A federal judge set an Oct. 18 plea and sentencing hearing for van der Sloot in Birmingham, Alabama. He had previously entered a plea of not guilty in the case. Van der Sloot was extradited to Alabama from Peru, where he’s serving a 28-year sentence after confessing to killing a Peruvian woman in 2010.
A judge declared Holloway dead but her body has never been found.
KPRC 2 will speak to Texas EquuSearch at 7 a.m. on KPRC 2+ about what they’re hoping to accomplish to bring closure to the family after all these years.
Joran van der Sloot is expected to plead guilty to his involvement in an extortion plot connected to Natalee Holloway's disappearance, and her family's lawyer said the deal will require him to reveal how the Alabama teen died.
“It [the plea agreement] was conditioned upon Mr. van der Sloot revealing details of how Natalee died and how her body was disposed of,” family lawyer John Q. Kelly told NBC News on Sunday.
Neither a lawyer for the van der Sloot nor federal prosecutors could immediately be reached for comment Monday.
Holloway disappeared on vacation in Aruba with classmates celebrating their high school graduation in 2005, and an Alabama probate court declared her dead in 2012.
Judge Gray Boden asked him if he understood all of his Constitutional rights and the extortion and wire charges against him.
"Yes sir," van der Sloot replied each time.
He waived a reading of his two-count indictment and pleaded not guilty through his attorney, Kevin Butler.
According to the indictment, Holloway’s mother wired $15,000 to a bank account van der Sloot held in the Netherlands and through an attorney gave him another $10,000 in person. Once he had the initial $25,000, van der Sloot showed the attorney, Kelly, where Natalee Holloway’s remains allegedly were hidden but later admitted by email the information was “worthless,” the indictment states.
The teenager was last seen 18 years ago leaving a nightclub with van der Sloot and two other men on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba. Police in Aruba arrested and released van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe multiple times in 2005 and 2007 in connection with Holloway’s disappearance. Attorneys for the men maintained their innocence throughout the investigation.
In December 2007, the Aruban Public Prosecutor’s Office said none of the three would be charged and dropped the cases against them, citing insufficient evidence.
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