Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (19 page)

“My name is Bolo,” he said, using his nickname.

“I’m Deepak.”

“What are you in for, man?”

“I was picked up for the missing girl.”

Mickey was a strong believer in good versus evil and he was convinced there was only one truth. Here in jail, he held fast to his faith, knowing the good suffer, but goodness always prevails. Somehow he felt relief from his suffering when the stranger arrived with a connection to the case.

The new inmate was Deepak Kalpoe.

That Thursday morning, June 9, two separate and simultaneous raids had taken place, one at the home of Joran van der Sloot and the other at the Kalpoe brothers’ residence. At 5:30
A.M.
, police had arrived at the door of the Van der Sloots. Joran’s mother hurried to the guesthouse to wake Joran. “Joran, the police are here to arrest you,” Anita told her still groggy son.

Ironically, this was Joran’s graduation day, liberation day for most teenagers. But there would be no pomp and circumstance, no ceremony. Joran’s college plans, his entire future would have to be put on hold. Standing in the doorway behind his mother were five police officers and Aruba’s attorney general, Karin Janssen. One of the officers had begun reciting his rights as a detainee. Unsure of what to do, Joran held his hands out in front of him, expecting to be handcuffed. He was told that he could brush his teeth and change his clothes before they put the cuffs on.

“You should put a towel over your head,” an officer advised. “There’s a lot of media outside.”

“Don’t worry, Mom, everything will be all right,” Joran told his mother before emerging from the house with a blue-and-green-striped towel draped over his head.

Across the island in Hooiberg, officers were handcuffing Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. All three young men were brought to the central police station in Oranjestad. Joran did not remove the towel from his face during the twenty-minute ride in the back of the police car to the central booking facility in Oranjestad. The three-story, yellow-and-blue art deco building was on Wilhelmina Street, a narrow, one-way road with pink-and-white tile sidewalks about two blocks from City Hall. Deepak’s silver Honda was impounded and computers and other evidence from both homes were seized.

Joran was led into the building in handcuffs through a back door and brought to a rear holding area with twelve empty cells. Officers removed his handcuffs and placed him in Cell 1, a small concrete cell with a hole in the floor for a toilet. On his way to what he thought was going to be an interrogation room, Joran passed his friend, Satish.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered to his Surinamese co-conspirator. “Just stick to your story and they will have to let us go in ten days.” Joran was not interrogated that day. Instead he was transferred to another holding facility at the Noord Police Station, where security guard Abraham Jones was also being held.

Police opted to detain Deepak in the Sint Nicolaas facility. Perhaps they thought isolating him from the other two would encourage him to snitch. Whatever the reason, there he was, one cell wall away from Mickey.

Mickey John later claimed God had played a hand in the seemingly random cell assignment, giving him the opportunity to save himself. But on a human level, his ingenuity was pure brilliance. That afternoon, he launched his own private investigation of Deepak.

“Tell me the truth,” John asked Deepak in a casual tone. “You saw the guys in the news.”

John knew that he was one of the two “dark-skinned” security guards that the Van der Sloot-Kalpoe trio had implicated in Natalee’s disappearance. He also knew that Deepak was unaware he was housed next to the man he had so cruelly implicated in Natalee’s disappearance, and that they were now jail mates. Mickey John was at liberty to ask questions anonymously.

“You saw the guys in the news. Where do you think they are from?”

“I’ve heard one of them is from Grenada,” Deepak responded.

John was from Grenada and knew Deepak was talking about him. He continued his probe. For the next couple of hours, John sang his favorite Rasta songs and spoke in a thick Caribbean accent, convincingly acting Jamaican. Deepak had no reason to withhold information from his new friend.

Deepak confessed that the story about dropping the girl at the Holiday Inn and leaving her talking with the black security guard was not true. He said that he, the Dutch guy, and the Dutch guy’s father had concocted the story, believing that Natalee would resurface in a couple of days.

Deepak explained to John what
really
happened that night. They drove to the lighthouse, and he and his brother dropped Joran and Natalee at the public, more deserted beach next to the Marriott Hotel and he and Satish went home. Deepak continued that when he got home, he went on his computer to chat with some friends. At some point, he received a cell phone message from Joran, saying that when he got home he would chat with him online.

From what Deepak was saying, the Dutch guy was the last person with Natalee Holloway that night. He also took notice that Deepak was strangely calm for someone who was being questioned in such a serious crime. He was so quiet that John was compelled to periodically check on his well-being. “Are you okay, Deepak?” he yelled to the man in the adjacent cell.

“I’m fine,” was always his answer.

When he was confident that he had extracted all the important information from Deepak, John decided it was time for a proper introduction.

“Hey man, it’s me,” John said, smiling, pausing outside Deepak’s cell on his way to a lawyer’s meeting.

Deepak looked out at him through the bars.

“I am the security guard from Grenada,” the black man in Cell 20 said with a wink.

For a moment, Deepak stood dumbfounded as he processed what he had just been told. The man he believed was from Jamaica was actually the innocent scapegoat of his false and callous incrimination.

“I’m sorry, man,” Deepak pleaded. “You shouldn’t be here. I lied and you are here because of my lie.”

Months later, Mickey John still felt pain, referring to Deepak as an “evil man.” “He did not tell the truth, and because of that I was arrested. He and his friends don’t care about a poor black man,” he lamented, referring to their ability to use and discard him. But, true to his faith, goodness had prevailed.

