FBI Paid for Van der Sloot's Peru Trip

The FBI secretly gave Joran Van der Sloot $25,000, which he then used to evade them and fly to Peru, where he killed a young girl, sources tell the New York Post. Van der Sloot had tried to shake down Natalee Holloway’s mom, Beth, for the money, promising more details about Holloway’s death. The Feds decided to provide the money, in an attempt to build an extortion case against him.

An intermediary handed the dough over in Aruba on May 10. But the Feds didn’t promptly file charges, or do anything to detain Van der Sloot, so he flew to Peru four days later. Beth Holloway was furious—she’d been “told that an arrest was going to happen before he left,” the source said. The information Van der Sloot provided for the money turned out to be worthless, too; he told them Natalee’s remains were hidden in a house that hadn’t even been built when she disappeared. (More Peru stories.)