(Trends Wide) — It’s been nearly 18 years since American teenager Natalee Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip to Aruba.
Now, the main suspect in his disappearance could soon be extradited to the United States to face Justice in a related case. He maintains his innocence, and no one has currently been tried or charged in his death.
Natalee Holloway, from Alabama, poses for her senior portrait in the Mountain Brook High School yearbook. (Mountain Brook High School/Holloway family)
This is how the story of the disappearance of Natalee Holloway has developed
May 30, 2005: Natalee Holloway, 18, from suburban Birmingham, Alabama, leaves a bar with three young men: two brothers and Joran Van Der Sloot, then 17.
June 9, 2005: Van Der Sloot and brothers Satish and Depak Kalpoe are arrested in Aruba in connection with Holloway’s disappearance.
Joran van Der Sloot, center, arrives for a DNA test on July 20, 2005 in Oranjestad, Aruba. (Dino Trump/AP)
June 23, 2005: Van der Sloot’s father, an Aruban judge, is arrested.
June 26, 2005: A judge orders the release of van der Sloot’s father after failing to find “sufficient suspicion of guilt,” his lawyer said.
July 2005: The Kalpoes are released.
August 26, 2005: With Joran van der Sloot still in custody, the Kalpoes are re-arrested in Aruba on suspicion that they acted “along with other people” to rape and kill Holloway, the prosecutor’s office says without elaborating on the evidence. Defense attorneys maintain that all three are innocent.
September 3, 2005: Van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers are again released but remain under investigation.
November 21, 2007: Van der Sloot, at school in the Netherlands, and the Kalpoe brothers, in Aruba, are re-arrested and charged based on new evidence with “participation in the premeditated murder of Natalee Holloway or causing grievous bodily harm to Natalee Holloway , resulting in his death,” Aruba prosecutors say without describing the new evidence.
December 1, 2007: The Kalpoe brothers are released. The prosecutors cite the reasoning of the judge a day before that although “the new evidence, together with the existing evidence in this case, produce serious grounds for the suspicion of some type of complicity, of covering up the traces of a crime committed or of disposing of a dead body”, persons accused of these crimes do not qualify for pretrial detention under Aruban law.
Joran van der Sloot walks to a supermarket near his parents’ home in Aruba in December 2007 after his release from prison. (Raul Henriquez/AFP/Getty Images)
December 7, 2007: An Aruba judge orders van der Sloot released, pending any possible trial, and a prosecutor says the judge cited a lack of evidence that Holloway died of a violent crime or that van der Sloot was involved in such a crime. crime.
December 18, 2007: Charges against the three men are dropped for insufficient evidence, Aruban prosecutors say.
March 29 to May 17, 2010: Van der Sloot offers to tell Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, where her daughter’s body is and the circumstances of her death in exchange for $25,000 up front and $225,000 afterwards, a jury indictment alleges federal investigator.
Beth Holloway speaks June 8, 2010, at the opening of the Natalee Holloway Resource Center at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
May 10, 2010: Holloway wired $15,000 to a van der Sloot bank account in the Netherlands and, through an attorney, delivered $10,000 to him in person, according to the indictment. Van der Sloot shows the lawyer, John Kelly, a place where he says the remains are hidden, but the information is false, he says.
May 30, 2010: Van der Sloot kills Stephany Flores, 21, in her Lima hotel room after she finds something related to the Holloway case on her computer during a visit, investigators say. Five years have passed since Holloway was last seen. Van der Sloot takes money and bank cards from Flores’ wallet and flees to Chile, police say.
June 3, 2010: Van der Sloot is arrested in Chile, where the authorities will send him back to Peru, Interpol confirms.
June 30, 2010: A federal grand jury in Alabama indicts van der Sloot on racketeering and wire fraud charges for claims involving Beth Holloway and the location of her daughter’s remains.
January 11, 2012: Van der Sloot pleads guilty to the charges against him in Flores’ murder, which include “qualified murder” and simple robbery, saying he is “really sorry about what happened.”
January 12, 2012: An Alabama judge signs an order declaring Natalee Holloway legally dead.
Joran van der Sloot, center, is escorted by Peruvian police June 4, 2010, after Chilean authorities handed him over. (Sebastian Silva/AFP/Getty Images)
January 13, 2012: Van der Sloot is sentenced to 28 years in prison for the murder of Flores.
March 2014: Peru agrees to extradite van der Sloot to the United States to face extortion and wire fraud charges after he serves a 28-year murder sentence, making him eligible for release in 2038, reports Peruvian news agency Andina .
May 10, 2023: Peru reverses course and agrees to extradite van der Sloot to the United States to face charges of extortion and wire fraud. He would be returned to Peru after the legal proceedings against him in the United States are concluded, the Peruvian judiciary said.
May 11, 2023: Van der Sloot will appeal Peru’s extradition decision, says his lawyer Máximo Altez, calling the extradition decision announced by the government of President Dina Boluarte an attempt to divert public attention from the country’s immigration, social and political problems.
