JORAN VAN DER SLOOT STORY

Dutch youth lives under shadow of Holloway case 5 years later

It was supposed to be a celebration — sun, fun and relaxation on a tropical island for recent graduates savoring the heady taste of approaching adulthood. But instead, the trip to Aruba by a group of Birmingham, Alabama, high school seniors ended in tragedy, as one of their members, 18-year-old Natalee Holloway, never returned home. Questions surrounding her fate are unanswered five years later. Now, Joran van der Sloot, the youth twice arrested and released in Holloway’s disappearance — seen by many as a privileged playboy who has displayed no remorse or concern over her whereabouts — has been named a suspect in the stabbing death of a woman in Peru, allegations that hint at a chilling pattern. Van der Sloot was arrested Thursday in Chile following a manhunt. “It’s fair to say that he’s a pretty easy guy to point a finger at, a pretty easy guy to say, ‘I’m confident suspecting him,’” said Joe Tacopina, who represents van der Sloot in the Aruba case. “And he’s earned some of that and some of it he hasn’t earned. He’s been through the wringer. He’s been detained twice in Aruba. There’s been absolutely no credible evidence in that case whatsoever … he was never charged with a crime there. Don’t forget that.” Holloway was last seen in the early hours of May 30, 2005, leaving an Oranjestad, Aruba, nightclub with van der Sloot and two other men, brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. She was visiting the island with about 100 classmates to celebrate their graduation from Mountain Brook High School in suburban Birmingham. Holloway failed to show up for her flight home the following day, and her packed bags were found in her hotel room. Van der Sloot and the Kalpoes were arrested and released in 2005 in connection with the case, then arrested a second time in 2007 after Aruba’s then-chief prosecutor Hans Mos said he had received new evidence in the case. Van der Sloot, then attending college in the Netherlands, was brought back to Aruba. But judges ruled the new evidence — which included an Internet chat the same day Holloway disappeared with one of the three youths writing that she was dead — was not enough to keep them in custody. In the years since Holloway vanished, van der Sloot has consistently denied any involvement in her disappearance, police said. “He’s just totally, totally dragged us all through hell,” Holloway’s anguished mother, Beth Twitty, has said. In 2008, a videotape surfaced on Dutch television. In it, van der Sloot tells a man he thought was a friend he had sex with Holloway on the beach after leaving the nightclub, then she “started shaking” and lost consciousness. He said he panicked when he could not resuscitate her and called a friend who had a boat. The two put Holloway in the boat, van der Sloot said, and he went home. The friend told him the next day that he had carried the body out and dumped it into the ocean. “I don’t lose a minute of sleep over it,” van der Sloot said. He later claimed the account was a lie, saying he told the man what he wanted to hear. A court ruled there was not enough evidence to re-arrest him. Aruba chief prosecutor Peter Blanken said the story was “unbelievable and not true.” But it’s been van der Sloot’s cavalier attitude toward the case that has fueled criticism, as well as conflicting statements he’s made. He told Fox News in a 2008 interview he sold Holloway to human traffickers for $10,000, then in a taped interview denied it. At the time his name first surfaced in the Holloway investigation, suspicion swirled around his parents, particularly his father, an Aruban lawyer training to be a judge. Paul van der Sloot was briefly taken into custody in 2005 on suspicion of involvement in the Holloway case. Authorities said he told his son that police had no case without a body. He was released after three days of questioning. Holloway’s parents, however, have said they met with Paul van der Sloot and continue to believe he had the answers to questions regarding their daughter. “I remember the day I met with Paul at the prison,” Dave Holloway has said. “And the thing that stuck out in my mind was I asked him all the questions, why he hid from the news media. And the last question that I had was, was he involved, and he said no. He said, ‘Dave, I can understand your position, but you’ve got to understand mine. Joran’s my son and I’ll do everything I can to protect him.’ And I believe it.” Van der Sloot’s mother, Anita, has said her son told her he was on the beach with Holloway but left her there because she wanted to stay. She has maintained her son’s innocence. However, Tacopina said van der Sloot’s relationship with his family has suffered in recent years. “Joran in the last several years has gone in a very different direction, has not behaved in a way that is acceptable to anybody,” he said, referring to van der Sloot’s being paid for versions of events in the Holloway case. “It border-lined on pathological, it really did, and quite frankly I think he hurt a lot of people.” Tacopina cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying that many times a new lead was thought to be the key to the Holloway case but didn’t pan out. In March, for instance, a Pennsylvania couple told authorities a picture they took last year while snorkeling off Aruba showed something that looked like a skeleton. Authorities called off a dive team’s search after two days, saying they found nothing that resembled the image depicted in the photograph. source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/06/03/holloway.suspect.profile/index.html?hpt=Sbin video from the confessions of Joran van der Sloot known as the killer of Nathalee Holloway and now suspect for a murder in Lima Peru.



