Van der Sloot was arrested in June 2010 in relation to Flores ' death but was not formally charged until this month . The three Peruvian drivers who allegedly helped him flee to Chile after the incident are also charged in the case . Prosecutors want five-year prison sentences for them and fines of about $ 1,800 . Before he resigned as van der Sloot 's lawyer this year , Maximo Altez told In Session that his client attacked Flores after she found something on his computer that tied him to the disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway , who vanished while on a graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba in 2005 . Van der Sloot was arrested twice but never charged in connection with Holloway 's disappearance , which remains unsolved . `` My client ... admits having murdered the victim , but not with ferocity , for profit or pleasure , nor any of the other element -LRB- s -RRB- that make up this murder , but only by violent emotion that overtook him at the time he was attacked by the victim , '' Altez said in a motion that was given to In Session
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- In a videotaped interrogation with Peruvian police broadcast Monday , Joran van der Sloot admitted that he hit , strangled and ultimately killed a 21-year-old woman last year in his Lima hotel room . Footage of the confession by the 24-year-old Dutch national was aired by America TV , a CNN affiliate , as well as other Peruvian news organizations . In it , an interrogator twice asks van der Sloot in Spanish whether he killed Stephany Flores . Both times , he answers yes . The admission is part of a lengthier conversation in which van der Sloot explains that he met the young woman in a casino in Miraflores , and then they went to his hotel room . There , the suspect said , he began hitting her after noticing that she had pulled up news about him on his computer . Wearing a hooded sweatshirt and smoking a cigarette , a seemingly calm van der Sloot answers a series of detailed questions about the case on the video . Among other things , he describes hitting the victim in the head with his elbow and putting two hands around her neck .