Birmingham, Ala- Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalie Holloway, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that he tried to extort money from the missing teen’s mother.
Van der Sloot was extradited to the United States Thursday from Peru, where he is serving a 28-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to killing a Peruvian woman. He was brought to trial before a federal judge in Birmingham, not far from the suburb where Holloway grew up, making his first court appearance in the case.
US prosecutors say that in 2010, Van der Sloot reached out to Beth Holloway, asking him for $250,000 to reveal the location of the young woman’s body. He was indicted by a grand jury that year.
Natalie’s mother watched the proceedings from the third row of the courtroom.
“For 18 years I have lived with the unbearable pain of losing Natalie,” Beth Holloway said in a statement Thursday. “Each day has been filled with unanswered questions and a yearning for justice that eluded us at every turn. But today… I hope some small semblance of justice is finally done.”
Van der Sloot is charged with one count each of racketeering and wire fraud – the only charges that have linked the Dutch national to Holloway’s disappearance on the Caribbean island of Aruba. It was handed over to the United States about a month after the two countries agreed to hand it over.
Handcuffed and dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, Van der Sloot refused to use a Dutch interpreter offered to him at Friday’s arraignment hearing. He sat alongside his court-appointed attorney, Kevin Butler, who entered a not guilty plea on his behalf during the summary proceedings.
Natalie Holloway, 18, was on a high school graduation trip with classmates in Aruba when she went missing in 2005. She was last seen leaving a bar with Van der Sloot, who was a student at an international school on the island. Van der Sloot was identified as the prime suspect and taken into custody weeks later for questioning along with two Surinamese brothers, but no charges were filed in the case.
A judge declared Holloway dead, but her body was never found.
Holloway’s mysterious disappearance sparked years of news coverage and countless true-crime podcasts.
In 2012, Van der Sloot pleaded guilty in Peru to the murder of 21-year-old Stephanie Flores, a business administration student from a prominent Peruvian family. She was murdered in 2010, five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.
Van der Sloot married a Peruvian woman in July 2014 in a ceremony in a maximum security prison. He was moved between Peruvian prisons in response to reports that he had privileges such as television, Internet access and a mobile phone, and accusations that he had threatened to kill a jailer.
A 2001 treaty between Peru and the United States allows a suspect to be temporarily extradited for trial in the other country. Van der Sloot’s attorney, Maximo Altz, initially indicated his client would not challenge his extradition, but that changed on Monday when he filed a writ of habeas corpus. A judge ruled against van der Sloot the next day.
Peru has agreed to allow Van der Sloot to remain in US custody until the Alabama case is concluded, including any appeals if convicted, according to a decision published in Peru’s Federal Record. The decision stipulates that the US authorities agree to return Van der Sloot to Peruvian custody thereafter.
The video in the player above is from a previous report.
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