A Dutch national who is already serving time for murder in Peru now faces extradition to Alabama, where he faces federal charges of extortion and wire fraud in relation to a missing persons case.
The Peruvian authorities announced on May 10 that Joran van der Sloot will be temporarily extradited to the U.S. to face federal prosecutors, according to The Washington Post.
Van der Sloot is law enforcement’s primary suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a teen from Mountain Brook, Alabama, according to AL.com.
Natalee was 18 years old when she visited Aruba as part of a trip celebrating high school graduation with her classmates.
On the last night of her visit, Natalee and her friends met van der Sloot at a local bar. She was last seen entering a gray Honda with van der Sloot and two other men in the early hours that following day.
Despite extensive search efforts by local authorities, the FBI, and her parents, Natalee was never found. She was officially declared dead in 2012, according to The Washington Post.
The case was the subject of several works of fiction and true-crime documentaries, yet it still remains unsolved.
While van der Sloot was suspected of killing Natalee, he was never charged. Instead, he was found guilty of murdering a different young woman in 2010.
Van der Sloot is currently serving a 28-year sentence in Lima, Peru, for killing 21-year-old business student Stephany Flores.
In 2010, van der Sloot was also indicted by the U.S. Northern District Court of Alabama on charges of extortion and wire fraud in connection with the Holloway case.
Court records explain that Beth Holloway Twitty, Natalee’s mother, was allegedly contacted by van der Sloot by email on March 29, 2010.
He allegedly claimed to know where Natalee’s body was and offered to lead her to it and explain what happened for $250,000. Subsequent emails seemingly from van der Sloot then requested another $225,000 upon Natalee’s body being found and identified.
Twitty wired $15,000 to van der Sloot’s presumed account as requested the following May as a partial payment but never received the information.
The charges of extortion and wire fraud stem from these exchanges.
Lima and Washington have an extradition treaty that allows the federal authorities to request van der Sloot’s temporary extradition to be tried on these charges in the Birmingham federal court, according to The Washington Post.
Van der Sloot, now 35 years old, is reportedly trying to fight the extradition order.
Twitty released a statement upon the news from Lima, thanking those involved in requesting that van der Sloot be extradited and expressing hope that justice for her daughter might soon be at hand.
“It has been a very long and painful journey, but the persistence of many is going to pay off,” Twitty’s statement read, according to AL.com.