Free Republic

A private investigator who helped build an extortion case against Joran Van der Sloot says the young Dutchman should have been arrested before he went to Peru. Bo Dietl says FBI agents recorded a meeting last month in Aruba where Van der Sloot requested money from a lawyer for the family of Natalee Holloway in exchange for information about her 2005 disappearance.

BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC) - Joran Van der Sloot, the longtime suspect in the disappearance of missing Mountain Brook teenager Natalee Holloway, has been accused of offering $250,000 in exchange for her whereabouts. In a criminal complaint filed Thursday by the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, Van der Sloot is accused of offering $250,000 to a person in Birmingham in exchange for information about the whereabouts of her remains in Aruba.

  BIRMINGHAM, AL (WSFA) - The U. S. government has charged Joran van der Sloot with attempting to receive money in exchange for revealing the location of Natalee Holloway's body.  Van der Sloot has long been suspected in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway in Aruba.Chilean police say they have detained van der Sloot in connection with the murder of a woman in Peru.Police spokeswoman Macarena Olivares says van der Sloot has been taken into custody in Chile's capital of Santiago. Five years to the date after Holloway disappeared, van der Sloot was the last person seen with a Peruvian woman found dead...