Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (36 page)

Casually dressed in a short-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans, Joran promises two young exotic dancers that he can help arrange jobs for them as dancers in the Netherlands. Joran acts crudely. He makes sexual gestures, sometimes gyrating his hips in imitation of a pole dancer. He tells the two Thai women that they can make $15,000 in a ten-hour day in the Netherlands. He pretends to be envious, saying he would happily shake his ass for that amount. Joran uses an alias, “Murphy Jenkins,” with the women. He presents them with official looking business cards imprinted with his phony name and line of business.

In the recording, Joran accepts 1,000 euros, about U.S.$1,300, from the women, promising the money is a down payment for their travel documents. The video ends with vague plans for another meeting soon.

Somehow, Joran learned that the “deal” had been staged by De Vries, and that the Thai women had really been exotic dancer impersonators for the sting. How the recruiting mission may have progressed could only be speculation. Nevertheless, the video was aired on Dutch TV in 2008.

Unlike De Vries’s Emmy award–winning documentation of Joran’s confession to Van der Eem, this video was coolly received and promptly criticized. Not only was De Vries admonished for his tactics in getting the story; but he was criticized for his “tabloidism,” his story airing only two months after Joran’s bogus confession to Van Susteren.

The Thai prostitution sting story did not get much play in the mainstream media. But the repercussions in the Rangsit community were substantial. Parents were concerned for the safety of their daughters, replaying their image of the Dutch monster trawling for sex slaves. Joran’s fellow students and compatriots were disgusted by his behavior, particularly his cashing in on the Holloways’ tragedy.

Parents and students mounted protests and in May 2009, Joran was officially asked to leave the university. His 1.31 GPA at the time certainly didn’t help his case.

Anita van der Sloot must have been devastated when she learned of her son’s expulsion. She and her husband had hoped Joran would be able to start on a successful path in Thailand, after his failure in Holland. They blamed De Vries and his obsession with Joran for the latest defeat.

Despite the animosity, Joran was unwilling to abandon Rangsit and Thailand. He used money from his brokered interviews to start a business, opening a coffee shop across the street from the university’s athletic center. He named the restaurant the SawadeeCup,
sawadee
being a greeting in Thailand similar to “aloha” in Hawaii.

The storefront was modern and sleek with floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, several tables occupied the brick sidewalk. Inside, the walls were painted a shiny white and accented with a bold orange stripe in the center. Joran had installed faux hardwood floors, which were impressively polished to a glass-like shine. Black metal chairs, tables and barstools made up the furniture in the front restaurant area. In the rear, a more comfortable lounge area featured a black leather couch with a matching swivel chair and a giant flat-screen TV. A desktop computer had been wired to an elaborate sound system to provide the acoustics. Tall CD racks helped separate the two areas, although the menu of sandwiches, pizza, fruit smoothies, ice cream, coffee drinks, and other light snacks could be enjoyed on either side.

Joran maintained a YouTube page featuring the restaurant. He used the site to upload and share videos as well as market his skills. On the homepage, after introducing himself as a poker player and entrepreneur, he offered poker lessons and an e-mail address for potential students.

“I like to think big and outside the box,” he claimed, adding that he was extremely left wing on the political spectrum.

His Web visitors learned that his musical tastes included rap, hip hop and reggaeton, mentioning Lil Wayne, Drake, and Young Money Crew. They also discovered that if he had to choose an animal that described him, it would be a snake. He aspired to be a lion—“I want to be a lion and one day I will be a lion,” he predicted. But for the time being, he was a snake.

Joran listed his passions as music, soccer, tennis, poker, nightlife, traveling, movies, and television. His favorite films were
Pulp Fiction
and
City of Ghosts
.
Californication, Entourage, Breaking Bad, CSI,
and
Law and Order
were his favorite television shows. He admitted that reading was not a passion, but listed
Ace on the River: An Advanced Poker Guide,
by Barry Greenstein as his favorite book.

He took a moment to reflect on his life’s journey. “I think there is a lesson to be learned in every path you decide to take in your life,” he wrote. “But one thing I am sure of is that you need to stand up for what you believe in and what you want to do and you will be successful in your life.”

