Natalee Holloway Suspect Joran Van Der Sloot Claims There's a Bounty on His Head in Prison: 'I Don't Want to Die'

Longtime suspect in 2005 Natalee Holloway disappearance says 2010 murder victim's father wants him dead

Photo: Karel Navarro/AP

In a letter to the woman he married while behind bars, convicted murderer Joran van der Sloot – the longtime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway – expresses fear for his life in a Peruvian prison and claims there’s a bounty on his head.

“I don’t want to die,” Van der Sloot wrote to his wife, Leydi Figueroa, according to a handwritten letter in Spanish that she shared with Fox News Latino.

In May 2005, Van der Sloot was unknowingly on the run from a Holloway-related sting in Aruba when he met and murdered Stephany Flores Ramirez, 21, in his Lima hotel room. Van der Sloot alleges that Flores’ father, Ricardo, is offering $10,000 to anyone who kills him inside the maximum-security Challapalca prison in the Andes mountains.

Ricardo Flores denied the charge in a statement to Fox News Latino: “Joran is a pathological liar who will say anything to better his condition and get what he wants. Now that he can’t get his way, he will say or do anything to get attention and get transferred to an easier location.”

Van der Sloot wrote: “The inmates of Challapalca believe if they kill me, the maximum security prison will be shut down.”

“I beg authorities to take action on my case before it’s too late and blood is spilled, with all due respect,” his letter states.

The murder of Flores occurred five years to the day from when Van der Sloot was seen on May 30, 2005, leaving a bar with Holloway, 18, of Mountain Brook, Alabama. Holloway was on a high school graduation trip to Aruba at the time, and has not been seen since. She has since legally been declared dead.

Van der Sloot’s ever-shifting tales of his role in Holloway’s disappearance led Holloway’s mother, Beth, to front $25,000 in the May 2010 sting that led to a federal extortion charge in the U.S. against Van der Sloot for lying about the location of Holloway’s remains. Before charges were brought and he could be arrested, however, Van der Sloot used that money to travel to Peru, where he encountered Flores in a casino and later killed her.

He is serving a 28-year sentence for Flores’ murder. He met wife Figueroa while in jail, and the two have a daughter, now 11 months old.

Figueroa says her husband now is writing a book about his life, and plans a chapter “dedicated” to Natalee Holloway.

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