Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (29 page)

“I am of the opinion that my wage has nothing to do with this case. I am not going to answer questions about how much I make. I am angry. I have already agreed with my lawyer that I would no longer make any statements. I know I am innocent.”

Deepak made it clear that he only wanted to stick to the facts that he considered relevant to the case. He confirmed that he was at Joran’s apartment when his Dutch friend told the Holiday Inn story to his good friend Freddy Zedan. He also responded to questions about the route the men drove and confirmed that Joran had told him about leaving his sneakers behind at the beach during their 2:30
A.M.
phone call.

“Didn’t you find it strange that Joran left his shoes on the beach?” the detective asked.

“I did find it strange, but they were his shoes, so not my problem.”

“Didn’t you buy sneakers for someone at the Athlete’s Foot?”

“I bought sports shoes before the girl went missing. Can you tell me when it became a crime to buy sneakers?”

During the interrogation, detectives pointed to an online chat that Deepak had had with a friend after dropping Joran and Natalee at the beach on May 30. During the chat, Deepak told his friend that Natalee had put her hands down his pants. But that admission had never been repeated in any of his interviews with police and detectives wanted to know why.

“I did this to mess up the investigation,” Deepak claimed. “I wanted the police to focus on me and Joran because we were worried Satish would screw up the details regarding the Holiday Inn story. At that time, I was pretty sure that our telephone conversations were being recorded and that my computer was being monitored as well.

“Although this never happened, the story about the girl putting her hands down my pants, I’d like to know since when is this a crime? I repeat, this never happened, but my question to the district attorney is how is this considered a crime?”

“You’ve had Joran’s back from the beginning,” Burke said. “You agreed to go along with him on the story about dropping Natalee at the Holiday Inn. What do you have to say about all the lies that Joran is now telling us about you and Satish?”

Deepak explained that he had been willing to go along with the Holiday Inn story because Joran was his friend. But after learning that Joran was trying to implicate his brother and him, he changed his mind and decided to tell the truth.

“What do you think Joran meant when he said that he had left Natalee passed out on the beach?”

“I took it to mean that she had fallen asleep,” Deepak explained.

Officers next focused on the 3:45
A.M.
text message Joran had sent to Deepak that night saying that he was at home.

“What do you think Joran meant when he said, ‘thanks for waiting’?”

“He wanted to thank me for waiting online,” Deepak said. The group had a buddy system and checked in on each other to make sure they had made it home safely.

After reading the statement he had just given to police, Deepak refused to sign it, citing that his attorney wasn’t present as he had been in previous interviews.

The following day, detective Dennis Jacobs and his partner, Haydee Nadal, sat down with Deepak’s brother Satish at Oranjestad headquarters.

Satish had been implicated by Joran in his last statement to police. But as he sat in his chair at the interrogation table, he was unaware of his friend’s recent betrayal.

In his previous statement, Satish had expressed frustration with Joran. He hadn’t known that Freddy Zedan had been told that the Holiday Inn story had been revised.

He, Deepak, and Joran had formed a secret pact, and Joran had deviated from the plan when he told Freddy that the brothers had dropped Natalee and him at the beach next to the Marriot.

“I thought that stunk because I was not aware that Freddy was told the beach tale,” Satish said.

The younger Kalpoe admitted that even in the early days he thought Joran was lying about leaving Natalee sleeping on the beach. “He acted nervous when talking about it,” Satish recalled. “He kept avoiding eye contact and changing the subject back to the Holiday Inn cover story.”

Now, Satish regretted his decision to cover for a friend. “We had lied in the interest of Joran and now I sit locked up,” he said. “I have lied at the request of Joran and Deepak.”

“What do you think happened to Natalee Holloway?” Detective Jacobs asked.

Satish theorized, “I think Joran left her too close to the beach and she drowned.”

That same afternoon, detectives Erasmus and De Cuba interviewed Joran. This would be the Dutch teen’s thirteenth statement to police. The questioning got underway with a discussion about Joran’s schooling.

