he returned, the woman was on his laptop—supposedly looking at evidence that may have tied him to the Holloway murder. Van der Sloot flew into a rage, then allegedly snapped Flores' neck. He also admitted to emptying the girl's wallet, then fleeing the scene.

Van der Sloot was charged with the Flores murder in June 2010, and sent to Peruvian jail to await trial. Van der Sloot's attorney argued that the confession should be nullified on the grounds that it was made in the presence of a police-appointed defense lawyer. A Peruvian police chief disagreed, citing that van der Sloot was not only properly represented at the time, but that evidence included blood stains found on van der Sloot's clothing.

Arrest and Imprisonment

On June 21, 2010, a Dutch newspaper revealed that van der Sloot had again recanted his murder testimony.