Report: Murder suspect Van der Sloot boasts of receiving marriage proposals in cell

Report: Van der Sloot boasts of marriage offers

AMSTERDAM — Murder suspect Joran van der Sloot is talking plenty — just not to the judge investigating his case.

The 22-year-old Dutchman is quoted in an interview published Tuesday as boasting that he has received several marriage offers from women while in his jail cell in Lima, Peru, where he is awaiting trial for allegedly killing 21-year-old Peruvian Stephany Flores.

“One of them even wants me to get her pregnant,” De Telegraaf newspaper quoted Van der Sloot as saying.

Van der Sloot has been charged with the premeditated murder of Flores in his hotel room in Lima, Peru — 5 years to the day after the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, a resort island just north of Venezuela. He is the main suspect in Holloway’s disappearance, but her body has never been found and he has never been charged.

He met both women in casinos and is the last person known to have seen them alive.

Talking to Peruvian police, Van der Sloot admitted killing Flores, but later said he only confessed because he was intimidated and was promised he would be extradited to the Netherlands.

He faces a sentence of 15 to 35 years, if convicted.

A self-avowed liar, Van der Sloot also has admitted and retracted several confessions of involvement in Holloway’s disappearance.

Superior Court Judge Carlos Morales visited Van der Sloot on Monday at the maximum-security prison in eastern Lima where he is being held, but Van der Sloot refused to answer questions, on instruction from his lawyer.

The lawyer, Maximo Altez, contends Van der Sloot’s confession in the Flores case isn’t valid because the defense lawyer present when Van der Sloot made it was state-appointed.

According to a transcript of the confession, Van der Sloot elbowed Flores in the nose, strangled her with both hands, threw her to the floor, took off his bloodied shirt and asphyxiated her.

De Telegraaf said Tuesday that Van der Sloot expressed no remorse at Flores’ death during the 20-minute interview its reporter conducted with him in his cell. The paper said Van der Sloot claimed to have been “tricked” and that he would “explain later how it all happened.”

However, the paper said Van der Sloot would not answer direct questions about whether he killed Flores.

“It’s my own fault I’m here” he was quoted saying, adding that he expected to spend two years in jail before his trial.

Van der Sloot is being held in a segregated block of Castro Castro prison, having asked to be separated from the main prison population out of fear for his life.

For now he has his own 6½-by-11½-foot (2-by-3.5-meter) cell, which is adjacent to that of a reputed Colombian hit man, with whom he shares a television set.

Van der Sloot’s mother Anita has said her son suffers from mental problems. She says she doesn’t believe he killed Holloway, but if he killed Flores he would have to face his punishment and she wouldn’t visit him in jail.

The suspect was quoted by the paper Tuesday as saying he understood his mother’s position.

“I have hurt her and too many other people,” De Telegraaf quoted him saying. “If only I had listened to her.”

Associated Press Writer Carla Salazar in Lima contributed to this report.