LIMA, Peru — A young Dutchman previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway is the prime suspect in the weekend murder of a Peruvian woman, police said Wednesday.
Joran Van der Sloot is being sought in the killing Sunday of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told a news conference. He said the suspect fled the country the next day by land to Chile.
The Dutch government said Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Van der Sloot.
Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman, who was in the country for a poker tournament, appears with the woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday.
The victim’s father, Ricardo Flores, told reporters she was killed about 8 a.m. in a blood-spattered hotel room.
The killing occurred exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island.
Guardia said Van der Sloot had been staying at the hotel since May 14 and checked out Sunday four hours after he arrived there with the victim.
“We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room,” Guardia said.
An attorney for Van der Sloot in New York City, Joe Tacopina, said he did not know his client’s whereabouts and had not been in touch with him since the Peru allegations emerged. He cautioned against a rush to judgment.
“Joran Van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull’s-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play,” Tacopina said.
Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway, who was on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island.
No trace of her has been found, and Van der Sloot remains the main suspect in the case, said a spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor’s office.
A spokeswoman for Holloway’s mother, Beth Twitty of Mountain Brook, Ala., said the family would have no comment.
