Holloway Suspect Sought in Peru Slaying

A Dutch man who was questioned in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway on the Carribean island of Aruba is a suspect in the slaying of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman, Peruvian police said Wednesday.

Chief of detectives Col. Miguel Canlla said police are seeking Joran van der Sloot, 22, in the Sunday killing of 21-year-old Stephany Tatiana Flores in a Lima hotel.

El Comercio newspaper in Lima reported that the girl was stabbed, according to police. She is the daughter of a businessman and race car driver, Ricardo Flores.

The girl's father, Ricardo Flores, said van der Sloot appears with her in video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday.

Police say they are seeking to confirm van der Sloot's identity with the Dutch Embassy.

Police told El Comercio that she had been seen going out in recent days with van der Sloot. He reportedly arrived in Peru on May 14 from Colombia and left the country on Monday bound for Chile, according to RPP.com in Peru, citing immigration officials. Interpol has been notified to assist in the search. Canlla says Peru is asking Chilean authorities for help in the case.

The victim's body was found in a hotel room in the República de Panamá Avenue in the Miraflores district.

Holloway, 18, of Mountain Brook, Ala., was last seen in public leaving a bar on the Carribean island of Aruba with van der Sloot and two Surinamese brothers — Deepak and Satish Kalpoe — hours before she was due to board a flight home from a school trip. No trace of her has ever been found and no one has been charged with the crime.

Earlier this year, it was reported that van der Sloot confessed to dumping Holloway's body in a sit-down interview with a television journalist, according to a Dutch tabloid newspaper and Aruba's chief prosecutor.

However, the chief prosecutor Peter Blanken told NBC News in February that the suspect's story was "very unbelievable," and no charges followed the confession.

"The locations, names and times he gave just did not make sense," Blanken told NBC News.

De Telegraaf quoted Blanken as saying that van der Sloot's statement was "held together by lies and fantasy."

The interview was not aired by German broadcaster RTL because of doubts about whether van der Sloot was telling the truth, Blanken added.

Van der Sloot claimed that Holloway had died accidentally and insisted that he did not kill her, Blanken said.

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