Dutch murder suspect back in Peru to face charges
June 6, 2010 - 0:0
LIMA (AP) -- The young Dutchman long suspected in a U.S. teen's Caribbean island disappearance was delivered to Peru on Friday to face charges in the murder of a 21-year-old woman found with her neck broken in his Lima hotel room.
Joran van der Sloot told police in Chile — where he was captured on Thursday — that he did not kill Stephany Flores but did say “he met her and at some point they went to a casino,” said Fernando Ovalle, a Chilean police spokesman.The girl's father, Ricardo Flores said he doesn't want the death penalty for van der Sloot, only justice. In Peru, murder carries a prison sentence of up to 35 years.
“I haven't slept since Monday,” a devastated Flores, his eyelids heavy and speech slurred, said in an interview at his Lima home. “I'm waiting for him to step foot on Peruvian soil.” Then, he said, he'd take a sleeping pill or simply collapse from exhaustion.
They put a bulletproof vest on van der Sloot, who looked frightened, and took him to a police post for a medical check before continuing on by highway to Lima, where a preliminary arrest warrant was issued for him Thursday.
Peru's chief Cabinet minister, Javier Velasquez, told Radioprogramas radio that van der Sloot would arrive in the capital on Saturday morning.
Van der Sloot remains the prime suspect in the May, 30, 2005 disappearance — five years to the day of Flores' murder — of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway on the Dutch island of Aruba.
The body of Stephany Flores, a business student with a sunny disposition, was found late Tuesday in the Lima hotel room where van der Sloot had been staying since arriving in Peru on May 14 from Colombia.
A tennis racket was found in the room “that could have been the murder weapon but that's so far not been proven,” said Dr. Cesar Tejada, deputy Lima medical examiner.
Flores said police wouldn't let him see his daughter's battered body. His oldest son, 35, identified her at the morgue, and the casket was closed at her funeral.
The girl's mother, Maria Elena Ramirez, sat staring into oblivion accompanied by friends and family at a table in the grass-covered back yard. Stephany was the oldest of their three children and only daughter.
Peruvian police say they have video of van der Sloot and Flores together in the casino and on the street and say witnesses saw the two enter the Dutchman's hotel room about 5 a.m. and van der Sloot leaving alone some four hours later.
Flores, 48, buried his daughter Thursday but said he expected her to be exhumed so that DNA tests can be performed.
“Under the fingernails of my daughter there are traces, evidence, that's why they didn't permit her cremation,” he said.
Dr. Tejada confirmed that valuable evidence could be found under the girl's fingernails.
Flores said he hopes his daughter's death will help investigators solve not just the Holloway case but others of missing girls in which van der Sloot might be responsible.
Holloway was an 18-year-old celebrating her high school graduation on Aruba when she disappeared. Van der Sloot told investigators he left her on a beach. That's the last anyone saw of her. Van der Sloot was twice arrested in her disappearance — and twice released for insufficient evidence.