U.S. media report a Dutch murder suspect in Peru has told police he is ready to lead authorities to the body of a missing American woman.
Peruvian officials said late Thursday that 22-year-old Joran van der Sloot has agreed to tell authorities in Aruba where to find the remains of Natalie Holloway.
Holloway disappeared during a school trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba in 2005. Aruban police arrested van der Sloot twice, but he was freed each time for lack of evidence.
The chief of Peru’s criminal police told the Associated Press he does not know whether to take van der Sloot’s offer seriously because he has made dubious claims about the Holloway case in the past.
Van der Sloot is being held by judicial authorities in Peru for the murder of a young Peruvian woman whom he met in a Lima casino last month.
Police moved the Dutchman to a cell at the prosecutor’s office Thursday, dressing him in a bulletproof vest for the transfer.
Van der Sloot’s transfer came as new video was released, showing him and the Peruvian woman, Stephany Flores, 21, meeting and shaking hands at the casino. The Dutchman was in Peru for a poker tournament.
Later surveillance camera footage shows van der Sloot entering his hotel room with Flores after the two spent time at the casino, and of him leaving the room alone a few hours later.
Investigators say van der Sloot confessed to killing Flores in a fit of rage in his hotel room May 30. They say van der Sloot was upset she looked up information about his past on his laptop computer.
Van der Sloot traveled to Chile the following day, but was apprehended there and returned to Peru.
Authorities say Flores was killed five years to the day after the American woman, 18-year-old Natalee Holloway, disappeared in Aruba.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said this week it had been investigating van der Sloot for trying to extort Holloway’s family.
U.S. officials say van der Sloot offered to provide information about the location of Holloway’s remains and the circumstances of her death, in exchange for $250,000.
New documents say the Dutchman told a family representative Holloway was buried at his father’s house but that Aruban authorities determined the house had not been built at the time of the disappearance.
Some information for this report was provided by AP.