Overview
- Peruvian outlet La República reported that guards found van der Sloot hanging from a strip of blanket during breakfast rounds on Saturday, Dec. 14.
- Prison officials said the circumstances suggested a possible suicide attempt, and he was taken to the infirmary for treatment and placed under observation.
- The 38-year-old is serving a 28-year sentence in Peru for the 2010 murder of Stephany Flores Ramírez.
- He pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in October 2023 to extorting Natalee Holloway’s family and received a 20-year sentence to be served after his Peruvian term.
- As part of that plea, he confessed to killing Holloway in 2005, though no murder charge was brought in Aruba due to the statute of limitations; he recently told a local program he had been feeling depressed.