CSNbbs

Holloway suspect sought in Peru murder

Published - Jun 02 2010 05:24PM EST

By FRANKLIN BRICENO - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Pedro Famous Diaz)
In this Friday, Dec. 7, 2007 file photo Joran van der Sloot, sits in a car after being released released from custody as a suspect in the disappearance of American tourist Natalee Holloway near Oranjestad, Aruba. Peruvian police confirmed on June 2, 2010, they are seeking Joran van der Sloot in last Sunday's killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores at a Lima hotel.

LIMA, Peru— A young Dutchman previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway is the prime suspect in the weekend murder of a Peruvian woman, police said Wednesday.

Joran van der Sloot is being sought for Sunday's killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told a news conference. He said the suspect crossed into Chile the next day by bus.

The Dutch government said Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for van der Sloot.

Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman, in Peru for a poker tournament, appears with the young woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday and the two were later seen entering the hotel by one of its employees.

The victim's father, circus empresario and former race car driver Ricardo Flores, says his daughter dropped off some girlfriends at 2:35 a.m. then apparently returned to the casino. She and van der Sloot were seen entering the hotel room about 5 a.m., said Guardia, and the Dutchman departed alone about four hours later.

"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," said Guardia.

Stephany Flores' body was found face down on the hotel room floor on Wednesday, abrasions on her face and body, and signs of trauma, the police general said. He said she was clothed.

Asked if she had been asphyxiated, Guardia said he was awaiting autopsy results for the exact cause of death.

The killing occurred exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island.

Van der Sloot left Peru on Monday by land, Guardia said, his exit registered at the Santa Rosa border crossing. He had been staying at the hotel since May 14, having entered on a flight from Colombia, the police general added.

The victim's father is a 48-year-old former president of the Peruvian Automobile Club who won the "Caminos del Inca" rally in 1991 and brings circuses and foreign entertainers to Peru. He ran for vice president in 2001 and for president five years later on fringe tickets.

Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for van der Sloot, Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Bengt van Loosdrecht told The Associated Press in The Netherlands.

He cited as his sources Peruvian police and the Dutch Embassy in Lima. The embassy's head of consular affairs, Angela Lowe, told the AP she could not comment on the case.

An attorney for van der Sloot in New York City, Joe Tacopina, said he did not know his client's whereabouts and has not been in touch with him since the Peru allegations emerged.

Tacopina cautioned against a rush to judgment.

"Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull's-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play," Tacopina said.

Van der Sloot was twice arrested but later released for lack of evidence in the 2005 disappearance of Holloway, who was on a high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island.

No trace of her has been found and van der Sloot remains the main suspect in the case, said Ann Angela, spokeswoman for the Aruba prosecutor's office.

"What's happening now is incredible," she said. "At this 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."

Van der Sloot's late father was a prominent judge in Aruba.

The mystery of Holloway's disappearance has garnered wide attention on television and in newspapers in Europe and the United States.

Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of van der Sloot saying he was with Holloway when she collapsed on a beach, drunk.

He said believed she was dead and asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.

Judges subsequently refused to arrest van der Sloot on the basis of the tape.

A spokeswoman for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty of Mountain Brook, Alabama, told the AP the family was aware of the development in Peru but would have no comment.

___

Associated Press writers Carla Salazar in Lima, Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, Michael Melia in San Juan and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

http://rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/9000...rder/full/

Dutch suspect returned to Peru to face charges

Published - Jun 04 2010 04:28PM EST

By FRANK BAJAK and FRANKLIN BRICENO - Associated Press Writers


(AP Photo/Aliosha Marquez)
Chilean authorities escort Joran van der Sloot, center, out of a police station to be flown back to the Peruvian border, in Santiago, Chile, Friday, June 4, 2010.. The Dutch man was detained Thursday after crossing the border from Peru, where authorities say he's the prime suspect in Sunday's killing of 21-year-old Stephany Flores. Van der Sloot was previously arrested in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalie Holloway, but later released by Dutch authorities.

LIMA, Peru— A young Dutch man who is suspected in the 2005 disappearance of a U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway was returned to Peru on Friday to face charges in the slaying of a woman in his hotel room.

Police in neighboring Chile handed Joran van der Sloot over to Peruvian Interpol agents at the border city of Tacna. Officials there put a bulletproof vest on the 22-year-old and immediately took him to a police station for medical tests.

Van der Sloot said he is innocent in the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores but acknowledged having met her at a casino in Peru's capital, said deputy Chilean investigative police spokesman Fernando Ovalle.

He also remains the prime suspect in the disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba. Flores was killed five years to the day after Holloway disappeared. On Thursday, prosecutors in the U.S. charged van der Sloot with extortion in connection with the Holloway case.

Wearing the same black-hooded sweat shirt and khaki pants in which he was arrested the day before, van der Sloot was handcuffed and placed aboard a police Cessna 310 in the Chilean capital, Santiago, on Friday morning. A fixture on television crime shows after Holloway's disappearance in Aruba, the 22-year-old did not speak to or look at reporters who called to him Friday as he was escorted onto the plane.

Van der Sloot, who was seen on video with Flores prior to her death, fled Peru on Monday, but was captured three days later by Chilean police as he was headed in a taxi from Santiago to the Pacific coastal city of Vina del Mar. Police said he had rented a room there.

