LIMA, Peru – A young Dutchman previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway is the prime suspect in a weekend killing of a Peruvian woman, police said Wednesday.
Joran van der Sloot is being sought in the Sunday killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told a news conference. He said the suspect fled the country the next day by land to Chile.
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Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman, who was in the country for a poker tournament, appears with the young woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday.
The victim’s father, Ricardo Flores, told reporters she was killed about 8 a.m. in a hotel room in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood that was splattered with blood.
The killing occurred exactly five years after the disappearance of Holloway in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island.
Van der Sloot left Peru on Monday, Guardia said, according to immigration registry. He had been staying at the hotel since May 14 and checked out on Sunday four hours after he arrived there with the victim, the police general added.
“We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room,” said Guardia.
Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for van der Sloot, said Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht.
He cited as his source Peruvian police and the Dutch Embassy in Lima.
An attorney for van der Sloot in New York City, Joe Tacopina, said he did not know his client’s whereabouts and has not been in touch with van der Sloot since the Peru allegations emerged.
Tacopina cautioned against a rush to judgment.
“Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull’s-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote 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, who was on a high school graduation trip.
No trace of her has been found and van der Sloot remains the main suspect in the case, said Ann Angela, spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor’s office.
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