“I just finished my senior year at the International School,” Joran told the officers. “I have never failed any of my subjects. My last exam day was the day before my arrest and I passed everything. The police at the Noord station showed me my diploma.

“During the last school year, I have completed about thirty projects that were school related. The most recent reports were on government, economics and advanced placement English and calculus. Government and economics were about politics and the economy worldwide. Advanced placement English was about a book I had to read. Calculus is mathematics, for me the most difficult subject.

“On May 29, 2005, when Deepak and Satish stopped by my house, I was printing out my homework for school. It was a report about the book,
Life of Pi.
Pi is a boy lost at sea on a boat with a lion, monkey, and a zebra. Pi’s father works in a zoo. The boy must learn to save himself.

“That same evening I was working on government and economics.

“I complete most of the work on my own. I search for information via the Internet, library, and just things I already know by heart. The Internet info I usually find through Google or otherwise Ask Jeeves or the MSN.

“I use the computer quite a bit. At home we have a computer and a laptop. The laptop is usually in my brother’s room. My dad never helps me. His English isn’t too good. I am very self-reliant.

“My mother wants to string me along, but my dad just lets me figure it out. I think it’s because he’s from a family of ten children and had to figure it out for himself, too.

“My mother helps when it comes to arts and crafts.

“That Monday, May 30, I did go to school. I had testified before that I’d run late and that my dad had dropped me off near the Drive Inn so I could make the rest of the trip with the school bus. However, I was mistaken: that was on a Thursday, the day after my mother had gone to the Netherlands.

“Monday, May 30, about 6:45
A.M.
, I took the bus to school. I talked about this with my dad today and we’re a hundred percent certain that that is how it went. At 3:45
P.M.
the school bus brought me home.”

Joran was next asked about a condom that Rita, the family’s housekeeper of eight years, had supposedly found in the pocket of his pants. The officers did not indicate when the condom was found, but Joran acknowledged that Rita worked for the family and very well could have found a condom in his pants pocket while doing the family’s laundry.

“Rita is not a liar,” Joran said, “so it is entirely possible that she did.”

During the interview, Joran indicated that he had made a request to speak with a mental health professional. “While at the KIA prison, I asked if I could speak to a psychologist because I didn’t feel well,” he explained. “I have spoken to one in the past because I had lied so much.”

“Did you have anything to do with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway?” Detective Erasmus asked.

“The only thing I have to do with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway is that Deepak, Satish, and I were the last people to be with her, as far as I know, before she disappeared. Other than that, I have nothing to do with her disappearance.”

Joran went on to detail a dream he had while sleeping in his cell in the Noord Police Sation. “I dreamt that I was driving with her in a car to Las Vegas. We were laughing. She was laughing so hard.”

“Have you ever used drugs?”

“I have never used hard drugs before. By hard drugs I mean: cocaine, heroin, base, PCP.”

“Did you leave Natalee unconscious on the beach that night?”

“I didn’t leave the girl behind while she was unconscious. I had even lifted her up. Before leaving her behind at the beach, I lifted her up to carry her back to the hotel. She said she didn’t want to and asked me to stay with her. I just left her behind and didn’t look back to see whether or not she was sleeping.”

“Do you have any regrets about leaving Natalee on the beach?” one of the officers asked.

“At first I didn’t feel guilty about leaving her behind … I just assumed everything would be fine. She wasn’t yet missing. Now I regret having left her behind alone. If I had known this would happen, I never would have left her alone.”

“You’ve said in the past that you believe it’s possible that Deepak or Satish could have gone back for Natalee that night.”

“I don’t want to talk about that anymore. Before I had said that Deepak had said that he wanted to rape a girl. He was taking screen shots of a girl as she was talking to her boyfriend at the Internet café. I was angry with him that day, and walked out of the café angry. That’s why my thoughts went the way of thinking he might have gone back for her,” Joran claimed.

“Let’s get this straight: can you tell us who picked you up from the beach that night? Was it Deepak or Satish?”

“Satish is the one who picked me up,” Joran insisted.