Flores was found dead late Tuesday in the Lima hotel room where van der Sloot had been staying before he left the country. She had a broken neck. She was fully clothed, with multiple bruises and scratches on her body, but there were no signs she had been sexually assaulted, the chief of Peru's criminal police, Gen. Cesar Guardia, told The Associated Press.

"The room was a complete mess," he said in an interview. He added that no potential murder weapon was found.

Peruvian police say they have video of van der Sloot and Flores together in the casino and witnesses who saw the two enter the Dutchman's hotel room.

"This isn't a coincidence, this murder," Flores' father, Lima entertainment impresario Ricardo Flores, told reporters after van der Sloot's arrest Thursday.

Flores, a 48-year-old former race car driver and sometime politician, buried his daughter Thursday in the upscale Jardines de la Paz cemetery accompanied by about 100 mourners. He called on authorities to immediately bring van der Sloot to Peru to face justice.

"It's not just about my daughter," he said. "There's a matter pending in Aruba, and we don't know how many more remain unpunished."

Also Thursday, van der Sloot was charged in Alabama with trying to extort $250,000 in return for revealing the location of Holloway's body and describing the circumstances of her death.

Federal prosecutors did not say who was allegedly extorted, but filed a sworn statement saying that van der Sloot received a partial payment of $15,000 wired to a Netherlands bank.

In the Netherlands, Dutch prosecutors on Friday said they had raided two homes hunting for evidence linked to the extortion charges. They seized computers, cell phones and data-storage devices in the raid, which was carried out at the request of U.S. authorities, said national prosecutor's office spokesman Wim de Bruin.

Holloway was an 18-year-old who was celebrating her high school graduation on Aruba when she disappeared May 30, 2005. Van der Sloot told investigators he left her on a beach, drunk. That's the last anyone saw of her.

Van der Sloot was twice arrested in her disappearance _ and twice released for insufficient evidence.

"If they have enough proof that he committed the crime in Peru, maybe, just maybe, that might help to get him to confess in Natalee's case. It just might crack him," a Holloway family lawyer, Vinda de Souza, told the AP.

A spokeswoman for Holloway's mother, Beth, issued a statement saying she "extends her deepest sympathy" to the Flores family "and prays for swift and sure justice."

On May 14, Van der Sloot arrived in Peru on a flight from Colombia and checked into the room where Flores' body was later found, Gen. Guardia said. Van der Sloot was in Peru for a poker tournament and it appears he and Flores met Saturday evening at Atlantic City, the Lima casino hosting the tourney, Guardia said.

The police chief said Flores was killed between 5 a.m. Sunday, when the victim and suspect were seen entering his room by a hotel employee, and about 8:45 a.m., when two people saw van der Sloot leave.

"Various things aren't very clear," Guardia said, among them the killer's motive.

It certainly wasn't money, he said. Van der Sloot had no problem paying for his travel to Chile.

Truck driver Luis Aparcana said van der Sloot gave him 1,500 Peruvian soles ($525) to take him from Ica, a town south of Lima, to the Chilean border. The Dutchman didn't speak Spanish very well and carried two suitcases, Aparcana said in a TV interview.

Aparcana said van der Sloot appeared "worried, because he kept smoking cigarettes."

"He didn't have a cell phone but he had a laptop that he would take out, handle and then put back."

Lawyers for van der Sloot did not immediately comment.

The Holloway case has followed many twists and turns. Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of van der Sloot saying he was with Holloway when she collapsed on a beach from being drunk. He said he believed she was dead and asked a friend to dump her body in the sea. Judges subsequently refused to arrest van der Sloot on the basis of the tape.

The journalist, Peter de Vries, reported later in 2008 that he had documented van der Sloot recruiting Thai women in Bangkok for sex work in the Netherlands.

___

Associated Press writers Eva Vergara in Santiago, Chile, Carla Salazar in Lima, Kendall Weaver in Montgomery, Alabama, and Michael Melia in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...rges/full/

Moist-eyed Dutch murder suspect interrogated

Published - Jun 05 2010 04:32PM EST

By FRANK BAJAK and FRANKLIN BRICENO - Associated Press Writers


(AP Photo/Karel Navarro)
Police officers escort Joran Van der Sloot, second right, during a press conference at a police station in Lima, Saturday, June 5, 2010. The young Dutchman wanted in the murder of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman, and who also remains the lone suspect in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway, arrived in Peru's capital Saturday to face justice, after being handed over by Chilean police on Friday at the two countries' border.

LIMA, Peru— The lone suspect in the disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway was paraded _ moist-eyed and looking stunned _ before reporters Saturday as Peruvians denounced him and detectives began interrogating him about the killing of a Lima student.

Joran van der Sloot arrived at criminal police headquarters in a brown Interpol SUV and was escorted across an auditorium crowded with shouting, shutter-snapping journalists three times.

Wearing a green bulletproof vest, his hands handcuffed behind him, the husky 22-year-old stared straight ahead and didn't respond to reporters' questions or make eye contact.

Outside, seven Indian shamans in brightly colored ponchos repeatedly stabbed a cloth doll representing van der Sloot in a "spiritual punishment" ritual. "We're punishing him so that all the forces of evil are purged," one shouted.

About an hour earlier, onlookers yelled insults at the man who has dominated Peruvian front pages as police switched cars south of the foggy coastal capital.

