LIMA, Peru (AP) — A Dutch man long suspected in the disappearance of an Alabama teen in Aruba was arrested yesterday in the murder of a young woman in Peru.
Stephany Flores, 21, was killed in a Lima hotel Sunday, five years to the day after Natalee Holloway disappeared.
The suspect, Joran van der Sloot, was arrested in neighbouring Chile, where he travelled the day after Flores died. Van der Sloot was taken in a dark vehicle to a police office in downtown Santiago. He made no comment as he entered, walking calmly and without handcuffs as journalists shouted his name.
Van der Sloot was detained while travelling in a taxi, about halfway to the coast on Route 68, said Fernando Ovalle, deputy spokesman of Chile’s national investigative police.
The suspect did not resist and has been calm under detention, Ovalle said.
Chilean police are awaiting instructions from their counterparts in Peru, Ovalle said.
Flores, who had been seen with van der Sloot early Sunday, was found Wednesday lying face down on the floor of the suspect’s hotel room in Lima, with her neck broken, Peruvian police Gen Cesar Guardia told The Associated Press. She was fully clothed, with no signs of having been sexually abused.
Authorities found no potential murder weapons in the room, Garcia said.
Flores was killed exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway during a high school trip in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island where van der Sloot’s late father was a prominent judge.
Prosecutors said van der Sloot is still their main suspect in the case even though he was never charged.
Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman was in Peru for a poker tournament and appears with the dead woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday. The two were later seen entering the hotel by one of its employees about 5 am and the Dutchman departed alone about four hours later, he said.
“We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room,” Guardia said.
The victim’s father, Ricardo Flores, 48, is a former president of the Peruvian Automobile Club who won the “Caminos del Inca” rally in 1991 and brings circuses and foreign entertainers to Peru. He ran for vice-president in 2001 and for president five years later on fringe tickets.
A lawyer for van der Sloot in New York, Joe Tacopina, cautioned against a rush to judgement.
“Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bullseye on his back now and he is a “usual suspect” when it comes to allegations of foul play,” Tacopina said.
Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway in Aruba.
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