Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Joran van der Sloot Recants Murder Confession

After providing chilling details of Stephany Flores's final moments, Joran van der Sloot is now reportedly retracting his confession and claims he was tricked by investigators.

"I was very scared and confused during the interrogations and wanted to get away," he said during a prison cell interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. "In my blind panic, I signed everything but didn't even know what it said."

The Dutchman, 22, said he only admitted to killing Flores May 30th – five years to the day Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba – because police intimidated him and promised he would be transferred back to the Netherlands if he confessed.

Meanwhile, his mother, Anita van der Sloot, broke her silence, granting her first interview in years to the same Dutch newspaper.

"He is not a monster," Anita tells De Telegraaf. "He's sick in the head but wanted no help."

In the interview, Anita also reveals that Joran was to be committed to a psychiatric hospital just two days before he fled for Peru, where he has been charged with Flores's murder. Anita says Joran had "nothing to do with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in 2005." But, she adds, "Stephany, he may have killed."

Anita says she and her husband, who passed away of a heart attack in February, made a mistake by allowing a "traumatized" Joran the opportunity to study in the Netherlands following the Holloway case. "He already needed psychiatric help back then," she says. Since then, her son's life spiraled downward quickly.

Anita says Joran told many lies, struggled with an addiction to poker and experienced severe pychological stress following his father's death from a heart attack, for which he blamed himself. Though she stood by his side during his two arrests tied to Holloway's disappearance, she concludes: "I will not visit him in his cell ... I cannot embrace him ... I believed Joran, despite his many lies."

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