His interrogation began almost immediately, Gen. Cesar Guardia, chief of Peru's criminal police, told The Associated Press. Van der Sloot is suspected of killing 21-year-old Stephany Flores on May 30 at his hotel room in the Peruvian capital

Police in neighboring Chile caught van der Sloot on Thursday and expelled him across the border a day later. He was then driven 17 hours north in a police caravan.

Chilean police spokesman Fernando Ovalle said the Dutchman told them he did not kill Flores, who was found battered with a broken neck.

But van der Sloot did acknowledge that "he met her and at some point they went to a casino," Ovalle said.

Police released video Saturday taken by hotel security cameras showing van der Sloot and his alleged victim entering his hotel room together.

Flores trails van der Sloot, her head bowed, after he is given his room key. She is in the same attitude when she follows him into the room.

Van der Sloot is wearing a white, long-sleeved button-down shirt and jeans in the video. Flores wears a dark sleeveless T-shirt and jeans and has her hair up.

Later video shows the Dutchman leaving the hotel alone with his bags. He is in a patterned shirt and carries a day pack on his back and a gym bag in his hand.

Guardia, the police chief, said that at 8:10 a.m., nearly an hour and a half before leaving the hotel, van der Sloot walked across the street alone, bought bread and two cups of coffee at a supermarket and returned to his hotel room.

Peru's interior minister, Octavio Salazar, reminded reporters that the murder investigation was not over: "We can't rush the matter, nor can we give details concerning the event or that investigation itself," he told a brief news conference.

"In two weeks we'll know if the girl had sexual relations or if there is alcohol in her blood," Dr. Cesar Tejada, the deputy Lima medical examiner, told The Associated Press in an interview. He said toxicological reports should also be able to tell whether she was given a so-called "date rape" drug. Flores' father, Ricardo, told The Associated Press he believes van der Sloot drugged his daughter.

The girl's father told the AP that video cameras had also tracked the couple as they walked before dawn Sunday to van der Sloot's hotel from a casino in Lima's upscale Miraflores district where the two met playing poker.

She had dropped two girlfriends off at their homes several hours earlier. El Comercio, citing a police report, said she sent a text message to one to tell her she was "walking up the stairs to my bedroom."

Guardia said he could not confirm that report.

Flores, a 48-year-old circus promoter and former race car driver, said he doesn't want the death penalty for van der Sloot, only justice. In Peru, murder carries a prison sentence of up to 35 years.

Van der Sloot remains the prime suspect in the May, 30, 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Holloway on the Dutch island of Aruba. He was arrested and released in that case, and faces no charges.

Flores told the AP in an interview at his home that the loss of his daughter may ensure that van der Sloot is punished for that death.

"My daughter was an instrument for this girl (Holloway), so that there can be justice," he said. "He's going to have to talk now."

Van der Sloot also now faces criminal charges in the United States of trying to extort $250,000 from Holloway's family in exchange for disclosing the location of Holloway's body and describing how she died.

U.S. prosecutors charged van der Sloot with the crime on Thursday, saying $15,000 was transferred to a Dutch bank account in his name. In the Netherlands on Friday, prosecutors acting on a U.S. request raided two homes seeking evidence in the case, seizing computers, cell phones and data-storage devices.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia told reporters on Friday that van der Sloot would have to be tried in Stephany Flores' death before any extradition request could be considered.

A college business student less than a year from graduation, Flores was found late Tuesday in the Lima hotel room where van der Sloot had been staying since arriving in Peru on May 14 from Colombia.

She was fully clothed, with multiple bruises and scratches on her body but no signs she had been sexually assaulted, Guardia told the AP.

A tennis racket was found in the room "that could have been the murder weapon but that's so far not been proven," said Tejada.

"My daughter resisted," Flores told the AP. "Under the fingernails of my daughter there are traces, evidence. That's why they didn't permit her cremation." Flores said he expected her to be exhumed for DNA testing, and Tejada said that was likely.

Holloway's uncle, Paul Reynolds, told NBC's "Today" show Friday that the family hopes to see van der Sloot behind bars and the Aruba case reopened.

Holloway, 18, was celebrating her high school graduation on Aruba when she disappeared. Van der Sloot told investigators he left her on a beach, drunk. That's the last anyone saw of her. Van der Sloot was twice arrested in her disappearance _ and twice released for insufficient evidence.

Two years ago, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of van der Sloot saying that after Holloway collapsed on the beach he asked a friend to dump her body in the sea. But judges in Aruba ruled it insufficient to re-arrest him. The same journalist, Peter de Vries, reported later in 2008 that van der Sloot was recruiting Thai women in Bangkok for sex work in the Netherlands.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...ated/full/

Police: Dutchman confesses to killing Peru woman

Published - Jun 08 2010 12:19AM EST


(AP Photo/Lima Police Handout)
This image from security footage provided by the Lima police alledgedly shows Joran van der Sloot, as he leaves his hotel room May 30, 2010.

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 Colonel Abel Gamarra told The Associated Press early Tuesday 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.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LIMA, Peru (AP) _ Police in Peru say the Dutchman Joran van der Sloot has confessed to killing a young woman in his Lima hotel room last week.