On July 3, detectives Jacobs and Nadal sat down again with Satish. Police had again taken the younger Kalpoe to the beach by the Marriott so that he could retrace his and his brother’s steps on the night they supposedly dropped off Joran and Natalee. A police photographer documented Satish’s reconstruction.

Once back at police headquarters, the officers informed the younger Kalpoe that three new witnesses had come forward, three night fishermen, who were on the beach at the time that he and Deepak claimed to have dropped Joran and Natalee there.

“They did not see your brother’s silver Honda. Can you explain that?” Detective Jacobs posed.

“That’s because we parked Deepak’s car on the north side of the Marriott Hotel,” Satish asserted. “Joran and the missing girl immediately got out of the car and walked towards the beach. The three men couldn’t have seen Deepak and me because we didn’t go on the beach.”

“The fishermen said they didn’t see Joran and Natalee, either. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t tell you if Joran walked off in another direction after getting out of the car because Deepak and I drove away immediately.”

That afternoon, Satish’s brother, Deepak, was also questioned. Police wanted to know everything, each detail of dropping Joran and Natalee at the beach, what the weather was like, if his engine was still running, even the exact location where he claimed to have pulled off the road to take a leak. Investigators also asked if he had seen anyone else on the beach that night. Deepak said he hadn’t seen anyone.

Police also confronted Joran van der Sloot that day.

“You have informed me that you have various questions you’d like me to answer. I am going to exercise my right to silence,” he told detectives Erasmus and De Cuba that Sunday afternoon.

“Joran, we just need you to confirm a few things we have already discussed,” Detective De Cuba explained.

Joran and the two officers had just returned from a walk-through of the beach area where Joran claimed he had taken Natalee in the early morning hours of May 30.

The on-site tour had been an uncomfortable experience for Joran. Police had taken him onto a crowded beach in full daylight and forced him to walk between tourists as he performed his reenactment of his night with Natalee. One woman who had been sunning herself in a beach chair jumped up and ran away at the sight of him. Joran assumed she had been frightened because of his infamy. He was mortified when she returned a few minutes later with a camera and began snapping pictures of him. Other tourists on the beach were gawking and whispering, “Hey, there’s the guy who killed Natalee.”

Joran had been humiliated. He had been handcuffed, displayed, and mocked. He felt like a marionette on a string. He was furious that the police hadn’t done the walk-through in the evening when the beaches were empty. He was a public spectacle and convinced that the midday event had been orchestrated for the benefit of the American public to show that officials were taking Natalee’s disappearance seriously.

Deepak and Satish Kalpoe were also taken to the beach that Sunday afternoon. Their reenactment was carefully studied to compare it with Joran’s.

When Joran returned to the police station that afternoon, he was vindictive. He invoked his right to silence, except for answering the policemen’s questions with regard to the time line of May 29 into May 30.

“Natalee and I walked on the beach in the direction of the Holiday Inn, but we laid down on the beach in front of the Marriott Hotel. After that, we walked in the northern direction, with our feet in the water, towards the Fisherman’s Hut. I had left my shoes at the Marriott. We laid down in the sand behind the first cement hut of the Fisherman’s Hut.

“You ask if we engaged in sex there. Yes, a hand job and fingering. I stood behind the Hut to call Deepak. Because of the wind, I stood there in order to make myself audible. Deepak had said that he was having a hard time understanding me, that’s why I stood behind the hut. Natalee remained lying in the sand. I was able to see her.

“The time of the conversation with Deepak was 2:26
A.M.
I know this because I was confronted with the information during my detention. The conversation lasted eight minutes.

“After the phone call, Satish came and picked me up. That happened within a half hour after the call.

“I heard Deepak’s gray Honda approaching from a distance, so I walked out to the asphalt road. At the car, I realized it was Satish driving.

“The night of May 29 to 30, 2005, was clear and unclouded. The stars were visible. There was wind, but nothing out of the ordinary. I didn’t pay attention to the direction of the wind, or whether or not it was especially hard or soft.