Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (13 page)

“Where is Stephany?” she was yelling. “Where is my daughter?”

Looking back toward the commotion, he saw Mariaelena pushing her way through the crush of reporters and bystanders that continued to grow on the sidewalk just beyond the yellow crime scene tape. Bundled against the cold, she looked worn out. Her brown eyes were puffy and red, and tears channeled down her face. Carolina, Ricardo’s daughter-in-law, was with her.

“Let them through,” someone yelled. “She’s the mother.”

With all the pandemonium, Ricardo was unable to prevent his wife from seeing the coroner’s van backed into the hotel’s driveway, its doors open as if waiting for a passenger.

“No! No!” she shrieked. “I want to see my daughter!”

Without thinking, someone in the crowd announced she was dead.

The news was too much. Stephany’s mother collapsed on the sidewalk. She was carried back to the family’s Mercedes while relatives called for an ambulance. Paramedics arrived within a few minutes and administered medication to help calm her. Even so, she was in no condition to remain on the scene and Richie volunteered to drive her home, where caring relatives were waiting. Although Richie wanted his father to accompany her, Ricardo refused to leave. He insisted on remaining outside on the sidewalk until his daughter’s body was removed from the hotel.

Upstairs, officers were waiting in the hallway outside of Room 309. All hotel employees were forbidden from entering the chamber where Stephany’s body lay sprawled on the floor. They weren’t allowed to leave the hotel, either. Everyone was waiting for homicide investigators to arrive.

Captain Juan Callan was on duty that night. At forty-six, the compactly built policeman had been a member of the Peruvian National Police Force for two decades, the last eight years working homicide. His detective work was legendary in law enforcement circles, as was his affinity for motorcycles, particularly Harley-Davidsons.

Callan’s four-man team had been clearing backlogged paperwork at police headquarters in Central Lima when their commander, General Cesar Guardia, alerted them to the dead body found at a hotel in Miraflores. General Guardia was the director of Peru’s criminal investigations division and made it clear to his lead detective that this was a high-profile case with international implications. The dead woman was the daughter of a famous race-car driver, and the prime suspect, Joran van der Sloot, was a Dutch national and suspected murderer who was last seen fleeing in a car similar to Stephany’s.

Callan, grabbing his signature leather jacket from the coat rack, quickly briefed his team members on the investigation unfolding in Miraflores. The body had been there for several days, meaning Van der Sloot had a significant jump on them. Callan had heard about the Flores case on the news but hadn’t followed it closely. He knew his colleagues in the kidnapping division had been working around the clock since the woman had been reported missing.

During his career, Callan had been involved in nearly fifty homicide cases, including the high-profile 2009 murder of Peru’s beloved folk singer, Alicia Delgado, known throughout South America as the “Peruvian Princess of Folk Music.” The vivacious fifty-year-old redhead had been discovered hanging by a leather belt in the closet of her home in Santiago de Surco, not far from the Floreses’ residence. She had been stabbed nine times, and Callan and his team were charged with tracking down her killer.

While policework didn’t pay well—rookie cops made about $500 a month—Callan was passionate about his job and often attended seminars and took classes at the police academy to stay on top of the latest forensic techniques. He was the lead detective of Homicide Team 2 and his four-man squad was made up of some the city’s brightest investigators.

His most experienced officers, Macedonio Ugarte and Jose Castro, were ten-year veterans of the division. With a full head of wavy gray hair and tinted eyeglasses, Ugarte was known for his stern, no-nonsense approach. Castro, by contrast, had jet-black hair and put witnesses at ease with his disarming smile.

Miguel Tong and Frank Gonzalez, the younger members of Callan’s team, couldn’t have asked for better mentors. The baby-faced Tong had joined the squad in 2007, and he and Callan were
compadres,
friends, whose families socialized outside the office. Callan was the godfather of Tong’s young son.

Gonzalez, nineteen and reed thin with a buzz cut and goatee, was a rookie, and had been recruited right out of the academy. His fellow officers liked to rib him about his serial dating and his reputation as a ladies’ man.