Police Colonel Abel Gamarra told The Associated Press early Friday 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.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...oman/full/

Van der Sloot in Peruvian prosecutors' hands

Published - Jun 10 2010 02:06PM EST

By FRANK BAJAK - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/Karel Navarro)
A man browses at a newspaper stand selling papers bearing the images of suspected murderer Joran van der Sloot in Lima, Wednesday, June 9, 2010. Peruvian police have announced that the Dutch citizen Van der Sloot has confessed to killing a young Peruvian woman in his Lima hotel room on May 30.

LIMA, Peru— Police moved Joran van der Sloot to a cell at the prosecutor's office on Thursday as officials prepared to file charges following what they called a remarkably complete confession in the beating and strangling death of a 21-year-old woman.

"We've practically closed the case," criminal police chief Gen. Cesar Guardia told The Associated Press.

Sheathed in a bulletproof vest, the young Dutchman was driven less than a mile across central Lima during rush hour in a police convoy.

Guardia said Van der Sloot, who also remains the lone suspect in the Natalee Holloway missing-teenager case, "confessed with a wealth of details that have been corroborated through criminal investigative rigor."

But he said Peruvian interrogators restricted their questioning to the case of Stephany Flores, the daughter of a circus promoter and former race car driver whom he met playing poker at a casino.

They did not question him about Holloway's disappearance _ exactly five years to the day before Flores was killed.

Guardia denied any suggestion that Van der Sloot's confession was forced. He said a translator assigned by the Dutch Embassy was present, as was a state-appointed defense attorney.

If tried and convicted on murder charges, Van der Sloot would face from 15 to 35 years in prison.

The attorney for the slain girl's family, Edwar Alvarez, told the AP that prosecutors have until 8 a.m. Friday morning to file charges. Otherwise, Van der Sloot would have to be freed.

Still unresolved is the May 30, 2005 disappearance of Holloway on the Caribbean island of Aruba.

Efforts by the FBI to try to solve it may have inadvertently helped fund the travel that enabled the murder of Flores.

Believing it was closing in on Van der Sloot, the FBI videotaped and allowed him to be paid $25,000 in a sting operation in Aruba last month. But it held off on arresting him, and he took the money and flew to Peru.

Guardia told the AP in an interview Wednesday evening that the 6-foot-3 (190-centimeter-tall) Van der Sloot, 22, impressed investigators with both his intelligence and brutality.

"He grabbed her and smashed her with an elbow," Guardia said, pointing to his own nose. "A lot of blood spewed out ... Then he strangles her and throws her to the floor."

"He is irascible. He has no self-control," Guardia said.

The general said Van der Sloot took Flores' cash, about US$300 worth of Peruvian currency, two credit cards and her national ID card. He apparently also took her Jeep Cherokee, which was found abandoned blocks away in a lower-class neighborhood.

Guardia said Van der Sloot attested in his confession to killing Flores because she found out about the Aruba case by using his laptop without his permission. But he said police didn't necessarily believe him and think he may have killed Flores before going out and returning to the room with two cups of coffee and rolls.

"This guy is very intelligent but at times has lapses," said Guardia. "And the truth is that he is not a person in possession of all his senses."

A psychological examination is pending, he said.

Van der Sloot is also getting plenty to eat, Guardia said. "If he wants a steak we give him a steak ... If he wants a cigarette we give him cigarettes."

The evidence against the Dutchman includes hotel security camera video showing Flores and Van der Sloot entering his hotel room together and the Dutchman leaving alone four hours later.

Security camera video from the Atlantic Casino where the two met shows Flores arriving at a poker table where Van der Sloot is sitting with other players, shaking his hand as if they'd met before and then taking the seat next to him. The two later leave together.

"The incriminatory elements were so powerful that he had to confess," said Guardia.

Van der Sloot confessed, police say, on his third full day in police custody and a full week after he fled into northern Chile.

He was charged with extortion in the United States on June 2, the day of his arrest in Chile, in a case the commenced after Van der Sloot contacted John Kelly, a New York lawyer for Holloway's mother Beth Twitty in April, according to an affidavit unsealed on Thursday.

The Dutchman allegedly was seeking $250,000 in exchange for the location of the young woman's body, how she died and the identity of those involved.

Van der Sloot's father died in February and he "wanted to come clean, but he also wanted money," said Bo Dietl, a private investigator who worked with Kelly on the case.

Holloway's family said they wanted closure and Kelly contacted the FBI. It sent 10 to 12 agents to Aruba who set up a sting operation, added Dietl.

In the operation, Kelly gave Van der Sloot $10,000 in cash _ another $15,000 was wired to a bank account in his name _ and told he'd get $225,000 once the body was found, the investigator said.

Van der Sloot was secretly videotaped by the FBI in an Aruba hotel telling Kelly he pushed Holloway down, she hit her head on a rock and died, according to the affidavit. He said he then contacted his father, who helped him bury the body.

Kelly and Van der Sloot then went to where the Dutchman said he and his father _ in the foundation of a house.

No body has been found and the affidavit, signed by special agent William K. Bryan of the FBI's Birmingham, Alabama, office, says Van der Sloot admitted in a May 17 e-mail _ he was in Peru by then _ that he had lied about the location of Holloway's remains.

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

However, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy quickly asked FBI Director Robert Mueller for an explanation of "exactly what happened in this case and the basis for all actions taken by the FBI."

The affidavit says Twitty wired Van der Sloot $15,000 to his Netherlands bank on May 10.

