A Dutch newspaper that interviewed Joran van der Sloot in his prison cell in Lima, Peru, said yesterday he has retracted his confession to the killing of a young woman there.
De Telegraaf said the 22-year-old Dutchman claims he only signed papers admitting killing Stephany Flores because he was intimidated by police and had been promised he would be transferred to the Netherlands if he confessed.
“I was very scared and confused during the interrogations and wanted to get away,” the paper quoted him as saying. “In my blind panic, I signed everything, but didn’t even know what it said.”
Van der Sloot is the suspect in Flores’ May 30 killing in a Lima hotel, exactly five years after the still unsolved disappearance of US teen Natalee Holloway on Aruba.
If convicted of killing Flores, he faces from 15 to 35 years in prison in Peru.
Prosecutors allege Van der Sloot killed Flores in his hotel room, where her body was found, with “ferocity and great cruelty.” According to a transcript of the confession, he elbowed the young woman in the nose, strangled her with both hands, threw her to the floor, took off his bloodied shirt and asphyxiated her.
The newspaper said he now says that’s not true.
“I was tricked,” the paper quoted Van der Sloot as saying of Flores’ killing. “I’ll explain later how it all happened.”
He is scheduled to be interviewed by a judge in Lima this week.
A self-avowed compulsive liar, Van der Sloot has several times given and retracted admissions of involvement in Holloway’s disappearance.
His mother Anita van der Sloot said in an interview published by the same newspaper on its Web site on Sunday that Van der Sloot suffers from mental problems.
She said she doesn’t believe he had killed Holloway, but if he killed Flores “he’ll have to pay the price” and she didn’t plan to visit him in jail.
“My son is sick in his head,” De Telegraaf quoted her as saying.
She told the paper her son disappeared in the middle of last month, two days before he was scheduled to travel to the Netherlands for treatment in a mental institution. He left a note saying he was going to Peru, she said.
She said his mental health had deteriorated steadily since Holloway disappeared. She attributed his decline in part to media scrutiny. She told the paper he had called her several days before Flores’ death, sounding paranoid.
“He said he was being followed. He had been arrested together with a girl and robbed. He was not making sense,” the paper quoted her as saying. “I can’t cry for Joran like I did for Paul. I hope that he gets psychological help.”
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