By August, Joran was broke. Desperate for money, he decided to sit down with Jaap Amesz, the host of a Dutch reality television show, for an interview. Amesz was known for acting outrageously in public. His antics as a contestant on the popular Dutch TV show
The Golden Cage
had launched his career. In one scene on that show, the grossly overweight showboater allowed himself to be filmed naked and rolling in his own vomit. He went on to create his own reality hit,
Terror Jaap,
a Jerry Springer knockoff filled with tasteless shock-value acts featuring anyone from porn stars to anorexics.

In exchange for an interview, Jaap agreed to bail Joran out of his latest financial bind. Joran’s parents had stopped responding to his begging and he had no money. Although the restaurant initially paid for itself, Joran spent any profits recklessly.

Joran made a promise to Jaap, who was dressed in his signature baggy black suit, white collared shirt, and black fedora: Jaap would be receiving the complete story of what happened to Natalee Holloway, the absolute truth.

Joran arrived for the interview sporting a new scraggly beard and mustache. He wore a tidy red-striped polo shirt and nice jeans. His story was graphic: He and Natalee had gone to his friend’s house, she snorted cocaine, and then under the influence fell off the balcony to her death. After the unfortunate accident, he dumped her body in a swamp.

To prove he was telling the truth, Joran agreed to take a polygraph test. He was arrogant enough to believe that he would pass. The test and its results were also perfect props for
Terror Jaap
.

Joran appeared confident when he sat down across the table from Jaap to hear the results. He was dapper, dressed in a black-and-white V-neck sweater and black jeans. He listened intently to the results as the camera rolled. He was relaxed when results in his favor were revealed, namely that Natalee had fallen to her death and that his parents, Paulus and Anita van der Sloot, had played no role in her disappearance or subsequent cover-up.

However, he became infuriated at unfavorable findings. His responses to questions about the disposal site, whether or not Natalee’s body had been moved, and about his sneaker lost in the swamp, all showed signs of deception.

The TV host announced that Joran had failed the polygraph and Joran’s anger exploded. Dramatically, he sprang from his chair and hurled a glass of water he had been given to the floor, then stormed out of the studio.

*   *   *

In the fall of 2009, Joran met a beautiful blonde from southern California. The young woman was in her early twenties, slender and attractive, with long, silky hair and delicate features. Like Natalee Holloway, she looked like an all-American girl.

Joran’s new love interest was a graduate of a university in California and had come to Thailand to teach. Her course was a service-learning class combining classroom study and volunteer work. She was also an adviser to foreign students studying abroad.

After a short time together, Joran asked the young woman to move into his three-bedroom house with him. He seemed genuinely happy and in a solid relationship. He spoke fondly of his new girlfriend in conversations with his parents in phone calls over Skype. They rode motorbikes around town, took excursions to the white, sandy beaches of Thailand, and spent evenings at the bars and clubs of Bangkok, only forty-five minutes by cab from Rangsit.

But Joran’s gambling addiction worsened. Not only was he frequenting the casinos of Bangkok, he was gambling online with multiple accounts. Big wins were followed up by bigger losses, and Joran was in debt. He was constantly soliciting money from family and friends, concocting outlandish stories to explain his financial difficulty.

Sometimes, he was successful. When his parents had finally stopped funding him, he went to others on his A list before going to his B and C lists if necessary, desperately trawling for cash.

Eventually, Joran’s girlfriend grew weary of his lies and left him. By February 2010, he was alone and penniless, his coffee shop now failing miserably. Customers were complaining about the inconsistent hours and the lack of staples such as milk for coffee or bread for sandwiches.

He was no longer able to pay the $1,000 monthly rent on his apartment, and he was evicted. After his eviction, his landlady described his tenancy to a reporter from
People
magazine. She said he was boisterous, he frequently had late-night gatherings with too much booze and marijuana, and he had caused extensive damage to her property. Ultimately, an uncle in the Netherlands paid the cost for her repairs.

With no place to live, Joran moved into his coffee shop, still open but struggling.