Van der Sloot was the last person seen with her daughter before the girl vanished on the last night of a high school graduation trip. He was arrested twice but released both times for a lack of evidence.

Flores' family was asked Wednesday for comment on the fact that Van der Sloot traveled to Peru less than a week after receiving the cash in the extortion sting.

Enrique Flores, one of the slain Peruvian woman's brothers, said, "My sister is dead, so I can't accomplish anything by thinking about what might have been."

"Neither I nor the family are thinking about all the things that could have happened but did not."

___

Associated Press Writers Samantha Gross in New York City, Pete Yost in Washington, Jay Reeves and Kendal Weaver in Alabama and Mike Melia in San Juan contributed to this report.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...ands/full/

Van der Sloot Tells All

Published - Jun 10 2010 10:35AM EST

By Barbie Latza Nadeau and Dan Collyns



He has spilled gory details about Stephany Flores' murder, including the drugs he took and why he left her body. Barbie Latza Nadeau and Dan Collyns report on what's next for his case.

Joran van der Sloot told police investigators that he ate breakfast and sipped coffee as he contemplated what to do with the body of Stephany Flores moments after he killed her. He considered using suitcases, but that would mean dismembering Flores' body. He didn't have any friends to call to help and he didn't want to raise the alarm with the hotel staff. So he popped a few amphetamines to stay awake, and then packed up the bare essentials and headed for Chile. On his way out, he told the receptionist at the front desk not to wake "my girl," who he said was sleeping off a long night playing poker.

Gory details of Flores' senseless murder are being drip fed to the Peruvian press as police prepare to file formal murder charges against the 22-year-old Dutch native. Normally in Peru, suspects of violent crimes who confess, like Van der Sloot did earlier this week, are required to visit the crime scene and "recreate" the crime in an effort to garner even more evidence. But due to media attention and the thoroughness of Van der Sloot's confession, the crime scene visit has been waived.

A Van der Sloot conviction may seem like a slam-dunk, but there are still potential caveats. The Dutch consulate in Lima says Van der Sloot's confession was coerced, and his mother Anita, who spoke with him briefly by telephone, told a Dutch radio station that his interrogation has been "barbaric." In 2009, Peru was singled out by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor for human rights abuses involving "abuse of detainees and inmates by police and prison security forces" and "harsh prison conditions."

A police source told The Daily Beast that Van der Sloot will likely be charged with first-degree murder by this weekend. Once charged, Van der Sloot will be transferred to Lima's notorious Miguel Castro Castro high security prison, where he will await trial under extreme conditions.

There, he will have limited visitation privileges, and his lawyers will have to pay the guards for the right to consult with their client.

A police source in Lima told The Daily Beast that Peruvian prisons are controlled by criminal mafias. There are very few foreign inmates but they still have to pay protection money to the gangs for their own security. Sources in the National Penitentiary Institute say Van der Sloot will be sent to the Castro Castro maximum security prison, in the San Juan de Lurigancho district of Lima. Most of the foreigners there are serving time for drug-trafficking. There's just one other murderer in his section of the prison: a Colombian hitman called Hugo Trujillo Ospina who was convicted in the 2006 murder of a wealthy businesswoman, Myriam Fefer, on the orders of her daughter and lesbian lover.

"If he's going to survive he will need money," said the police source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The state provides around $1.50 a day per prisoner, he will need to buy everything from toothpaste from a decent space in which to sleep. On top of that, the mafias will be pressing him for protection money, all foreign prisoners have to pay just to stay alive." The source added: "The prisons are run by the prisoners, everything is available there: drugs, alcohol, sex."

Van der Sloot could wait years in prison for his trial to begin. The time he serves in Castro Castro waiting will be hard indeed, but as bad as it sounds, Peruvians say Van der Sloot is actually considered lucky to have escaped being sent to the more dangerous but less secure San Juan de Lurigancho prison in the same Lima district. No doubt, he will wish he were back in the Aruban prison where he once spent three months in connection with the disappearance and presumed murder of American teen Natalee Holloway.

Under Peruvian law, Van der Sloot's confession is similar to a plea bargain, which will reduce his prison sentence if he is convicted of Flores' murder. Van der Sloot also confessed to being high on marijuana when he killed Flores, which may have been a strategic attempt at a further reduction in his sentence since crimes committed under the influence of drugs are often treated with leniency. Peru does not try criminal cases by jury like in the United States.

Instead a judge will apply the rule of law based on the evidence presented including his prior criminal record. The accusations against him in Aruba will most certainly be used against him in Peru.

Van der Sloot's actions so far imply that he has good legal advice, but it probably won't be enough. Authorities in Aruba say they are ready to redouble efforts in the Holloway investigation and will seek to extradite Van der Sloot if they finally have enough evidence to tie him to her murder. The FBI in Birmingham, Alabama has also filed extortion and wire fraud charges against the Dutch national in connection with a sting operation that began in April. Van der Sloot was paid $25,000 in cash and wire transfers by Holloway's mother in exchange for information about her daughter's whereabouts and the circumstances of her murder. The FBI was waiting for Van der Sloot to provide details before making an arrest but he slipped away to Peru before keeping his end of the deal.

