(PatriotWise.com) — Joran van der Sloot, the primary suspect in the 2005 disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to extortion charges related to her disappearance and was sentenced to twenty years, ABC News reported.
Van der Sloot, who in 2012 was sentenced to 28 years for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores Ramirez in Peru, was extradited to the US in June to face trial for federal extortion charges in connection to Holloway’s disappearance.
As part of his plea agreement, van der Sloot agreed to provide details about Holloway’s death to her mother, Beth.
According to the transcript of van der Sloot’s proffer meeting with prosecutors earlier this month, the 36-year-old admitted that he killed Natalee on a beach in Aruba, smashing her face with a cinderblock and dumping her body in the ocean.
He said after Natalee rebuffed his advances on the beach by kicking him in the crotch, Van der Sloot kicked her in the face, and as she lay unconscious, he picked up a cinderblock he found on the beach and bludgeoned her to death. Van der Sloot then carried Natalee’s body into the water, where he dumped her in the ocean.
Beth Holloway addressed her daughter’s killer in court, noting that after 18 years of denying that he killed Natalee, he has now finally admitted that he is a killer. She expressed frustration that van der Sloot will never be tried for killing her daughter and asked the court to give him “the maximum sentence possible.”
Van der Sloot apologized to Natalee’s family and his own and said he hoped that his statement of facts would “provide some kind of closure.” He claimed that he is now a different person, saying that he gave his “heart to Jesus Christ.”
The judge accepted van der Sloot’s plea, noting that while he killed two women for refusing his sexual advances, his confession to Natalee’s murder could not be used against him.
The judge sentenced van der Sloot to a twenty-year prison term to run concurrently with his sentence in Peru and ordered him to pay restitution to Natalee’s mother.
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