Lima, Peru (CNN) — Joran van der Sloot was charged with murder Friday, acting “with ferocity and great cruelty” in the slaying of a 21-year-old student in Lima, Peru, according to court documents.
Van der Sloot also was charged with robbery in last week’s slaying of Stephany Flores Ramirez, according to a release from the Lima Superior Court of Justice.
Judge Juan Buendia Valenzuela ordered that van der Sloot be detained and turned over to penal authorities while awaiting trial. He was transferred to a prison Friday afternoon, America TV showed in a broadcast.
The 22-year-old Dutch citizen was considered the main suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba, where van der Sloot lived. He has been arrested twice in connection with the case but was released for lack of evidence.
Van der Sloot told authorities he attacked Flores on May 30 after she read an e-mail on his computer connected with the Holloway case, Peruvian national police said in a statement Thursday.
The court also accused three men of failing to report the crime, the release said. Brothers John Williams Aparcana Pisconte and John Oswaldo Aparcana Pisconte, along with Carlos Alberto Uribe Petril, drove van der Sloot from Peru to Chile last week, police said.
Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile on June 3 and returned to the next day to Peru, where police say he confessed to killing Flores.
Police say that in addition to savagely beating and killing Flores, who had a broken neck, he took money and bank cards from her wallet before fleeing. The robbery charge is related to that accusation.
Flores and van der Sloot went to a hotel room registered in his name after playing poker at a nearby casino, police say. Hotel surveillance video shows them entering his room together and him leaving alone more than three hours later.
In the Holloway case, van der Sloot told investigators during an interrogation that he knows the location of her body, a Peruvian police official said. But van der Sloot would not identify the location or say what happened to her the night of her disappearance, said Miguel Canlla, head of the homicide division of the Peruvian national police investigative unit.
“In the interrogation done to the Dutch citizen, he says he knew the location of the corpse of the American citizen but that he was going to explain everything to Aruban police,” Canlla said Thursday.
Canlla said Thursday that Aruban police were not currently in Peru and that he did not know whether Aruban and Peruvian investigators had been in contact.
Van der Sloot’s lawyer, Maximo Alonso Altez Navarro, has said he plans to ask the judge in the case to strike down van der Sloot’s confession because he was not properly represented when he was interrogated.
Canlla defended his department’s interrogation and said van der Sloot’s confession was acquired legally.
“The statement was done within all the requirements stipulated by Peruvian law,” he said.
Canlla said investigators were still waiting for judicial permission in order to investigate the contents of van der Sloot’s computer.
But authorities have gathered significant evidence, he said.
Bloodstains found on van der Sloot’s clothes match Flores’ blood type, he said.
“We found bloodstains on the victim’s clothes, and we found bloodstains on his clothes, which, according to biological testing, they correspond to the victim,” he said.
Police said in a statement Thursday that van der Sloot presumably attacked Flores to rob her of the money she had won gambling at a casino. The two met playing poker May 27 and had several encounters before driving together to van der Sloot’s hotel May 30.
After killing her, the police statement said, van der Sloot cleaned the room in an attempt to hide evidence of the crime, changed clothes and fled with Flores’ money, bank cards and black Jeep.
Police said the evidence against van der Sloot includes his confession, forensic data, surveillance videos and fingerprints from the crime scene and Flores’ Jeep.
Altez, van der Sloot’s lawyer, claims he has found indications that the handling of the evidence was tainted, especially the way the body was handled during the crime scene investigation.
But Canlla said there were no irregularities in the investigation.
Although van der Sloot was never charged in connection with Holloway’s disappearance in 2005, U.S. authorities have filed extortion and wire fraud charges against him.
A FBI affidavit says van der Sloot tried to extort money from Holloway’s mother.
The FBI says a representative for Holloway’s mother paid $25,000 last month for information on the whereabouts of her daughter’s remains.
Van der Sloot said he would reveal the location of the body and the circumstances surrounding Holloway’s death for $25,000 in cash and asked for $250,000 in total, the document states.
The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Birmingham, Alabama, arranged for a meeting in which van der Sloot was paid $10,000 in cash and another $15,000 in a wire transfer, the affidavit said.
The meeting took place last month, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Birmingham.
The FBI affidavit says the $15,000 was transferred to a personal bank account in the Netherlands.
In exchange for the money, the document said, van der Sloot showed the representative a house where Holloway’s remains supposedly were buried. When records and aerial photography showed that construction had not started on the house at the time of the disappearance, van der Sloot admitted that he lied, the affidavit said.
John Kelly, an attorney for Holloway’s mother, has said he is the unnamed person mentioned in the FBI affidavit as having taken the money to Aruba and met with van der Sloot.
A source with intimate knowledge of the case confirmed for CNN that Kelly is the cooperating witness named in the affidavit.
The money paid to van der Sloot came from Holloway’s mother, Kelly said.
According to the affidavit, van der Sloot said his father helped him conceal Holloway’s body and buried it under the house a few days later while van der Sloot waited in a car.
“Van der Sloot added that he had not actually seen his father inter the remains but was told and shown by his father where the body was buried,” the affidavit states.
Van der Sloot’s father, Paulus, died in February while playing tennis in Aruba. He was an attorney and judge and had been involved in his son’s defense in the Holloway case.
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