WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI thought it was closing in on Joran Van der Sloot in the notorious Natalee Holloway missing-teenager case, and he was paid $25,000 in a sting operation. But when the agency delayed his arrest to help build a murder case, he took the money and headed for Peru, where authorities say he now has confessed to killing a different young woman.

The investigation of van der Sloot in the Alabama teenager’s case simply was not far enough along to have him arrested, the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Birmingham said Wednesday.

The federal criminal complaint in that case, filed in Birmingham, alleged an arrangement to pay the money for disclosing the location of Holloway’s body. According to a sworn statement, van der Sloot got a partial payment of $15,000 wired to a Netherlands bank soon after, but the complaint does not say where the money came from.