Murder suspect Joran van der Sloot arrived Saturday at the Lima police headquarters in Peru, where he is facing charges that he killed a Peruvian woman. Van der Sloot, handcuffed and wearing a protective vest, was escorted through a news conference held by Peruvian authorities as photographers snapped photo after photo. The body of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez was found Wednesday in a Lima hotel room registered to van der Sloot, a Dutch citizen who was twice arrested and released in connection with the 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba. Flores’ body was badly beaten and investigators believe a tennis racquet in the room was used in the killing, Carlos Gonzalo, spokesman for Peru’s Interior Ministry, told CNN. Despite reports that a baseball bat was the murder weapon, Gonzalo said there was not a baseball bat in the room. The Dutch Consulate is now involved in the case and has volunteered a defense attorney for van der Sloot, according to Carlos Neyra, a spokesman for the Peruvian Investigative Police. Gonzalo said van der Sloot has asked for his mother, though authorities couldn’t confirm whether she’s coming to Lima. Surveillance video from a casino on May 30 shows Flores and van der Sloot playing cards at the same table, he said. The woman won about 5,000 soles (about $1,755), though it was not found in the room or the victim’s car, Gonzalo said. He said “they found bloodied clothes with” van der Sloot and that investigators are testing them, as well as the tennis racquet, for DNA. He added that there is no other suspect connected to Flores’ death. A hotel worker is seen in a surveillance video speaking to van der Sloot as he is leaving the hotel, Gonzalo said. When investigators questioned the workers, he told them that van der Sloot told him “don’t bother my girl.” Van der Sloot indicated that he would be returning to the room, according to the worker. The hotel workers became suspicious after no one else left the room, and eventually a foul smell came from it, Gonzalo said. It wasn’t immediately clear how much time lapsed between the conversation on video and workers noticing the smell. Chilean authorities delivered van der Sloot to their Peruvian counterparts on Friday in the border town of Santa Rosa, where he was greeted by hecklers and dozens of media personnel jostling for position to get a better picture of the Dutch citizen. The Dutch Consulate has told Peruvian authorities that it is not comfortable with the way van der Sloot has been presented to the media, Neyra said. The Peruvian Minister of the Interior is asking authorities not to talk about the case without his authorization. Paperwork showed that van der Sloot entered Chile the same day Flores’ body was found, Chilean police told CNN. He was captured in Chile on Thursday and transported to the border to be expelled, said Macarena Lopez, a spokeswoman for Interpol. The Chileans drove van der Sloot across the border to a Peruvian police station. He made a 100-foot walk from the car to the station as journalists pushed past a police line and a handful of hecklers rained loud and angry obscenities on the suspect’s head. Van der Sloot was taken inside the station for processing. From there, he was to be taken to the nearby town of Tacna and then flown to Lima. Holloway was on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba in 2005 when she disappeared. Van der Sloot was arrested twice in connection with the case but released both times. He denied any involvement and has not been charged. Van der Sloot also faces an arrest warrant on charges of extortion and wire fraud in Alabama, U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance said Thursday. The charges are unrelated to the killing of the Peruvian woman and deal with an attempt to sell details about Holloway for $250,000, Vance said. source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/06/05/peru.murder.case/index.html