In a poignant coincidence, Holloway's mother inaugurated the Natalee Holloway Resource Center inside the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C. earlier this week. A call center has been established in Natalee's name to provide families with valuable information if their loved ones disappear abroad. "When Natalee went missing, we desperately needed contact information, law enforcement information, government resources, organization of foot soldiers, setting up command centers and media engagement," Holloway said at the center's opening. "I feel confident it will serve as a point of light for all missing."

Barbie Latza Nadeau, author of the Beast Book Angel Face, about Amanda Knox, has reported from Italy for Newsweek since 1997. She also writes for CNN Traveller, Budget Travel Magazine and Frommer's.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/..._All/full/

His folks are going to have send a heck of a lot of dough if they want him to stay alive in that jail.

Here's hoping they run out of funds.

Dead man walking.

Bracketed by crimes: Van der Sloot's last 5 years

Published - Jun 13 2010 03:49PM EST

By FRANK BAJAK - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/America Television Channel, Domingo al Dia)
In this photo taken June 11, 2010 and obtained by The Associated Press via Peru's America Television channel, Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot holds his inmate number before been transferred to the Miguel Castro Castro prison in Lima. Peruvian police said Van der Sloot, long suspected in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway, has confessed to killing 21-year-old Peruvian business student Stephany Flores on May 30, after they met playing poker. The photo was broadcast during America TV's show ''Domingo al Dia'', on Sunday, June 13, 2010.

LIMA, Peru— For all of his garrulous charm, Joran van der Sloot didn't do himself any favors in his online interactions, where his generation tends to reveal a lot about itself.

"If I would have to describe myself as an animal it would be a snake," he wrote on his YouTube page. Perhaps wistfully wishing the past undone, he continued: "however, I want to be a lion and one day I will be a lion."

At age 22, Van der Sloot is now a caged animal. He sits in a bleak third-world prison, where he fears his fellow inmates. After requesting isolation, he shares a cellblock with a reputed Colombian murderer-for-hire.

Van der Sloot's journey from the quiet comfort of Aruba to being escorted briskly in handcuffs past Peruvian crowds screaming "murderer" is a tale of dissolution, deception and increasing desperation, according to friends and people who have chronicled his life.

Bracketing that journey are the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba and, five years later to the day, the strangling death of Stephany Flores in his hotel room in Lima, Peru.

Bred in privilege on a Caribbean tourist island, a high school soccer and tennis star, the handsome, physically imposing young Dutchman has fallen about as far as a young man can fall. But between the disappearance of Holloway, one year his senior, and the death of Flores, one year his junior, where was Joran Van Der Sloot? What journey led him from the ashes of one missing-persons case to the heart of a murder?

Who, really, is he?

___

The moment word got out that Van der Sloot was suspected of Flores' murder, speculation swirled that he'd left a trail of young female victims in his travels _ that he was something of a playboy killer for the globalized 21st century. He likes to travel, after all, and there were visits to Cambodia, Hong Kong, Venezuela, the United States.

Peruvian police officials called Van der Sloot a "psychopath." A New York detective who worked for the Holloways, Bo Dietl, branded him "a homicidal maniac."

But no evidence has emerged thus far linking Van der Sloot to any other disappearances or killings, and he certainly does not fit the profile of a deranged loner. He has had plenty of interpersonal relationships _ friends, girlfriends, ardent defenders.

"Joran isn't a monster and isn't a serial killer," his cousin, Natalia den Boer, told the AP. "I think that Joran needs help. Because something is bad in his head."

Before Lima, the only case in the past five years where he's known to have caused bodily harm was in January 2008. Then, he threw a glass of red wine in the face of Dutch crime reporter Peter de Vries right after a live TV program on which the journalist called him a liar.

But the five years in between those brackets _ Holloway and Flores _ were bumpy ones for Van der Sloot:

He is twice arrested in the Holloway disappearance, and twice released. He is harassed by crime-obsessed media and tracked doggedly by investigators hired by the Holloway family.

He relocates to Holland but, perpetually accosted, can't live a normal university student's life. He settles in Thailand, where he studies business without earning a degree. He buys a coffee shop.

In February, his prominent lawyer father collapses and dies of a heart attack on an Aruba tennis court at age 57. Van der Sloot flies home, lingering there after the funeral.

Then he moves. Strapped for cash, he obtains $25,000 from Holloway's mother in exchange for a promise to lead her to her daughter's body. The FBI secretly records the alleged extortion but Van der Sloot is not arrested.

Instead, he heads off to Lima to play poker. He kills Flores, Peru's police say, after a night of poker with her at a casino in which he had about 10 drinks of whiskey and pisco while she drank wine. The evidence against him is so overwhelming, they say, that he has no choice but to confess.

But what motivated Van der Sloot, as his signed confession describes, to slam Flores in the face with his right elbow, strangle her for a full minute, then take off his shirt and asphyxiate her?

In the confession, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, he says Flores threw the first blow.

The two were playing online poker on his laptop, said Van der Sloot, when an insulting message arrived mentioning the Holloway case and saying, "I'm going to kill you, you little Mongoloid." He said that after he explained the Holloway disappearance and how he'd been accused of it, she punched him on the left side of his head.

There is no mention in the confession about Flores and Van der Sloot having sexual relations. Police say there is no evidence of sexual abuse.

Peru's criminal police chief, Gen. Cesar Guardia, says he's skeptical about Van der Sloot's story. The defendant is, after all, a person who described himself as "a pathological liar" in a 2007 book he co-wrote when several of the figures in the Holloway saga cashed in on the case with published accounts.

