Missing in Paradise
It's been over five years since 18-year-old Natalee Holloway disappeared while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba
A security camera in a Peru casino has captured the moment Joran Van der Sloot met the young woman who he has confessed to killing in a fit of rage.
The video shows the 22-year-old Van der Sloot sitting at a card table at the Atlantic City Casino in Lima as Stephany Flores approaches, and the two shake hands. The casino is owned by Flores’ father, an influential politician and former race car driver, Ricardo Flores, Sr.
After chatting and drinking with him, Flores, 21, drove Van der Sloot in her Jeep to the Miraflores Hotel Tac, where they went to his room at about 5:20 a.m. local time on May 30.
Van der Sloot told police he sat on the edge of his hotel bed in Lima, Peru, sipping espresso and munching four sponge cakes just minutes after brutally killing Flores, the New York Post reported Thursday.
Van der Sloot, the man long suspected of murdering Alabama teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba five years ago, told Peruvian detectives he also popped three amphetamine pills to stay alert and ward off the exhaustion he felt from playing poker with Flores at the casino into the early-morning hours before considering whether he could dump the body in the ocean, according to La Republica newspaper in Lima.
"I was going to use one of my suitcases to get rid of the body, but I didn't do it because I was afraid that I would be detained leaving the hotel with my baggage and not paying the bill," he later told cops.
He eventually showered and changed out of the clothes he wore while he was bashing Flores with a tennis racket, and left the hotel room with a backpack containing his laptop computer. He walked out of the hotel room shortly before 9 a.m. local time, leaving behind Flores' body. The corpse was found three days later when hotel workers grew suspicious and entered the room.
A wrapper from a date-rape pill later was found in her abandoned car, according to Flores' father. Police believe that Van der Sloot tried to have sex with Flores in his room but that she rebuffed him by saying she was a lesbian, U.S. tabloid the National Enquirer said. Both of them slept until about 8 a.m. local time, at which time Van der Sloot got up and went out to a nearby restaurant to buy some cakes and two espressos.
When he returned, he discovered Flores looked at his laptop and learned of his ties to Holloway. Van der Sloot told cops he grabbed Flores by the neck and began a beating that ended with her death.
"I did not want to do it," he later told cops, according to La Republica. "The girl intruded into my private life. She had no right."
He was arrested in Chile one day after Flores' body was found. Authorities there found him in possession of his laptop and a chart indicating the tides in the Pacific off Lima's coast, which led them to suspect he wanted to dump Flores' body in the ocean.
Van der Sloot was quickly extradited to Peru.
On Monday, La Republica reported, van der Sloot spoke to his mother on the phone for 20 minutes, and authorities believe she convinced him to tell the truth.
Click here to read more on this story from The New York Post.
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