Van der Sloot Denies Killing Peruvian Woman, Cops Say

(June 5) -- Eerie coincidences are coming to light as authorities compile their case against Joran van der Sloot, the longtime suspect in Natalee Holloway's disappearance, who's now expected to be charged soon in the killing of another young woman in Peru.

The Alabama 18-year-old vanished five years ago on Memorial Day weekend while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba. That's exactly five years to the day before the slaying of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, who was found dead last weekend in a Lima hotel room registered to van der Sloot.

"We are probably talking about a serial killer," Peru's interior minister, Octavio Salazar, told reporters, according to the New York Daily News.

The 22-year-old Dutchman was captured in neighboring Chile and delivered to Peru yesterday to face possible charges. Authorities say security cameras spotted him and Flores walking together in a hotel and casino where a poker tournament was being held. Later the woman's body was found fully clothed but battered and bruised, with a broken neck, in van der Sloot's hotel room.

Investigators also found a baseball bat in the room, and two law enforcement sources told CNN that it was the suspected murder weapon.

Van der Sloot told Chilean police that he did not kill Flores but said "he met her, and at some point, they went to a casino," Chilean police spokesman Fernando Ovalle told The Associated Press.

A journalist who happened to be there covering the Latin America Poker Tour wrote a blog for the San Francisco Chronicle describing the scene. Tournament officials told him van der Sloot wasn't playing in the poker tournament, but was instead a "railbird," a slang poker term referring to someone who stands elbow-to-elbow with other spectators.

Van der Sloot was twice arrested and then released in Holloway's case. He's denied any involvement in her disappearance as well, and was never charged. But he's accused of trying to sell information about the case -- including perhaps the location of Holloway's body -- for $250,000. A warrant is out for his arrest in Alabama on charges of extortion and wire fraud.

Van der Sloot's former attorney, Joseph Tacopina, told CNN it was too early to tell whether any of these cases are related. "I just think we need to take a step back before we get to the 'I told you so' stage, and let's see what the evidence is here," he said.

Tacopina said he's no longer representing van der Sloot and that the young man no longer has a good relationship with his family.

His mother is "shocked" by the latest allegations against her son, according to her lawyer, Bert de Rooij, who spoke to Dutch media. He said Anita van der Sloot spoke to her son by telephone on Thursday evening, and that Joran had "certainly not" admitted to murdering Flores.

De Rooij said he's been trying to reach van der Sloot by e-mail. "I am advising him to find a lawyer who knows something about laws affecting foreigners in South America," he said.

On Saturday, van der Sloot arrived at Lima's criminal police headquarters in a brown Interpol SUV and was escorted across an auditorium of shouting, shutter-snapping journalists three times. The AP said he stared straight ahead and didn't respond to reporters' questions or make eye contact.

Meanwhile the families of Holloway and Flores are speaking out.

Flores' father, Ricardo Flores, a former race car driver, said he doesn't want the death penalty for van der Sloot, only justice. In Peru, murder carries a prison sentence of up to 35 years.

"She was absolutely innocent ... good and without any malice," Flores told the AP.

"My daughter resisted," he said. "There was violence, resistance to being raped -- and there's where she was murdered."

The Holloway family has also been closely following the Flores murder, which has revived horrible memories from their own daughter's disappearance five years ago. The teen's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, is said to be "overwhelmed" at news of another case involving van der Sloot.

"She's just really very disturbed," a close friend, Carol Standifer, told the CBS "Early Show" on Friday. "Every Memorial Day weekend, it's hard for her and it's hard for all of us who went through this because it brings it back, and we remember what happened."

Natalee's stepfather, "Jug" Twitty, said he hopes the investigation into the Flores murder in Peru is conducted better than his daughter's was in Aruba.

"We could have had the answers in the first couple of days down there had they done their job right," he told CBS. "And this should have never happened what's happened in Peru."