Asked about his motive for killing Flores, Van der Sloot told his questioners he didn't really know. "I lost control of my actions," the confession quotes him as saying. "I didn't know what I was doing."

___

Van der Sloot's Facebook picture is a near-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Red whisky, corked, with a powerboat at rest in the ocean as a backdrop.

He likes the rapper Notorious B.I.G. and pop singer Katy Perry, the TV show South Park. He has 160 kills in the game "Mob Wars" and likes "Pissing in random places when totally drunk/wasted," Texas Hold'em Poker, Heineken beer and Barack Obama.

On his DateInAsia.com profile page, created when he was living in Thailand, he says he is attractive, agnostic, a smoker, regular drinker and a former professional card player. He retired from cards, he says, because it's "too much stress and ups and downs."

In the sleepy Bangkok suburb of Muang Ake, he attended Rangsit University in 2008 as a business major but dropped out and bought the Sawadee Cup cafe just off the campus, which served sandwiches and pizza.

One person who met Van der Sloot there, a 35-year-old schoolteacher from Illinois named Matthew Lufcy, was struck by his cavalier attitude about his notoriety.

"I would describe him as arrogant, like nobody can do anything to me. He wasn't shy about it," Lufcy said. He said he met Van der Sloot's then-girlfriend, a blonde from California. Lufcy was surprised, given all the media attention on him, that she was with him.

Van der Sloot may have been a charmer, but he apparently wasn't much of a businessman. So says the young Thai woman who, with her American boyfriend, bought the cafe from him early this year.

"I looked at the documents and balance sheets he left. Many items just look wrong," said the woman, who would identify herself only by her first name, Siripat. Still, Siripat described him as "a very affable guy. He'd invite us for meals. Sometimes, he'd let us eat for free at his cafe."

One souvenir Van der Sloot apparently picked up in Thailand is visible on his chest in a photo taken during a medical checkup after Chilean police handed him over to Peruvian authorities on June 4. It is a tattoo that says, in Thai, "never mind." The word reflects two prominent characteristics of Thai culture in foreigners' eyes: tolerance and forgiveness.

___

If Joran van der Sloot can be said to have a nemesis, it is De Vries, a no-nonsense 53-year-old investigative reporter who has refused to leave him alone.

In 2008, the Dutch crime journalist broadcast video of Van der Sloot confessing in front of hidden cameras in the Netherlands to having a friend dispose of Holloway's body after, intoxicated, she went into convulsions. In the conversation with businessmen and ex-con Patrick Van Eem, Van der Sloot describes how he wanted her to give him oral sex.

In the video, Van Eem comments on the huge media hype the Holloway case has caused. Van der Sloot, smoking what appears to be a large marijuana joint, smiles.

"But now," he says, "I can abuse that as well."

Nine months later, De Vries drops another bombshell. He airs undercover footage of Van der Sloot in Bangkok alleging that he was trying to recruit Thai women to go to the Netherlands to work as prostitutes. No women were actually delivered, and Thai authorities have no record of ever opening an investigation.

Van der Sloot's next confession comes that same month _ November 2008. He tells Fox News' Greta van Susteren that he sold Natalee into sexual slavery. But before she airs the interview, he calls to say it was all a lie.

In recent months, particularly after the death of his father, it appears Van der Sloot got back into gambling in a big way online.

"I do not have a real job but am a professional poker player," he says on his YouTube page. He says he hasn't read many books, but if he had to choose a favorite it would be "Ace on the River" by Barry Greenstein, a poker strategy book.

Jaap Amesz, a Dutch reality TV star, befriended Van der Sloot and extracted yet another confession from him in the Holloway disappearance. In this one, she falls off a balcony drunk and is disposed of in a swampy lake.

On his blog, Amesz writes about how Van der Sloot was often broke and constantly losing at poker. Van der Sloot, Amesz acknowledges, has swindled him, too.

"He likes to think of himself as a gambler, but he's a loser," said Harold Copus, a former FBI agent who worked as a private investigator for Holloway's family.

The Van der Sloot family's finances were already depleted hiring lawyers to defend him in the Holloway case. Now his mother Anita, an art teacher at Aruba's international school, must pay for defense counsel in Peru.

"She is devastated. She just lost her husband a few months ago, and now she's essentially lost her son," said Julia Renfro, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Aruba Today.

Neither Van der Sloot's mother, his two younger brothers or his friends or neighbors would speak to the AP about the case. An old girlfriend, Aline Hibbert, replaced her Facebook photo with a picture of words:

"Mind Your Own Business."

___

On his TV show's blog last week, De Vries reported that its reporters "have gotten countless e-mails in recent months pointing to the money problems Joran had. He made up anything to get money, and did not hesitate to pry money from the pockets of friends or his own family."

The blog publishes an instant-message exchange it says is between Van der Sloot and a 20-year-old girlfriend five days before Flores was killed. In it, he asks her to wire him 300 euros in Peru. He claims his wallet has been stolen.

Separately, Amesz said on his blog that a close friend of Van der Sloot's told him Joran had run out of money, didn't know how he'd pay his hotel bill and was hungry.

