Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (27 page)

As far as Chilean immigration was concerned, he was an undesirable whose only real purpose for entering the country was to escape murder charges in Peru. Despite being informed that he was under no obligation to speak, Joran announced to the investigators that he wanted to make a statement, in English, so there would be no misunderstanding.

He was innocent, he insisted, and wanted authorities to know what had really happened in Lima. Just after 9:00
P.M.
that Thursday evening, Joran sat down with Chilean detectives. For the next several hours, he spun a fantastic tale about meeting Stephany Flores and how the two had fallen victim to a pair of con artists posing as members of the Peruvian National Police.

“I am a professional poker player,” Joran said. He explained that he gambled mostly online, but had participated in tournaments around the world. “It was going to be my first time in the Latin American Poker Tournament in Lima and I did not get to play.”

Joran told the officers that his reason for the journey from Aruba to Peru on May 12 was for the tournament.

Unfortunately for Joran, investigators examining his worn, brown Dutch passport noted the Peruvian entry visa was actually dated on May 14. The date was the first of his many lies.

Calmly, Joran explained to his interpreter that after flying into Lima he had checked into the Hotel Tac, which he described as a three-star hotel, in Miraflores, not far from the Atlantic City Casino. “My room was number 309 and it was fifty soles a day. I paid in cash and in advance. I stayed there for two weeks.”

Chilean detectives kept closemouthed about what they already knew. Captain Juan Callan, the Harley-Davidson-riding homicide detective in Peru, had updated them with the latest developments in Lima. He had given them the witness statements from staff at the Hotel Tac, confirming that Joran had entered Room 309 with Stephany Flores in the early morning hours. He had likely committed an act of premeditated murder before fleeing the scene in the victim’s SUV. Callan had also included a brutal blow-by-blow account of the injuries the young woman had sustained. He had apprised them of Joran’s known movements during the previous five years, including his suspected involvement in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba.

Joran told detectives that he had not had any problems with immigration or airport security when he had flown into Peru, even though he claimed to be carrying $25,000 on his person when he stepped off the Avianca flight at Lima’s Jorge Chávez International Airport. “That’s the typical amount I carry with me when I go to participate in a poker tournament,” he claimed.

“I stayed almost all nights in the casino, sleeping during the day, eating at a restaurant and mostly playing poker. This is where I met this girl, Stephany. She sat at the table and right away she started talking to me. She wanted me to teach her to play. She told me her father had money, and that she was studying, and that she was not interested in guys.”

Joran said he could not remember Stephany’s exact age, but estimated she was between twenty and twenty-two years old. “We mostly spoke about poker.”

He was vague about where and when he had met her but had a clear memory of a terrifying incident in which he and Stephany were brutalized by Peruvian cops. He claimed that the two were on their way to a casino in Miraflores when they were stopped by two men traveling in a white car. The men were wearing police uniforms and badges, and both Joran and Stephany had assumed they were cops.

Stephany pulled over to the side of the road and the two assailants demanded money, Joran recalled. “They said, ‘Give us the cash, or else!’

“I offered them $1,000 and they laughed. I then offered $4,000 and they agreed. Then one of them told me to give him something as a souvenir, so I gave him one of my bracelets that I brought from Thailand and they let us go.”

Joran described the men as “dark skinned,” and said they spoke only Spanish. “It is hard for me to provide an exact description of their uniforms.

“One of the men was younger than the other,” he added.

Most tourists reported assaults and robberies to their embassies, but Joran claimed that at such an early hour the office would have been closed. His only desire was to find a cup of coffee and go to his hotel room with Stephany, forgetting about the assault.

He said he purchased some coffee at a place called Holly’s Coffee, around the corner from his hotel, then headed up to his room with Stephany to play some poker online.

“I can’t say what time it was, but the sun was rising and we entered the hotel through the lobby. We took the elevator to the third floor where my room was.”

Joran told the Chilean investigators that he and Stephany weren’t even safe once they were inside Room 309. “A man came out of the bathroom, holding a knife in his hand, and blocked the exit. Another man with a pistol in his belt was on the bed.

