Joran van der Sloot Indicted for Extortion

Joran van der Sloot's legal troubles grew Wednesday after a federal grand jury in Alabama indicted the Dutchman on charges he tried to extort more than a quarter of a million dollars from Natalee Holloway's family.

U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said Van der Sloot, 22, who is in a Peruvian prison after authorities charged him with the murder of a 21-year-old business student, faces one count of wire fraud and one count of extortion.

He allegedly solicited money from Holloway's mother in exchange for information about the teenager's death and whereabouts of her remains. Van der Sloot was twice arrested but never charged in the disappearance of Holloway, an Alabama high school student who never returned from a graduation trip in 2005.

Joran van der Sloot's Confession to Stand

Joran van der Sloot's request to retract his confession to last month's murder of Peruvian business student Stephany Flores has been termed "baseless" – and has been denied by a court in Lima, say reports.

The attorney for the Dutch murder suspect, 22, had claimed that his client's statement confessing to the brutal beating of Flores was made under duress and should be invalidated, as it allegedly infringed upon his constitutional rights. The lawyer said he would help police re-interview van der Sloot.

The attorney says he will appeal Friday's decision to let the confession stand.

On his own behalf, van der Sloot said from his cell at the maximum-security Miguel Castro Castro prison to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, "I was very scared and confused during the interrogations and wanted to get away. In my blind panic, I signed everything but didn't even know what it said."

However, police say their questioning of van der Sloot took place in accordance with established standards, in the presence of a prosecutor and a government-appointed attorney.

While he awaits his trial – which is expected to begin in anywhere between three to 12 months, say experts – van der Sloot stands charged with first-degree murder, along with aggravated robbery for allegedly taking more than $10,000 in gambling money from Flores.

In addition, van der Sloot still remains a person of interest in the 2005 disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway in Aruba.

Joran van der Sloot Accuses Police of Misconduct

Joran van der Sloot has filed a complaint of misconduct against Peruvian police officials, claiming he was wrongfully arrested and not given a translator when he was questioned for the murder of Stephany Flores, according to local reports.

In the complaint, the Dutch national, 22, says his June 3 arrest in Chile was executed without a proper warrant. He also claims he was confused during the interrogation because authorities did not provide an official translator, El Comercio reports.

"All this with the intention of pressuring me to accuse me of homicide," he said, according to a document obtained by Peruvian news program 24 Hours.

Van der Sloot recently retracted his confession, telling a Dutch newspaper he was "very scared and confused during the interrogations."

During the prison cell interview, he claims he only admitted to killing Flores, a business student, because police intimidated him and promised he would be transferred back to the Netherlands.

According to police, Flores was murdered on May 30 – five years to the day U.S. teen Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba. Van der Sloot was arrested twice but never charged in that case.

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."

Report: Joran Van der Sloot Recounts Chilling Moments After Murder

After apparently breaking her neck and killing Stephany Flores in his hotel room, Joran Van der Sloot consumed a breakfast of coffee and cookies while looking at her battered body and thinking of ways he could dispose of it, according to Peruvian media reports.

"I was going to use one of my suitcases to take her out of the hotel, but I didn't do it because I was afraid someone [would] stop me carrying my luggage without paying," said Van der Sloot, who told interrogators he had not paid for his final three nights in a Lima, Peru, hotel, according to a report in the Peruvian paper La Republica citing a source who recounted Van der Sloot's alleged confession.

Before leaving the hotel room for good early on May 30 – about four hours after video surveillance caught him and Flores entering together – Van der Sloot took a shower, shaved and changed his clothes. At some point during those hours, he told police, he also took three amphetamine pills, the report says.

Flores's lifeless body was discovered three days later, on June 2, by a hotel employee. Van der Sloot was arrested the next day in Chile and later returned to Peru, where he faces a likely murder charge that could be filed this week.Details of Extortion Case

Meanwhile, a source tells PEOPLE the FBI provided the $25,000 used to entangle Van der Sloot in an extortion attempt against the family of Natalee Holloway, whose unsolved disappearance in Aruba five years earlier has long been tied to Van der Sloot.

However, the FBI denies that the agency provided the funds for the sting operation. A joint statement from United States Attorney Joyce White Vance and FBI Special Agent Patrick Maley released Thursday says, "The funds involved were private funds."

The statement says Van der Sloot offered to provide information to an unnamed individual regarding the location of Natalee Holloway's remains in exchange for $250,000.

