Why did Joran van der Sloot kill Stephany Flores?

Joran van der Sloot had already served prison time for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores in Peru when he confessed to killing Natalee Holloway. Here’s what happened, and how the Holloway and Flores’ cases are connected.

In a missing person’s case that captured headlines worldwide, Natalee Holloway, an American teenager disappeared in Aruba in 2005. Holloway was last seen with van der Sloot, per CNN. As a result, he’d long been a prime suspect in the case. In 2007, Aruba authorities declined to press charges against van der Sloot for lack of evidence, along with two other men spotted with Holloway the night she died. And as a result, Van der Sloot remained a free man.

By 2010, van der Sloot made his way to Peru, where he met Flores. The couple were reportedly in a hotel room together in Lima, Peru, playing video poker on van der Sloot’s laptop when an unusual instant message popped up on the screen, ABC News reports. According to van der Sloot’s confession regarding Flores’ death, based on the content of the anonymous message, Flores lost her composure and, “She struck me on the left side of my head with her fist,” van der Sloot said.

Van der Sloot was implicated in the message

Also according to Joran van der Sloot‘s confession, the message Stephany Flores saw on his laptop the day she died suggested he had something to do with Natalee Holloway’s disappearance. Based on Flores’ reaction, van der Sloot said he beat and then suffocated her after her initial attack. Prosecutors in the case also said van der Sloot may have murdered Flores to rob her. According to Van der Sloot’s defense, he was triggered by the suggestion he had something to do with Holloway’s disappearance and that he should be charged with manslaughter, instead, according to The Guardian.

Van der sloot, however, pleaded guilty to Flores’ murder in Peru and in 2012, he was sentenced to 28-years in prison for the crime, per the Associated Press. Van der Sloot was still serving that sentence when he allegedly extorted money from Natalee Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, offering to tell Beth what happened to her daughter, which he never did.

When he finally confessed to killing Holloway, van der Sloot had been extradited to the U.S. to face extortion charges. That same year, van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extortion and wire fraud and was sentenced to twenty years in prison, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release.