The top suspect in the disappearance of an American teenager seven years ago has just confessed to murdering a 21-year-old woman in Peru five years to the day after the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. Joran van der Sloot offered a "sincere confession" to killing Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel room on May 30, 2010. But from the MSNBC report we read, it didn't sound like he fully agreed with the prosecutors' account: "The 24-year-old Dutch citizen had repeatedly shaken his head as the prosecutor described for the judges how van der Sloot allegedly 'brutally' beat and strangled the victim in his Lima hotel room, intending to rob her." But the "sincere confession," a Peruvian legal term, usually means a shorter prison sentence than a straight guilty plea, MSNBC reported. As for the Holloway case, Van der Sloot was arrested but never charged, and now that he's going to prison in Peru, it doesn't sound like he'll be available for any further investigation any time soon.

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Adam Martin