After Van der Sloot’s claim regarding the location of Natalee's remains proved false, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Birmingham, Ala., filed charges against him alleging both extortion and wire fraud.

The sting – with $10,000 handed to van der Sloot on May 10, four days before he arrived in Peru, and another $15,000 wired to a bank in The Netherlands – involved John Q. Kelly, an attorney for Natalee's mother Beth Holloway, who sat down in Aruba with Van der Sloot to turn over the cash in exchange for promised details on Natalee’s death and the whereabouts of her remains, a source has stated.

Four days after the cash exchange, Van der Sloot entered Peru, apparently to compete in a poker tournament. There, on May 30, he allegedly killed Flores in his hotel room after she encountered news about his link to the Holloway case on his laptop computer, according to media reports of his confession.

As for why Van der Sloot was not arrested before he left Aruba, the statement from the FBI says, "Despite having been in motion for several weeks at the time of Miss Flores's death, it was not sufficiently developed to bring charges prior to the time Van der Sloot left Aruba."

Peggy Sanford, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Birmingham, Alabama, told People Magazine that authorities "will still pursue extradition," of Van der Sloot. "It is premature to speculate exactly how that may proceed in light of the case in Peru."

Legal experts, however, told People Magazine the Peru murder takes precedence over both the extortion case and any movement in the stalled Aruba investigation into Natalee's disappearance.

"Peru's got the body, Peru has the only right to prosecute him right now, and the U.S. and Aruba are way down the list," says high-profile criminal attorney Roy Black, who is not involved in the case.

Was Peruvian Woman Murdered for Finding Joran Van Der Sloot's Secrets?

Joran Van der Sloot attacked Stephany Flores after she found out he was linked to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, according to media reports.

The Peruvian newspaper La Republica said the Dutchman, 22, flew into a rage when Flores, 21, opened his laptop and saw material about the 2005 case of the Alabama teen.

Flores was found dead last Wednesday. Van der Sloot reportedly confessed to her murder on Monday.

According to the newspaper, Van der Sloot said in his confession: "I did not want to do it. The girl intruded into my private life. She had no right. I went to her, and I hit her. She was scared. We argued, and she tried to escape. I grabbed her by the neck and hit her."

If true, the reports would focus even more attention on Van der Sloot's possible involvement in Holloway's disappearance five years ago in Aruba. Van der Sloot was arrested and charged twice in the case but released both times.

Van der Sloot appeared to confess to the Holloway crime in 2008 on a secretly recorded video, allegedly telling a friend he had disposed of her body. He later said he had lied on the recording, which had been arranged by a Dutch crime reporter.

SoFLa Local: Could Jeffrey Dahmer Have Killed John Walsh's Son, Adam?

Startling new evidence is mounting in a nearly 30-year-old case that may now link one of America's most infamous murderers to a high-profile, innocent, young victim.

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer – who tortured and murdered 17 men and boys, most of them in Milwaukee, between 1987 and 1991 – could have had some alarming ties to the 1981 kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, son of America's Most Wanted host John Walsh, according to a investigation by the Miami Herald.

Recent findings have uncovered witnesses who claim to have seen Dahmer with Adam on July 27, 1981, at the Hollywood, Florida, mall where the boy was abducted. At the time, Dahmer, recently discharged from the Army, was living in Miami Beach, some 20 miles away. One witness says that on that fateful day he saw Dahmer force a crying boy into the back of a blue van. Still others say Dahmer had access to a blue van fitting an early description of the getaway vehicle.

On August 10, 1981, Adam's severed head was found approximately 120 miles north of the mall in a canal in Vero Beach. The rest of his remains were never recovered.

When detectives questioned Dahmer about the boy's murder, his response was a terse, "Nothing to do with it," and officials took him at his word, the Herald reports.

Not long after his son's death, a grieving John Walsh helped to create legislation that led to the Missing Children Act of 1982 and the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1984.

Deathbed Confession

In December 2008, police named Ottis Toole, who had died of liver failure in prison in 1996, as Adam's killer. On his deathbed Toole had reportedly confessed to his niece that he had killed and decapitated Adam Walsh.

However, Toole had claimed credit for the boy's murder more than once before, only to recant each time. As was also discovered, over the years Toole had implicated himself in more than 200 other homicides, yet evidence would later reveal that he did not commit most of them.

