FIEND: Joran van der Sloot (in court yesterday) may still be charged in the death of Natalee Holloway (center) after doing time for Stephany Flores’ murder. (
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Jordan van der Sloot fidgeted nervously and sweated profusely as he finally faced justice — being sentenced yesterday to 28 years behind bars for murdering a Peruvian woman he met in a Lima casino.
The 24-year-old Dutchman shook his head and sighed after the panel of three female judges set his release date as 2038, accounting for the time served since his arrest in 2010. He had faced a maximum term of 30 years.
He could become eligible for parole in 14 years. But van der Sloot could still be prosecuted then in the case of missing Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway.
Investigators have tried for years to pin Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba on van der Sloot. Yesterday’s hearing in Lima resulted in his first prison sentence.
Van der Sloot was also ordered to pay $75,000 in reparations to the family of Stephany Flores, the 21-year-old business student he admitted strangling and beating.
His lawyer argued that he killed Flores on May 30, 2010, in a fit of rage prompted by the psychological trauma of being named as the prime suspect in Holloway case.
Flores’ father, Ricardo, complained after the sentencing that van der Sloot had been living well in a Lima prison, where he was set apart from the general population.
“A jail isn’t a five-star hotel,” he told reporters. “Since the first day, we’ve been complaining about the excessive privileges.”
Van der Sloot’s jail cell allegedly has a TV and a video-game console.
Flores’ family said van der Sloot killed her in a simple robbery.
Van der Sloot fled to Chile and was extradited back to Peru, where he admitted the murder but said he had acted in a blind rage after finding that she had looked up information about Holloway on his laptop.
Holloway, 18, disappeared in May 2005 just before she was to fly home to Alabama from a high-school graduation trip to Aruba. She was last seen with van der Sloot and two other men, authorities said.
Van der Sloot was twice arrested but never charged because of a lack of evidence and a failure to find Holloway’s remains.
The case took a new turn in 2008 when van der Sloot admitted in a video that he had disposed of her body in Aruba. But he later denied he had anything to do with her disappearance.
Dutch prosecutors eventually dropped a case against him.
Holloway was declared dead by Alabama authorities on Thursday.
But van der Sloot may still face a day in a US court. He’s been charged in Alabama with trying to extort money from Holloway’s family in exchange for revealing where her body is.
“We’ve still got a long way to go to get justice,” said Holloway’s father, Dave.