“The doubt is over, you are no longer a suspect but the killer of my daughter,” Beth Holloway snapped at Joran van de Sloot in the American courtroom on Wednesday. Dressed in an orange thug’s suit, he listened intently to the verbal punishment. He still had the decency to express his regret to the family and will have to live in a spartan cell in Peru until 2045.
Dressed in an orange prison overalls, clearly tense and hardly looking into the room, Joran van der Sloot underwent a painful verbal punishment on Wednesday for the murder of Natalee Holloway and the extortion of her relatives.
“The doubt is over, you are no longer a suspect but the killer of my daughter,” Natalee’s mother Beth argued in an emotional statement to the judge. “You took our daughter, sister and niece away from us in a gruesome manner,” said an emotional Beth, who could still bring herself to draw attention to the grief that Van der Sloot caused his own parents and brothers. “We finally feel justice today,” stated Natalee’s mother, who occasionally looked intently at Joran van der Sloot. “You look like hell,” she snapped at him.
After Beth’s impressive speech, the judge took the floor. She also criticized Van der Sloot and emphasized the irreparable suffering he caused. She would have preferred to give Van der Sloot a much higher sentence, but given the agreements between Joran’s lawyers and the public prosecutor, this is not possible under American law.
‘Skull smashed and body dumped’
The magistrate and Beth Holloway did not waste much time explaining how exactly Joran van der Sloot murdered Natalee and dumped her in the sea. The confession about this corresponds exactly with the reading in Van der Sloot’s diary, in which he describes how he smashed the girl in the skull with a stone after he tried in vain to force her to have sex. Then he let her body disappear into the sea. Therefore, no more searches will take place.
The public prosecutor in Alabama previously considered the statements to be credible, especially after Van der Sloot underwent a lie detector test. It gave the Public Prosecution Service the conviction that a so-called plea deal was the best option to get the truth out in both the extortion case and the murder case.
Empty hands
Natalee’s relatives had an important role behind the scenes during the negotiations. FBI investigators who had been investigating the case since 2005 kept the family continuously informed. On Wednesday, the prosecutor outlined the legal impossibility for the American justice system to convict Van der Sloot in the US for the manslaughter of Natalee.
Because the crime took place on Aruba, the public prosecutor’s office on that island is the appropriate authority to prosecute the case. But because the offense of manslaughter has now expired under Aruban law, the chance that Van der Sloot will be brought to trial on the Dutch island is virtually nil. The Aruba Public Prosecution Service would then have to prove that there was premeditation, i.e. murder instead of manslaughter. Because apart from Van der Sloot’s statements there is no evidence of murder, the justice system is left empty-handed on that point.
Benefit
The relative advantage for Van der Sloot of the agreement is that he will be deported from America at short notice and flown back to Peru. There are still difficult years ahead of him until 2045, because he is certainly not welcomed with open arms in the prisons in the South American country. Because the American sentence runs parallel to his detention in Peru, his only prospect is that he will be released at the age of 57.
During the hearing, the Dutchman addressed the relatives of his victim and expressed regret. “I apologize for my actions to the Holloway family, my own family and the judge. I hope this gives her some comfort. I am not the same as I was in 2005 and 2010,” he claimed. “I believe in God and in Jesus Christ.” Afterwards, he was taken through a side door by guards and returned to prison where he will spend the last days of his stay in America.
Beth Holloway spoke outside the massively flocked media. Once again she expressed the relief felt by herself and her family. “Natalee would now be 36 years old and I still miss her every day. But we finally have the answers we’ve been looking for all these years.”