That February, he received devastating news from Aruba. His father had died. Paulus had gone into cardiac arrest while playing tennis at Aruba’s Tierra del Sol Resort on Palm Beach. He was in the middle of a match when he collapsed on the court. Efforts to resuscitate the fifty-seven-year-old Van der Sloot were futile, and doctors pronounced him dead upon his arrival at the hospital.

Anita was overwhelmed and distraught. She managed to make arrangements to fly Paulus back to Arnhem, where he was cremated. Her three sons flew to Holland to be together and say good-bye to their father. He was remembered in a private memorial service protected from the media glare.

Paulus had died nearly penniless. Joran’s legal fees had drained the family’s bank account, his suspected involvement in the Holloway case had ravaged Paulus’s legal career, and his ruinous lifestyle had created so much stress and strain that Joran may have contributed to his father’s demise.

Joran’s younger brothers, Valentjin and Sebastian, had already distanced themselves from their notorious brother. They had witnessed their parents’ suffering on his behalf. They had watched his repeated, shameless sales of his story. They had seen him squander opportunities, always as the victim, and they disapproved.

In Arnhem for the memorial, Joran appeared to be inconsolable. His mother told a Dutch newspaper that he had cried nonstop for two days, and that he took the blame for his father’s sudden death. She described how he had even cried over the coffin.

“‘It’s my fault, Dad,’” Anita said Joran had whined, “‘I gave you the heart attack.’”

After his father’s death, Joran decided not to return to Thailand. He announced he was moving back to Aruba to be with his mother. He had always been close to her, sometimes parasitically. He telephoned her from all over the world to keep her from worrying, and in a calculated aside, would then ask her to bail him out of a mess.

Anita provided spiritual bailouts as well as financial ones. She was not a practicing Buddhist; however, she had adopted a Zen philosophy of life.

When Joran needed help, she offered uplifting messages about the power of positive thinking. She often suggested that Joran volunteer for those less fortunate to gain perspective about misery.

Although she thought Joran was spiritually wanting, she also strongly believed he was mentally ill and needed treatment. She suspected he suffered from bipolar disorder. She and her late husband had been aware of Joran’s gambling addiction, and knew that addiction and depression were frequent dual-diagnosis partners.

She could not commit Joran for treatment without his consent because he was an adult. He needed to take responsibility for his behavior.

Years of rescuing Joran had taken a toll on the family’s finances. The Van der Sloots had never been wealthy. But between legal fees and enabling Joran’s lifestyle, their full-time jobs were barely adequate. Their two younger children were now attending American universities and the Van der Sloots struggled to pay their household bills. Without Paulus’s salary, Anita had to take care of herself.

Joran made arrangements to sell the SawadeeCup for $12,000 and he returned to Aruba and moved back to his apartment behind the main house. To Anita, he seemed extremely depressed.

“He no longer laughs,” she told a Dutch reporter. “He even stopped playing poker.” Two months into his return, Anita thought he was improving after he managed to paint the family’s fence.

But Anita continued to worry. She had researched a mental health facility in the Netherlands and begged Joran to commit himself there. Much to her surprise, he agreed.

While Anita was making arrangements for her son’s in-patient treatment, Joran was making a deal of his own. On March 29, 2010, Joran began exchanging e-mails with a New York defense attorney, John Q. Kelly. He had represented Natalee’s parents, Beth and Dave, in the wrongful death suit they had filed against Joran in New York in 2006.

Kelly was a former prosecutor who earned a reputation as a star litigator. He had represented the estates of Nicole Brown Simpson, heiress Anne Scripps Douglas, and Kathleen Savio, the third wife of the infamous Drew Peterson, ex–police officer and convicted wife killer.

Although Kelly’s civil filing on behalf of the Holloways had been dismissed, he had remained an active spokesperson for the family. Over the years, he had appeared on cable news shows to weigh in on Joran’s various “admissions.”

Now, he found himself on the receiving end of one of Joran’s propositions. According to an FBI indictment filed in Birmingham, Alabama, Joran initiated the e-mail exchange, and during a series of correspondences, offered to share the circumstances of Natalee’s death, identify those involved, and show the lawyer her burial site. In exchange, he wanted Beth, now divorced from Jug Twitty, to pay him $250,000.