Authors: Lisa Pulitzer,Cole Thompson
Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery
A NOTE ON SOURCES
This book is based on scores of interviews and several thousand pages of police reports. We traveled in Aruba and Peru. We interviewed police, attorneys, witnesses, family members, scientific experts, and others tied to the story. We also made use of newspaper articles, television reports, and books written about the case. There are no fictional or “composite characters.” Certain events, sequences, and conversations were reconstructed from a synthesis of all the evidence, including the confessions, police reports, witness statements, interviews with participants, and other information.
CONTENTS
Also by Lisa Pulitzer & Cole Thompson
PROLOGUE
TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 2010
LIMA, PERU
The frantic call came in just before midnight to the front desk of Lima’s Hotel Tac, a budget lodging on the edge of the city’s tourist district of Miraflores.
That night, nineteen-year-old receptionist Adeli Marchena picked up the line.
“Mr. Van der Sloot, Room 309, please,” the caller said.
Adeli checked the computer to confirm that the man was still registered, as she did with all inbound calls, and then transferred the line to his room. About a minute passed when the call bounced back to the receptionist.
“I’m sorry, there’s no answer,” Adeli told the female caller.
Glancing at the room keys hanging on hooks behind her station, she noticed the one for Room 309 was missing. Since all guests were encouraged to leave their room keys at the reception desk when leaving the hotel and collect them upon their return, she assumed Mr. Van der Sloot must be upstairs resting. He’d been at the hotel for more than two weeks, and she’d become familiar with his comings and goings. She’d been the one to check him in when he arrived at the hotel early on the morning of May 14, carrying a duffel bag and several other items. He was one of just five guests to check in that day, and the only foreigner.
Although the Hotel Tac catered mainly to Peruvians, tourists from Spain, Portugal, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and even Switzerland lodged at the establishment during the first half of May. Many of the city’s visitors were merely transients passing through Lima on their way to Cuzco and the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu, discovered on a mountain ridge some eight thousand feet above sea level. Most travelers opted for the convenience of staying in the commercial district close to the casinos and shopping malls, but budget-conscious visitors chose more affordable lodgings such as the Hotel Tac, located on the outskirts of the main tourist area of Miraflores.
Tourism was the lifeblood of the area and every measure was taken to keep the out-of-towners safe. The eighty-room Hotel Tac had security cameras in the lobby and strategically positioned on each of its seven floors. The reception area was manned twenty-four hours a day.
Adeli worked six nights a week. Her shifts began at 8:00
P.M.
and ended at eight the following morning. Over the past two weeks, she’d seen more of Joran van der Sloot than she had of any of the other guests at the hotel. The Dutchman kept strange hours, typically leaving the hotel near midnight and returning some time around dawn. Standing six feet four, with a pale complexion, angular features, and piercing brown eyes, the twenty-two-year-old cut a striking image. Adeli remembered him well. Peruvians tend to have black hair, olive skin, and, for the most part, rarely break the six-foot mark. This foreigner was the polar opposite.
After he handed her a Dutch passport, Adeli copied the young man’s name and particulars into the guest book and into the hotel’s computer, Joran Andreas Petrus van der Sloot, born August 6, 1987, passport number NWJ77F425.
Chain-smoking, unshaven, and quiet, the brown-haired guest in Room 309 was a night owl and a loner. Although tourists traveling alone were the exception, those who did tended to enjoy chatting with the women behind the desk, practicing their broken Spanish, and inquiring about the historical and cultural sites to explore outside the confines of the hotel. Questions such as, “Are you from Lima?… Have you ever been to Cuzco?… Are there any cool bars nearby?” were happily addressed by the hotel staff. The young man in Room 309, however, was all business. Other than the occasional thank you or hello, he hadn’t once engaged Adeli in small talk during his two-week stay.
Mr. Van der Sloot had opted for the cheapest rate, fifty nuevos soles for a small, third-floor accommodation with a TV and private bath and sporadic chambermaid service. That’s the equivalent of about eighteen U.S. dollars. Unlike most tourists, he paid in cash for the first night, and came back to her several times to settle his bill—also using cash.
Adeli told the caller she imagined the guest in Room 309 must be sleeping—it was past midnight, after all. But the caller persisted. She wanted to know when the receptionist had last seen him. Thinking back, Adeli realized it had been several days since he had returned to the hotel, most recently in the company of a young Peruvian woman. It was after 5:00
A.M.
when the two had gone upstairs together, but their behavior did not seem indicative of a lovers’ tryst. Mr. Van der Sloot was leading and the young woman followed several steps behind him as they started for the staircase. Working in a small hotel was a bit like watching one of her
novelas
(soap operas) on television. There was little that escaped the clerk’s inquisitive eye.
