LIMA, Peru — Joran van der Sloot was sentenced to serve 28 years in a Peruvian prison Friday for the 2010 murder of a young woman in his Lima hotel room.
Van der Sloot also is considered the chief suspect in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway on the Caribbean island of Aruba in 2005. Coincidentally, his sentencing by a three-judge panel in Lima came one day after Holloway was declared legally dead in Alabama.
The nearly two-hour hearing, which included graphic details of the death of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, ended with the announcement that van der Sloot must serve 28 years in prison and pay 200,000 Peruvian soles ($74,400) to her family.
On Wednesday, van der Sloot pleaded guilty in the same Lima courtroom to killing Flores, saying “I am truly sorry for what I have done. I feel very bad.”
She was found beaten and strangled in his Lima hotel room five years to the day from Holloway’s disappearance. In an initial confession he later said was coerced, van der Sloot said he killed her in a burst of rage after she accessed files about Holloway on his computer.
Wearing blue jeans and a bright green T-shirt, van der Sloot, a 24-year-old Dutch national, sat waiting for the judges with his hands folded, rolling his head and shifting from side to side. At one point he closed his eyes as if falling asleep.
Before pronouncing the sentence, a lengthy recap of events before and after Flores’ death was read aloud and translated into Dutch as van der Sloot stood and listened, fidgeting but showing no reaction.
Later he asked for a glass of water and permission to sit down, when his eyes briefly closed again.
On Thursday, a judge in Birmingham, Ala., declared Holloway legally dead at the request of her father. Her body never has been found.
Holloway was in Aruba, where van der Sloot then lived, on a high school trip when she disappeared on May 30, 2005, the day she was scheduled to fly home.
Van der Sloot, one of those last seen with her, was twice arrested in the case and spent three months in jail but was never formally charged..