The detectives arrived at the Hotel Tac in unmarked vehicles. Their black police vests with official patches and the word “Homicide” in bold yellow letters identified them as law enforcement personnel.

It was a frenzied scene. Members of the local media were trying to get inside the hotel and swarmed investigators as they climbed out of their cars. The victim’s father immediately confronted Captain Callan. Ricardo Flores was on the sidewalk and begging to be let upstairs to see his daughter. Callan ordered uniformed officers to keep the reporters at bay. Taking Ricardo aside, he explained that his son Richie had already identified the body and for the moment no one else was allowed to enter the hotel.

Eager to begin the investigation, Callan instructed Ugarte, the team’s gray-haired veteran, and Gonzalez, the rookie, to go with him to the third floor. Checking the door to Room 309, he noted no signs of forced entry. The window was open. The smell of decomposition was faint but unmistakable. Callan and his men surveyed the bloody scene before slowly backing out of the room. The CSI team and a representative from the prosecutor’s office were on their way and he did not want to do anything to compromise the evidence. He had a daughter of his own, and exiting the room he thought about Ricardo Flores. Callan promised himself he would bring Stephany Flores’s killer to justice.

Wasting no time, Callan began interviewing hotel staff and quickly discovered that a guest on the fourth floor had returned to the hotel earlier in the evening, worried about Joran van der Sloot.

Adeli Marchena, the receptionist who had discovered the body, told Callan that Elton García, a guest for more than a month, had come into the lobby shortly after she had found the body. He seemed worried that Joran and the missing Peruvian woman whose disappearance was being followed on the news had both been kidnapped. Adeli thought the timing of García’s inquiry was strange. The police had been summoned by her boss but they had not yet arrived, and here was García at the reception desk, inundating her with questions about Room 309’s resident. Her exchange with the man in Room 406 was disturbing enough to compel her to mention it to the homicide investigators.

Callan agreed. A man of priorities, he had a killer to catch and if García could lead him to Van der Sloot he needed to be interviewed as quickly as possible.

Callan took the stairs up to the fourth floor to interview the possible witness in Room 406. The guest registry had listed García as Albanian, and Callan was a bit surprised when the square-jawed man in the jean jacket who opened the door addressed him in Spanish.

Callan made a rapid assessment of García. The thirty-five-year-old had a thick tousle of jet-black hair feathered with a bit of gray, long thin sideburns, and a “soul patch,” a thin clump of beard just beneath his lower lip. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

After introducing himself and referencing Van der Sloot, the experienced detective took a conversational tone. He knew the interview process could be intimidating. Taking a seat in one of the simple wood chairs, he invited García to do the same. García’s room looked identical to the one on the third floor: cheap gray carpet, white walls, a queen-size bed with a floral comforter, two chairs, and a small night table.

In response to Callan’s questions, García explained that he had been born in Albania, but was married and lived in Uruguay where he ran a small business. He had come to Lima the last week of April to participate in the Latin American Poker Tour.

Callan thought it strange that García would have arrived in Peru more than one month before the tournament was set to begin, and that a married man would leave his wife at home for so long, but he kept his skepticism to himself.

García explained that earlier in the evening he had attended a dinner party at La Rosa Náutica, a sprawling bar and restaurant on Pier 4 of the Lima Beach Circuit, at the base of the cliffs below Miraflores. The event was being hosted by the Atlantic City Casino to celebrate the kick off of the Latin American Poker Tour. This was the first time the tournament would be held in Peru, and local celebrities and government dignitaries were expected to attend.

The Atlantic City Casino was providing shuttle buses to and from the venue, which boasted 360-degree views of the Pacific Ocean from floor-to-ceiling windows. There would be cocktails, dinner, and live entertainment.

García explained that even though Joran was not registered to play in the tournament, he told him he had come to Lima for that purpose only. Joran knew that some of the best players in the world would be at La Rosa Náutica that night. By 11:00
P.M.
, when Joran had still not arrived, García said he started to worry. He did not know Joran well, but his failure to show up had him concerned.