Adeli had seen the Dutchman a second time that same morning when she was on her way home from her shift. It was just after 8:00
A.M.
when the two crossed paths on the sidewalk a half block from the hotel. He was carrying what looked like two paper cups of coffee, and nodded a hello as she passed in the company of her coworker Juan. She realized it had been three days since their sidewalk encounter and she hadn’t seen him again since that morning.
Feeling uneasy, Adeli hung up the phone and returned to her computer registry. It was then that she noticed that Mr. Van der Sloot was two days behind on his hotel bill. Though it was already past midnight, she couldn’t let this slide. She’d only been working at the hotel for a short time, and didn’t want to jeopardize her meager $280 a month salary. A hotel job in Miraflores was certainly better than any job she’d find in her own neighborhood of Chorillos, where she’d grown up in the shadow of the Santa Monica Penitentiary for Women.
At 12:30
A.M.
, Adeli headed up the stairs to Room 309 to ask Mr. Van der Sloot to settle the bill. She knocked several times. There was no answer. Standing in the hallway, she could hear that a TV or radio was on inside the room, but when no one came to the door she decided not to disturb the guest further. Returning to the first floor, she found Iris, the night manager, and explained the situation.
“Take a copy of the room key and go back upstairs and open the door,” Iris instructed.
Adeli was a bit apprehensive as she slid the key into the lock, and slowly opened the door. She was worried about intruding on a guest. A foul smell overwhelmed her as she stepped across the threshold. She noticed that the TV on the table directly in front of her had been left on. Empty soda bottles, cigarette butts, and coffee cups covered the tabletop. It was the beginning of the Peruvian winter and the room felt cold. A window across the room had been left open and a nylon curtain swayed in the breeze. The queen-size bed was in disarray; the mattress was askew revealing the wooden slats of the bed frame. The sheets were balled up in a heap on the floor between the mattress and the TV table, and clothing, a tennis racket, and a pair of sneakers were mixed in with the bed linens. The room was in shambles, but at least it appeared the hotel guest hadn’t skipped out without paying the bill.
As Adeli stood in the doorway scanning the room and wondering what had happened to Mr. Van der Sloot, she felt an eerie presence. Turning to her right, she caught sight of a person sprawled out on the floor. She gasped, and with her heart racing, she stepped farther into the room to get a better look. She assumed it was the Dutchman. But getting closer, she saw that the person had long, black, wavy hair and was drenched in blood. This was a woman. And she was dead.
The body was bloated and badly disfigured. There was what appeared to be dried blood around the woman’s nose. Whoever this was, she had clearly met a violent death. The corpse looked posed in an almost sexual manner; the legs were bent at the knee and apart, exposing red panties. The upper torso was dressed in a dark-colored T-shirt and partially covered with a white jacket that, like the body, was soaked in dried blood. The grisly sight was too much for the young receptionist to process. Confused and overwhelmed, Adeli backed away from the corpse, paused to switch off the television, and ran screaming into the hall.
The ghastly scene that Adeli uncovered would not only launch a murder investigation, but spark an international manhunt for a manipulative and callous fugitive connected to a tragic event on a small Caribbean island exactly five years earlier.
At the center of it all was a young man with a promising future, whose charm and manipulation helped him elude detention for years—until his spree came to an abrupt halt on June 3, 2010. Night receptionists, cabdrivers, security guards working double shifts—all found themselves in the spotlight due to their chance encounters with the Dutch national.
The criminal case against Joran, whose arrogance had captivated the media for years, would span four continents and involve law enforcement agencies around the globe, ultimately climaxing in Room 309 of a low-end Peruvian hotel.
ONE
MAY 30, 2010
LIMA, PERU
Ricardo Flores was an early riser, even on Sundays. Cracking open the door to his daughter’s bedroom, he saw that she hadn’t come home from her night out with friends. Her bed was still made and arranged with the stuffed teddy bears she loved and collected.
The fifty-eight-year-old remembered his youth when kids still had curfews. These days, the parties continued well past dawn. He only had a few ground rules with Stephany but checking in was one of them. She hadn’t even left a message about her whereabouts. She was going to get an earful when she did report in.