In 1991, Dahmer was arrested on charges involving decapitation, necrophilia and cannibalism. He confessed to the murders of the 11 victims whose severed heads were found in his Milwaukee apartment and later to six others that could have dated back as far as 1978. Dahmer, 34, was killed in prison in 1994.

Anna Nicole Smith was Investigated for Murder

A new wrinkle in the life of Anna Nicole Smith has come to life. It turns out that in 2000 and 2001, the FBI spent time investigating the former Playboy Playmate for taking part in a plot to kill her late husband's son, though ultimately dropped the case for lack of evidence.

According to files obtained by the Associated Press, the feds were looking into a murder-for-hire plot against E. Pierce Marshall, the son of the Smith's billionaire tycoon husband, J. Howard Marshall II.

Smith and Marshall were in the middle of a sometimes vicious battle over who would inherit the oil man's millions of dollars. Smith met the elderly man while working as a stripper, and married him shortly after. He was 89, she was 26. He died just over a year after their marriage.

According to files, Smith was questioned in 2000, and immediately broke down crying, denying all involvement. However, files also show that police raided her home at some point, and recovered a handgun, steel knife, and an orange and black "Dr. Seuss" hat.

The investigation came to end sometime in 2001, after prosecutors determined there was "insufficient evidence to establish that there was a murder-for-hire plot by Ms. Smith to kill Pierce Marshall." E. Pierce Marshall passed away in 2006 at the age of 67. Anna Nicole Smith passed away from a suspected drug overdose in South Florida a little over one year later.

Mother and Brother of Jennifer Hudson Are Killed in Shooting

The publicist for Jennifer Hudson has confirmed on Friday that the singer's mother and brother are dead after a fatal shooting in Chicago.

"We can confirm that there is an ongoing investigation concerning the deaths of Jennifer Hudson's mother, Darnell Donerson, and her brother, Jason Hudson," Hudson's personal publicist, Lisa Kasteler, said in a statement. "No further comment will be made and the family has asked that their privacy be respected at this difficult time."

TMZ first reported that law enforcement sources and neighbors said that Hudson's mother and brother were the victims of a double shooting.

Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said the deaths appeared to be the result of domestic abuse.

Deputy Chief Joseph Patterson said a family member entered the home around 3 p.m. Friday, found a woman shot on the living room floor and left to notify authorities. Responding officers found a man shot in the bedroom, Patterson said. There was no sign of forced entry.

Police tape blocked access to the large, white house, where a crowd gathered outside.

Authorities issued an Amber Alert for 7-year-old Julian King, and were seeking a 1994 white Chevrolet Suburban. The child was the grandson of the female victim, Patterson said.

The alert said the child was possibly abducted, and could be accompanied by a man named William Balfour — considered armed and dangerous — who was a suspect in the double homicide investigation. Records with the Illinois Department of Corrections show Balfour, 27, who has not been charged with a crime, is on parole and spent nearly seven years in prison for attempted murder, vehicular hijacking and possessing a stolen vehicle.

The two could also be in a teal or green Chrysler Concord with a temporary license plate, a left front headlight hanging out and scratches on the left side of the vehicle, police said.

The tragedy comes as Hudson, who grew up in Chicago, continues to reach new heights in her career. Her song "Spotlight" is No. 1 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop charts and her recently released, self-tiled album debut and has been a top seller. She was featured in this year's blockbuster "Sex and the City" and is also starring in hit movie "The Secret Life of Bees."

She won an Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2007 for her role in "Dreamgirls." In an interview last year with Vogue, Hudson credited her mother with encouraging her to audition for "American Idol," which launched her career.

The singer, whose father died when she was a teenager, described herself as very close to her family. In a recent AP interview she said her family, which includes older siblings Julia and Jason, helped keep her grounded.

"My faith in God and my family, they're very realistic and very normal, they're not into the whole limelight kind of thing, so when I go home to Chicago that's just another place that's home," she said. "I stand in line with everybody else, or, when I go home to my mom I'm just Jennifer, (so she says), 'You get up and you take care of your own stuff.' And I love that; I don't like when people tell you everything you want to hear, I want to hear the truth, you know what I mean."

Hudson recently announced her engagement to David Otunga, best known for his stint on VH1's reality show "I Love New York."

Hudson's representatives would not disclose her whereabouts Friday. She had been scheduled to appear Monday in Los Angeles to collect an ensemble cast honor at the Hollywood Awards for "The Secret Life of Bees" with co-stars including Alicia Keys, Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning.