The process to extradite Joran van der Sloot from Peru to the United States to face criminal charges is underway. He faces accusations of extortion and fraud.
Peruvian judges in January sentenced van der Sloot, a Netherlands native, to 28 years in prison for the murder of Stephany Flores in 2010.
He has long been the prime suspect in the disappearance of Holloway. Authorities want to try van der Sloot on charges of extortion and wire fraud in the U.S.
According to documents obtained through Maximo Altez, van der Sloot's Peruvian attorney, a judge has approved a U.S. request for provisional detention.
This is the first step in the extradition process between Peru and the United States. The document says a formal extradition request has yet to be submitted.
The only hold-up to the extradition process is van der Sloot's appeal, which should be finished in about a month, Altez said.
"I think he will be extradited within three months," said Altez. "He will go to trial in the U.S. Once he is sentenced, he will return to Peru to finish serving his 28 years, and then go back to the States to serve whatever sentence he gets there."
Talk about piling it on (deservedly so).
In June 2010, a federal grand jury in Alabama indicted him after allegations that he tried to extort $250,000 from Holloway's mother, Beth Holloway.
Van der Sloot offered to provide what turned out to be bogus info about the whereabouts of Holloway in exchange for the money, the indictment says.
He was allegedly given $25,000, which police say he used to travel to Peru for a poker tournament. If found guilty of extortion, he could get 25 years.
Van der Sloot admitted to killing Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room. The judges gave him a sentence two years short of the 30-year maximum.
They ordered he be expelled from Peru at the end of his sentence and required him to pay about $74,500 in reparations to Flores' relatives.
Joran van der Sloot confessed to robbery in addition to murder, admitting that he stole Flores' belongings, including more than $300 in local currency, credit cards and the victim's van as a means to leave the country.
He fled to Chile and was arrested a few days later.
Another van der Sloot attorney, Jose Luis Jimenez, said his client was under special stress the day of the 2010 murder, which marked five years after Holloway, an 18-year-old from Alabama, disappeared while vacationing on Aruba.
Van der Sloot, who was among the last people seen with Natalee Holloway in 2005, was detained twice but has not been charged in the case.
Investigators have said van der Sloot killed Flores after she found something related to the Holloway case on his computer while visiting him in his hotel room. The two met while van der Sloot was in town for the poker tournament.
Judges described how Flores hit van der Sloot in the face after reading the item, leading him to elbow her in the face. Flores fainted and van der Sloot tried to strangle her, but she was still breathing, so he suffocated her with his shirt.
Van der Sloot then tried to clean the room by removing the sheets and changing his bloodied shirt, they said. He was caught in a taxi near the Chilean central coastal city of Vina del Mar, then charged with murder and later convicted.
Holloway's body has not been found, and no one has been charged in relation to the case in Aruba. Six and a half years after Holloway went missing, Alabama Probate Judge Alan King signed an order declaring her legally dead.
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