He had seen the missing persons reports about Stephany Flores on the news. “The players at the Atlantic City were also talking about it,” he said. The news and the Internet had suggested kidnapping as a possible motive, and García thought Van der Sloot might be a victim, as well.

As the conversation continued, Callan discovered that García was acquainted with Stephany as well as Van der Sloot. Not only did García know Flores, he told the detective that he had been the one to introduce Joran to her at the poker tables one night. Although he hadn’t seen Joran at the casino for several days, he hadn’t made the connection that his friend was missing until he failed to turn up at La Rosa Náutica. Joran was a Dutch foreigner, and unless he was checking in with someone at home on a regular basis, no one would even know he was missing, García reasoned.

García said he expressed his fear to one of the table supervisors, a young woman named Katy Herrera. He had asked Katy to call the Hotel Tac to see if Joran was there.

Making calls for clients was not something that Katy normally did, but hearing García’s concerns she agreed to place a call on his behalf. Katy was also aware of the news reports about Stephany Flores. Members of the young woman’s family had been at the casino hours earlier that very night reviewing video footage, and word around the casino was that they had seen a tape of Stephany and Joran leaving the casino together.

During her three years at the Atlantic City, Katy had come to know Señorita Flores as a regular at the gaming tables. She had seen her sitting with the Dutch foreigner on two separate occasions that past week, and remembered the two of them playing together in an upstairs poker room when she left in the early hours of Sunday morning. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Joran was a quiet person and seemed devoted to the task of playing poker. He’d been coming to the casino for about three weeks, and told her he was in town for the Latin American Poker Tour.

On Saturday, May 22, Katy saw him at the casino. She invited him to attend Sunday services at the Emmanuel Evangelical Church in downtown Lima and handed him a brochure, “Steps to Receive the Lord in Your Life.” The following morning, Katy arrived at the church accompanied by a friend and was pleasantly surprised to see Joran there. After the service, she walked with him out to the street and helped him hail a cab. This was the only time she had ever seen him outside of the casino.

García gave Katy the telephone number for the Hotel Tac and she placed the call from a payphone in the employee cafeteria. But Joran wasn’t there.

That would explain the call to the receptionist earlier in the night, Callan thought, tapping on his notebook with his ballpoint pen. But why hadn’t García made the call himself? He was fluent in Spanish and had been a guest of the hotel for more than a month.

“Can you tell me where you were at 5:20
A.M.
on the morning of Sunday, May 30?” Callan asked. If this hotel guest had anything to do with the murder in 309, he didn’t want him to have the opportunity to concoct an alibi.

García claimed he was nowhere near the Hotel Tac the morning Stephany was last seen alive. He had stayed up most of the evening playing poker at the Atlantic City before heading to the Tequila Discotheque in San Isidro with several casino employees. The group partied until well past dawn, and he didn’t return to the hotel until ten o’clock that morning.

Callan made a note to check out his story. “Can you describe your relationship with Joran?” he asked García, who was now growing impatient.

“We weren’t friends at all,” he said. “I only knew him from sight and from having played poker with him at the free table at the Atlantic City Casino.”

“And Stephany Flores? Where and when did you meet her, and to what degree were you friends?”

“I met her on May 23, at around 9:00
P.M.
at the Fiesta Casino, across the street from the Atlantic City Casino.” García related how she had made $700 from a ten-dollar investment during a poker game that night.

Callan studied the man’s face, his square jaw, and the long, thin scar hidden beneath a thick, bushy eyebrow. He had small hands, and his skin was soft. His nails were well trimmed. He was definitely not a person who engaged in any kind of manual labor.

“Do you have any knowledge of what type of car Stephany drives and can you tell me if you drove it at any time?”

“I didn’t know that Stephany had a car, and furthermore, I have never driven a vehicle in Lima. When I arrived at the hotel tonight I asked the receptionist if Joran was in his room. She said he wasn’t there and that police were on their way because they found a dead woman in his room.

“What’s going on?” García demanded. “Was it Stephany Flores?”

“You tell me,” Callan fired back.