In the Peru confession, Van der Sloot says he took the equivalent of $300 from Flores' wallet and that he also paid drivers who took him south to Chile with his digital camera, his watch and some clothing.

On the day he was arrested outside the Chilean capital, Van der Sloot told police an elaborate story of two bandits jumping him and Flores in his Lima hotel room. According to a transcript obtained by the AP, he asserted that one was armed with a pistol, the other with a knife.

The knife-wielder told them to be quiet, it says, "but Stephany starts to talk in a loud voice and he strikes her in the face, making her bleed from the nose." The same men, Van der Sloot claims, had pulled over Flores' car the previous day and robbed them, taking $4,000 from her and a Thai bracelet from him.

One person Van der Sloot didn't deceive in Lima was Roberto Blades, brother of the famed Panamanian singer and former government minister Ruben Blades. He told Peruvian media that he played poker at the same table as Van der Sloot at the Atlantic City casino in Lima's upscale Miraflores district and said he warned casino employees about the Dutchman.

Blades, who lives in Miami, said he was surprised at how no one in Peru seemed to have heard about the Holloway case.

He also said in one TV interview that he was astounded by Van der Sloot's brazenness in asking for help to find female companionship: "When you have that reputation, when you have history, how can you so openly be talking about how you want to pick up women?"

For an answer, he might have turned to his acquaintance's YouTube page. Listed by Van der Sloot there as one of his favorite songs is "Fear," by the rap artist Drake.

In its refrain, the rapper sings plaintively: "Please don't be scared of me."

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press Writers Franklin Briceno in Lima, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Grant Peck, Thanyarat Doksone and Kinan Suchaovanich in Bangkok.

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...ears/full/

Death is too good for this A-Hole. Assuming he is guilty of these two crimes (which it certainly would appear he is), I hope he gets anally raped hourly.

Report: Van der Sloot mentally ill, mother says

Published - Jun 20 2010 02:58PM EST

By TOBY STERLING - Associated Press Writer


(AP Photo/America Television Channel, Domingo al Dia)
In this photo taken June 11, 2010 and obtained by The Associated Press via Peru's America Television channel, Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot holds his inmate number before been transferred to the Miguel Castro Castro prison in Lima. Peruvian police said Van der Sloot, long suspected in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway, has confessed to killing 21-year-old Peruvian business student Stephany Flores on May 30, after they met playing poker. The photo was broadcast during America TV's show ''Domingo al Dia'', on Sunday, June 13, 2010.

AMSTERDAM— Joran van der Sloot, the chief suspect in the murder of one woman and the disappearance of another, suffers mental problems, his mother was quoted Sunday as saying.

Van der Sloot, a 22-year-old Dutchman, is suspected in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005. He sits now in a prison compound on the dusty outskirts of Peru's capital, Lima, held on suspicion of killing 21-year-old Stephany Flores on May 30 _ five years to the day after Holloway vanished while on vacation.

"My son is sick in his head," the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf quoted Anita van der Sloot as saying in an interview published on its website Sunday. The comments were her first since her son's most recent arrest.

Police in Peru say Van der Sloot has confessed to killing Flores. He is scheduled to be interviewed by a judge in Lima next week.

He has confessed to involvement in Holloway's disappearance, then retracted his confession, several times. Holloway was last seen in his company.

Van der Sloot has told his jailers in Peru he is ready to clarify the Holloway case _ but only with Aruban authorities.

For now, he spends his days in a nearly empty block of a high-security prison, where he shares a TV set and homemade barbells with a reputed Colombian hit man.

The Van der Sloot family lives in Aruba, where the interview with Anita van der Sloot was conducted. She told the newspaper her son disappeared in mid-May, two days before he was scheduled to travel to the Netherlands for treatment in a mental institution. He left a note saying he was going to Peru, she said.

Van der Sloot had been traveling the world but returned to Aruba in February after his father, Paul, died of a heart attack while playing tennis.

In the Telegraaf interview, Anita van der Sloot said she does not believe her son killed Holloway.

"But if he killed Stephany, he'll have to pay the price. I won't visit him in his cell, I cannot embrace him," she was quoted saying.

She said Joran's mental health had deteriorated steadily since Holloway disappeared. She attributed his decline in part to media scrutiny.

She told the paper he had called her several days before Flores' death, sounding paranoid.

"He said he was being followed. He had been arrested together with a girl and robbed. He was not making sense," the paper quoted her as saying.

"I can't cry for Joran like I did for Paul. I hope that he gets psychological help."

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/...says/full/

(06-11-2010 06:24 AM)beck Wrote: [ -> ]Dead man walking.

Do you think he deserves to die?

Thrice daily corporal punishment about the head and shoulder area.

Honestly, I'd rather see him rot in prison. That place has to be worse than hell.

I've worked in the largest pen in Tn, West TN State Pen(i'm a nurse), and let me say the worst thing to be in prison is a punk, I hope he gets turned out and punked every day. They're gonna love his white ass lol.

His judge father is giving him some great defense arguments.

First he claimed he was on drugs (gotta love the addicition angle).

Next is the mental incapacity side (thanks Mom!).

Now it's the illegal confession / tricked issue.

He should fry - and I'd be glad to play the AC/DC to him.

A murderer maybe a bit off in the head?...No

Ah, the good ol' Insanity Defense Ploy.

A Peruvian lawyer explains what's in store for van der Sloot in Monday's court hearing.