LIMA, Peru — Peruvian police say the Dutchman Joran van der Sloot has confessed to killing a young woman in his Lima hotel room last week.
Police Col. Abel Gamarra told The Associated Press early today that van der Sloot confessed during an interrogation.
Van der Sloot was also the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of an American teenager on the Caribbean island of Aruba.
Van der Sloot has played out a troubled drama on TV over the five years since he came under suspicion in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba.
By his own admission, half of what he says is a lie.
Twice arrested and released for lack of evidence in the Holloway case, van der Sloot was taken into custody again last week in connection with the slaying in Peru of Stephany Flores, a 21-year-old college student police say he met while playing poker at a Lima casino.
Her May 30 killing came five years to the day after Holloway disappeared.
Towering over the Peruvian officers flanking him, the 6-foot-3-inch Dutchman appeared sullen and moist-eyed this weekend when he was paraded before journalists in handcuffs and a bulletproof vest after he was caught and extradited from Chile.
He was much more subdued than during his earlier appearances on American and Dutch TV, where he has become something of a minor celebrity — feeding public curiosity by spinning contradictory stories about Holloway's final hours and sometimes displaying flashes of a volatile temper.
Once, at the end of a relaxed interview with Dutch crime reporter Peter de Vries, Van der Sloot threw a glass of wine in the reporter's eyes.
Aad Schalke, a Dutch private investigator who administered a polygraph to van der Sloot for a TV show about the Holloway case aired last year, said he was not surprised the 22-year-old was in trouble again.
"The moment he's not in control any more, he can be really dangerous," the detective told The Associated Press on Monday.