The chief suspect in Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba has admitted that he killed the 18-year-old and disposed of her remains, as part of a plea deal where he admitted attempting to extort money from Holloway’s mother, a US judge said Wednesday. Joran van der Sloot, 36, confessed to murdering Holloway and pleaded guilty to extortion and fraud, Judge Anna Manasco said. Van der Sloot had been extradited to Alabama for the hearing from Peru, where he is serving a 28-year sentence for murdering Stephany Flores, a 21-year-old Peruvian business student, in May 2010 in Lima. “You changed the course of our lives and you turned them upside down,” Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway, said in court, standing a few feet from Van der Sloot. “You are a killer.” The disclosure came during a plea and sentencing hearing for Van der Sloot. The Dutch national is not charged in Holloway’s death, in Oranjestad, Aruba, but was instead sentenced to 20 years in prison for his attempt to extort Beth Holloway, in 2010. Prosecutors said Van der Sloot asked for $250,000 from Beth Holloway to reveal the location of her daughter’s remains, in an encounter that was recorded during a FBI sting operation. Van der Sloot agreed to accept $25,000 to disclose the location and asked for the other $225,000 once the remains were recovered, prosecutors said. Van der Sloot said Holloway was buried in the gravel under the foundation of a house, but later admitted that was untrue, FBI Agent William K Bryan wrote in a 2010 sworn statement filed in the case. Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip with classmates. She was last seen leaving a bar with Van der Sloot. He was questioned in the disappearance but was never prosecuted. A judge declared Holloway dead, but her body has never been found. Van der Sloot moved from Aruba to Peru before he could be arrested in the 2010 extortion case. In 2012, Van der Sloot was convicted in Peru after he confessed to beating, strangling and suffocating Flores, a 21-year-old Peruvian business student, in May 2010. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison and in 2023 was sentenced to another 18 years for smuggling cocaine. The government of Peru agreed to temporarily extradite Van der Sloot so he could face trial on the extortion charge in the US. US authorities agreed to return him to Peruvian custody after his case is concluded, according to a resolution published in Peru’s federal register. Outside court, Beth confirmed that Van der Sloot had confessed to the killing. “Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder,” Holloway said, CBS News reported. “He is the killer.” “He said that after killing her on the beach in Aruba, he put her into the water and that was the last that he ever saw her,” Holloway told reporters. “I’m satisfied knowing that he did it, he did it alone and he disposed of her alone.” Van der Sloot’s confession was verified by polygraph test, Holloway said. Manasco said the plea deal required Van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalee’s disappearance. The judge said she considered Van der Sloot’s confession to Holloway’s murder and the destruction of her remains as part of the sentencing decision in the extortion case. “You have brutally murdered, in separate instances years apart, two young women who refused your sexual advances,” the judge said. As part of Van der Sloot’s plea agreement, the 20-year sentence will run concurrently with his sentence in Peru. “The wheels of justice have finally begun to turn for our family,” Beth Holloway said in June, when Van der Sloot was extradited to Alabama. “It has been a very long and painful journey.”