Holloway suspect sought in Peru murder

A young Dutchman previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway is being sought as a suspect in a weekend murder of a Peruvian woman, Peruvian police said Wednesday.

Criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told a news conference that Joran van der Sloot was being sought in the Sunday killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel. Guardia said the suspect fled the country the next day by land to Chile.

He said van der Sloot, 22, who was in the country for a poker tournament, appears with the young 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. that morning in a hotel room that was splattered with blood, indicating a struggle.

The killing occurred exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance in Aruba of Holloway.

Van der Sloot left Peru on Monday, Guardia said, according to immigration registry. He had been staying at the hotel since May 14 and checked out on Sunday four hours after he arrived there with the victim, the police general added.

“We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room,” Guardia said.

The head of consular affairs at the Dutch Embassy in Lima, Angela Lowe, told The Associated Press she could not comment on the case for privacy reasons.

Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the disappearance of Holloway, who was on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island. No trace of her has  been found.    

The mystery of Holloway’s disappearance has and garnered wide attention on television and in tabloid newspapers in Europe and the United States.