“The man with the knife told me to ‘Shut up,’ but Stephany yelled out and the man with the knife punched her in the face, causing her nose to bleed. Then the man with the gun said that they only wanted money.”

Joran described how he had scanned the room and realized the intruders had already rifled through his luggage. Clothing was strewn everywhere. They had clearly been looking for money. “I told them that I had no money, but that I could go to an ATM to get some.

“Stephany kept asking ‘Why is this happening?’” Joran recalled. “Her nose continued to bleed. When I offered to pick up the money, they agreed, but the man with the pistol said that I should remember that they had Stephany.”

Joran said he was certain the man with the pistol was one of the police assailants who had robbed them on the roadside. He was also sure that the one with the gun was in charge because he did all of the talking, while his partner stood holding up the knife.

“I left the room, went downstairs and exited the hotel without speaking to anybody. I did not want to go to the authorities because of my previous experience with the police.

“I went to Stephany’s car and thought about fleeing, but then I decided to come back.”

Joran admitted that he had lied to the dirty cops who were holding Stephany hostage about needing to find an ATM. “I did not need to go to the ATM machine because I was carrying $20,000,” he claimed. After being robbed of $4,000, that was all the money he had left.

When he returned to the Hotel Tac from his ATM run, Joran said he realized he had left his room key upstairs. Stopping by the reception, he tried to remain composed, asking the uniformed man at the front desk for a spare. The man was a member of the housekeeping staff. He agreed to escort Joran to the third floor, where he handed him the key and walked away.

Joran described how he knocked on the hotel room door several times. No one answered so he let himself in using the key he had just been given by the hotel employee.

“The man with the pistol was very angry with Stephany and was covering her mouth with his hand,” Joran continued. “And he was angry with me for coming back into the room without giving him a warning.”

Unsure of where this frightening experience was heading, Joran said he handed the crooked policeman a wad of cash. “I gave him $10,000 and hoped that would have closed the deal.”

Joran had assumed that he and Stephany would be released. But the men demanded more money. “I told them that I could get more money so I went downstairs again, but the woman at the front desk told me I needed to move Stephany’s car.”

Stephany had left her black Jeep parked in front of the hotel lobby, and Joran’s dilemma intensified. He did not want to leave her car to get towed or ticketed, but to move her car he would need her keys, and they were back in Room 309.

Back upstairs he went to borrow the keys. But Stephany’s captors were now furious. Why had he come back empty-handed? He hadn’t brought the money.

Joran said the men began shouting at Stephany in Spanish, but they were speaking so quickly he could not make out what they were saying. “They told me to gather my things and go. Go back to my country and speak to no one!”

He shoved his personal belongings into two bags. In his haste, he had to leave a lot of things behind, mostly clothing. But he had to follow the armed thugs’ directive. He closed the door and fled, leaving his abandoned property, his two assailants, and Stephany in the room.

Before departing, Joran said that Stephany handed him the keys to her Jeep. He wanted to park her car safely. He described driving around for several minutes before realizing he didn’t know his way around the city and abandoned the Jeep several blocks from the hotel. He then flagged down a cab and headed for the airport. Joran said he didn’t call the police because the assailants were members of law enforcement and he was scared.

The events of Room 309 that May morning were recounted in Joran’s words and presented by him voluntarily. Chilean authorities were not interested in interrogating him, only getting him out of their country. Maybe he thought this would be his best chance for a sympathetic audience; nonetheless, he had thoroughly mastered the art of spinning himself as a victim. In his rendition, he himself had barely escaped with his life. When he minimized his role in Stephany’s brutal murder by “confessing” to telling the captors a lie—that he had needed an ATM to withdraw the ransom when in “truth” he had thousands in concealed cash—the story became absurd.

His tale of woe continued. Although he had purchased a roundtrip ticket from Aruba, he wanted to change the reservation and book a flight to Argentina instead. Unfortunately, he claimed, when he arrived at the airport a reservation agent told him he couldn’t book a seat on a flight until the following day.