Van der Sloot confesses to Peru slaying Paper reports suspect lost his temper after victim grabbed laptop LIMA, Peru – A high-ranking Peruvian government official confirmed to NBC News Monday night that Joran van der Sloot confessed to the slaying of a 21-year-old Lima woman. According to La Republica newspaper, he said that his anger exploded and he broke Stephany Flores’ neck after she grabbed his laptop without his permission, and found out that he was involved in the disappearance of an American woman. The paper quoted Van der Sloot as saying, “I did not want to do it. The girl intruded into my private life.” The Dutchman, who is also the prime suspect in U.S. teen Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba, is being held in a seventh-floor cell with a bunk bed and blanket and gets three hot meals a day, said Maj. Jose Gamboa, spokesman for the Peruvian national police. Van der Sloot is suspected in the May 30 killing — five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance — of Flores, a business student who police say he met playing poker at a casino. Police released video Saturday taken by security cameras at the hotel where van der Sloot had been staying since arriving from Colombia on May 14. It shows the two entering van der Sloot’s room together and the Dutchman leaving alone four hours later. The woman’s battered body was found on the room’s floor more than two days later, her neck broken. Van der Sloot had by then crossed into Chile, where he was arrested Thursday. In video taken of the husky 22-year-old Dutchman that was broadcast Sunday by a TV channel, Peruvian police search van der Sloot’s belongings in his presence. They pull out of his backpack a laptop, a business-card holder and 15 bills in foreign currency. Van der Sloot tells police the money includes Thai, Cambodian and Bolivian currency. He is asked for credit cards and documents and appears to say — his Spanish is very rudimentary — that they are in a hotel room back in Chile. Earlier, Peru’s chief homicide investigator, Col. Miguel Canlla, would neither confirm nor deny a Sunday report in the Lima newspaper El Comercio that van der Sloot told his Peruvian questioners he was innocent of the Flores killing. “I don’t know where that information came from,” Canlla told The Associated Press. “We are still in the investigative stage.” Chilean police said earlier that van der Sloot declared himself innocent in the Lima slaying but acknowledged having met Flores. Van der Sloot was represented by a state-appointed lawyer during Saturday’s questioning. Until he hires his own counsel, “the guys prosecuting him will decide which attorney he’s going to get,” van der Sloot’s U.S. attorney, Joseph Tacopina, told the AP. Tacopina said the suspect’s family “is trying to find competent counsel.” source:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/


Van der Sloot Linked to Women Disappearances in Colombia? (UPDATE) Under the headline, “Two women disappeared in Colombia during van der Sloot’s stay in that country,” the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reports that, before arriving in Lima on May 14, Joran van der Sloot had been in Colombia since May 6. The paper asks, “What did he do in [Colombia]?” and answers, “The same as here. Visiting casinos,” It continues, “Nevertheless, his stay coincided with the disappearance of two young Colombian women, who were also regular visitors of exclusive casinos.” During those days, the Dutchman visited casinos in Bogotá as shown by security videos of those premises. “We know that he was a guest at two hotels, and because of that our police department started the investigations” according to Colombian journalists. According to El Comercio, “during the next few hours the Peruvian authorities will begin ‘the reconstruction’ of the crime in the hotel ‘TAC’ where van der Sloot murdered [Stephany Flores], according to the police.” UPDATE: Except for the piece in El Comercio–and other publications and blogs referring to it–there are no independent confirmations of this development. The Colombian press is ominously silent on it. Will keep this updated. source:  http://themoderatevoice.com/75648/peruvian-newspaper-van-der-sloot-linked-to-women-disappearances-in-colombia/