Natalee Holloway suspect Joran van der Sloot eyed in murder of 21-year-old in Peru

The prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of American teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba is now wanted by cops in Peru for viciously murdering a 21-year-old woman exactly five years to the day that Holloway went missing.

The prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of American teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba is now wanted by cops in Peru for viciously murdering a 21-year-old woman — exactly five years to the day that Holloway went missing.

Joran van der Sloot, 22, is believed to have brutally stabbed Stephany Flores Ramirez in his Lima hotel room and then rolled her corpse into a blanket before checking out Sunday.

Van der Sloot fled Peru on a bus Monday, slipping into the neighboring South American nation of Chile, authorities said.

The blood-splattered body of Flores — the daughter of a former Peru presidential candidate — was discovered in van der Sloot’s hotel room only today.

An arrest warrant for the suspect, a Dutch national, has been issued by the international police agency Interpol. Chilean police today were scouring border areas, hotels, backpacker hostels and other places for him.

“This is my daughter’s assassin,” said Flores’ dad, Ricardo Flores, a prominent circus operator, politician and former race-car driver, according to CBS News.

“We have all the evidence to show that the killer is this man,” Flores, 48, told CNN en Espanol.

But van der Sloot’s New York lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, cautioned people not to jump to conclusions.

“Joran has a bulls-eye on his back, and any time there is any foul play that could be connected to Joran, he’s an automatic suspect,” Tacopina said. “It doesn’t mean he killed her.”

Tacopina said van der Sloot has not contacted him in the past several days. He added that he did not know where the suspect is.

Flores’ murder comes five years after Holloway, a blond, 18-year-old, Alabama high-school student, disappeared on the Caribbean island after last being seen with van der Sloot outside a nightclub — in frighteningly similar circumstances to those involving the pretty, brunette, Peruvian woman.

Van der Sloot never was charged in Holloway’s disappearance, despite being arrested and detained twice by authorities in Aruba.

It looks like he won’t be so lucky in the case of Flores.

The head of the criminal investigation unit of the Lima police, Cesar Guardia Vasquez, told reporters there is “incriminating evidence” linking van der Sloot to Flores’ savage murder.

Van der Sloot, who has gallivanted around the world since Holloway’s disappearance, flew to Peru from Colombia to play in a poker tournament at the Atlantic City Casino in Lima. It’s unclear if he was with any friends at the time.

He checked into the Milaflores Hotel Tac in Lima on May 14.

Guaria said police have surveillance video that shows van der Sloot and Flores together in the casino Saturday night.

Flores’ dad said he did not think his daughter previously knew van der Sloot and speculated that they began chatting in English, a language they both knew, when they met, according to CNN.

Flores left the casino to drop off some girlfriends at 2:35 a.m. Sunday but then apparently returned to the casino.

Police said a guest and a worker at the Miraflores Hotel Tac saw van der Sloot and Flores entering his room there at about 5 a.m. Sunday.

Van der Sloot then checked out of the hotel alone around 9 a.m., four hours after arriving there with Flores, Guardia said.

It was not clear why it took three days for Flores’ body to be discovered. Her corpse, which was clothed, was lying face down on the room’s floor, with abrasions on her face and body and signs of trauma, according to Guardia, who said officials are awaiting autopsy results.

Flores’ father told reporters that authorities believe she was slain at about 8 a.m. Sunday in Van Der Sloot’s room.

Ricardo Flores also said police found Stephany Flores’ car about 50 blocks from the Milaflores Hotel, and that inside that vehicle were pills similar to ones used in cases of date rape, CNN reported.

Ramirez’s murder occurred exactly five years to the day Holloway disappeared May 30, 2005, while she was on a high-school graduation trip to Aruba.

Holloway was last seen with then-17-year-old Van Der Sloot and two pals, brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, outside a night club on the island nation, which is part of the Netherlands.

The ensuing mystery as to what happened to Holloway generated a media firestorm. Her body as never been found.

Van Der Sloot was arrested in connection with her disappearance twice — in June 2005, and again in 2007. But he was never charged.

Still, the sensational case has continued to generate headlines over the years, particularly over reports that van der Sloot has occasionally revealed details about what actually happened to Holloway that night.

In 2008, a Dutch journalist claimed van der Sloot had confessed to murdering her and then dumping her body in the sea. Two years later, a Dutch newspaper reported that van der Sloot had said Holloway fell off a balcony while drunk.

Van der Sloot’s prominent lawyer dad, Paulus, dropped dead while playing tennis in Aruba at the age of 57 in February.

Today, spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor’s office said van der Sloot remains the main suspect in Holloway’s disappearance.

“What’s happening now is incredible,” said the spokeswoman, Ann Angela, about the South American police search for van der Sloot.

“At the moment, we don’t have anything to do with it, but we are following the case with great interest, and if Peruvian authorities would need us, we are here.”

Holloway’s mother, Elizabeth Twitty, had no comment on the new case, according to her spokeswoman, Sunny Tillman.

Holloway’s dad, Dave Holloway, did not return a call seeking comment.

But the co-author of a book that Dave Holloway wrote about his daughter’s case yesterday lashed out at van der Sloot.

“I’m not surprised by this new development. I never doubted that Joran was capable of hurting women,” said R. Stephanie Good, co-author of “Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise.”

“I really hope that he gets what’s coming to him,” Good said. “It’s long overdue.”

Kathy Drenga, a Connecticut phlebotomist and EMT who has traveled to Aruba to research the Holloway case and who maintained a Web site that tracked the search for her body, said of van der Sloot, “I really hope they catch him.”

“I’d really like to see him pay,” said Drenga.

“His father’s dead now . . . he was the one person who could save Joran from all the bad things he did, and now he’s not there.”

But van der Sloot’s lawyer, Tacopina, said his client has been unfairly treated in the past and suggested that might be going on now with Flores’ murder.

“We have to be wary of any stories that come out about Joran van der Sloot,” Tacopina told The Post. “So many have been proved inaccurate or out-and-out completely fabricated.”

“There are a lot of facts that have to be fleshed out before we can jump to the ‘I knew it’ conclusion,” the lawyer said.

Tacopina said he last heard from Van Der Sloot about a month ago in a phone call he made to the lawyer’s Manhattan office.

“He was really trying to get his life back on track,” Tacopina said. “He called to say he was fine.”

Additional reporting by Ada Calhoun, Philip Messing, Jeane MacIntosh and Post Wire Services

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