Frustrated, he left the terminal, flagged down a taxi driver and asked him to drive him to Chile, some nine hundred miles away. The driver had politely declined and instead drove him to the bus terminal.

“When I arrived, there were no express busses to Chile, but only local busses.” He then walked outside where another cabbie agreed to take him to Ica, Peru, for $500.

Never mentioning the Pisconte twins or Carlos Euribe, Joran told Chilean investigators that in Ica he was able to arrange private taxi service with another driver to the Chilean border for an additional $500.

After crossing the border in Santa Rosa, Joran said he stayed in a small hotel in Arica. “I do not remember its name or location, only that it was a five-minute walk from McDonald’s.”

He claimed that after spending the night in Arica, he took a bus to Antofagasta, a mining town more than eight hundred miles north of the Chilean capital of Santiago. From there, he caught a flight on PAL Airlines, arriving in Santiago on June 2.

After landing in Santiago, Joran said he reached out to a poker buddy to let him know he was in town. “I don’t remember his name. He told me I could stay in his home and after we had a couple of drinks I spent the night, but first I did a little sightseeing in Santiago.”

Despite being a friend, Joran claimed his host had taken advantage of his situation. “The man charged me for the night,” he complained.

The following morning, Joran wanted to do a little gambling in Santiago before he went to Viña del Mar by public bus. He took a taxi from his friend’s house to the Monticello Grand Casino, a 700,000-square-foot property with a hotel, seven restaurants, and one hundred table games. But the casino was closed, having sustained considerable damage in the big quake.

Before leaving for Viña del Mar for a one-night gambling stand, he logged on to his laptop and learned about Stephany’s fate.

“In the morning, after checking my e-mail, I learned what had happened to Stephany. I got in touch with my mother and she told me to speak with the authorities to resolve this matter.”

Joran’s arrogance was mind-blowing. Authorities had captured him crouching in the back of a cab with as substantial a makeover as he could manage on the run, and now he was claiming to have turned himself in voluntarily on the advice of his mother.

True, Joran had phoned his mother the previous day while on the run in Chile. Anita was already beside herself when her son called. He had telephoned her several days earlier from Peru claiming to have been the victim of a police kidnapping. Joran had sounded scared, almost manic. He described meeting a young woman in Lima and claimed they had been kidnapped and robbed by two Peruvian men who were posing as police officers. The assailants had shown them a photograph of Natalee Holloway during the terrifying ordeal.

Over the years, Anita had grown accustomed to her son’s fantastic tales and bouts of paranoia. This wasn’t the first time he had called home with such an incredible story. Joran could be sweet and loving. But more often the impetus for his phone calls was money. He was always broke. And he always had a tale of woe: his wallet was stolen; someone had broken into his apartment; he had a gambling debt and there were people after him. The stories were endless. Anita was never sure when he was telling the truth.

When Joran called her back on June 2, he claimed that he was in a taxi traveling south to Chile. He sounded scared. By then, Anita had heard the news broadcasts about the dead woman found in his hotel room. The story was unbelievable. The young woman had been murdered on May 30, the five-year anniversary of Natalee Holloway’s disappearance. Anita was in disbelief. To have such a coincidence seemed impossible. Someone was trying to frame her son.

“Joran, there is an international warrant out for your arrest,” Anita said. “A girl has died.”

There was a long silence.

“A girl dead?” Joran repeated. “It’s not Stephany, is it? No, not Stephany!”

Anita had urged her son to go to the nearest police station and surrender.

Now, sitting before the Chilean police officers, Joran was insisting that he had been trying to follow his mother’s instructions and was en route to a police station when he was apprehended at the toll plaza in Curacaví.

“I said to a cabdriver that I wanted to go to the police and I explained the problem. He said that he had a relative who was a police officer. It was through him that I arrived here after he met us at the tollbooth on the way back to Santiago,” Joran explained.