John immediately told the police detaining him what he had learned from his Surinamese jail mate. His clever interrogation had accomplished what police had been unable to do. Now, this new version of events pointed all suspicion to Joran van der Sloot.

*   *   *

Just after noon on June 11, Deepak Kalpoe sat down with investigators at police headquarters in Oranjestad for the fourth time since Natalee’s disappearance. Faced with his jailhouse admissions to Mickey John, Deepak acknowledged that he had misled investigators from the start. What had started out as a small lie, covering for a friend, had snowballed into a full-blown crime, interfering with a police investigation.

Still, he seemed to be relieved. Deepak Kalpoe and Mickey John sat together in an interrogation room as Deepak disposed of his lie, admitting that the idea to point suspicion at a security guard had been his idea. He had never seen John before arriving at the Sint Nicolaas jail, he said, and signed a statement to that effect. Once more, he apologized to him directly for his trouble.

“I am now willing to make a statement that is in accordance with the truth,” Deepak told sergeants Burke and Kelly. “Several details were missing from my last statement. I am now going to tell you exactly what happened that night.”

For the next several hours, Deepak revised his events of May 30. Just a day earlier, he had provided police with an alibi witness, a party boat disc jockey named Steve Croes, who he claimed had witnessed the three young men dropping Natalee at the Holiday Inn in the early morning hours of May 30. He had even provided police with a phone number for Croes, who he said was a customer of the Internet café where he worked in downtown Oranjestad.

Now, just twenty-four hours later, Deepak was offering detectives Burke and Kelly a radically different version of the events of Monday, May 30. He confirmed that he and Satish had, indeed, driven around the island with Joran and Natalee in the backseat. But they had not dropped her off at the Holiday Inn, as he had earlier insisted. He also confessed that Natalee was not as drunk as he and the others had described her.

“She danced beautifully,” Deepak recalled. “I lied in my previous statement about her being unsteady on her feet when she stepped off the stage at Carlos’n Charlie’s. The truth is, she had a steady walk, and in my opinion she was reasonably with it.”

Once the three locals and Natalee were underway in Deepak’s car, he said that Satish popped a pornographic movie into the DVD system. “The girl said in English, ‘Oh my God, what’s that?’” Turning to Joran, Deepak said in English, “Now she is going to think that we’re perverts.”

It was Joran who finally told Satish to turn off the video. “She’s had enough of it,” Joran said.

Deepak told the detectives that on the way to the lighthouse he pulled the car off the road so that he could relieve himself near Arashi Beach, before continuing north on L. G. Smith Boulevard. He had seen Joran and Natalee kissing, but admitted that he had lied in earlier statements about the rest. “I did not see Joran put his hand up the girl’s skirt,” he admitted.

Driving on a darkened stretch of L. G. Smith Boulevard near the Marriott Hotel, Deepak said he asked Joran if they should head back into town. Joran said no, to just let him out of the car there. Deepak pulled into a beach parking area and watched as Joran and Natalee got out together. He said he asked his friend how he was planning on getting home.

“I’ll just walk,” Joran replied, saying he and Natalee could stroll down the beach in the moonlight and he would drop her off at the Holiday Inn.

Deepak said that he and Satish saw Joran and Natalee walking in the direction of the beach holding hands. After that, they drove home. Satish went to bed immediately, but Deepak logged on to his MSN account and chatted with a friend. He told his chat mate that he had just dropped Joran and an American girl off at the beach and was waiting up to make sure Joran made it home okay. The group had a buddy system, and he was expecting Joran to call.

Around 3:00
A.M.
, Joran phoned and said he was still walking home. “You see, if you had stayed with me you could have gotten a ride home,” Deepak said. He asked his friend if he’d hooked up with the girl.

“No, man, we just went into the water,” Joran said, adding that Natalee fell asleep on the beach and he left her there.

“What do you mean you left her sleeping on the beach?” Deepak demanded. He told investigators that the idea of leaving a young woman alone and vulnerable on a darkened beach had made him angry.

“Yeah, well, I’m walking home barefoot,” Joran continued. He told his friend that he had left his sneakers on the beach.

“You’re not making any sense,” Deepak said. The entire call was disturbing. Deepak thought this story sounded wrong. “I want you to call me as soon as you get home. I’m not going to sleep until I hear from you.”

While he was in the bathroom, Deepak said, he received an online message from Joran saying he’d arrived home, thanks for waiting, and he’d see him tomorrow. At least he’s home, Deepak had thought before climbing into bed.

The following evening around midnight, Deepak said he hooked up with Joran at the casino inside the Radisson Aruba Resort and Casino on Palm Beach. Joran was playing poker with two friends, Guido and Andre, when Deepak arrived. Not much of a player himself, Deepak took a chair and watched his friends play. Joran, he said, seemed pretty drunk, even belligerent.

At one point, Joran got into a heated argument with a tourist about cheating. The tourist thought Joran was working in concert with Deepak, Guido, and Andre to swindle him at the poker table. To avoid a full-blown fight, the three friends dragged Joran out of the casino. Guido and Andre went home, but Joran wanted to keep playing cards.

Deepak said the two climbed into his silver Honda and headed to the casino at the Wyndham Hotel to play some blackjack. While pulling into the parking lot of the Wyndham, Joran received the angry call from his father about the Americans camped out in front of the house.

“After the conversation, Joran said to me that it had been his father calling and that there were police at his house,” Deepak recounted for the detectives.

Joran told him it was about Natalee. She was missing. Despite being told by his father to stay at the Wyndham, Joran and Deepak drove to the Van der Sloot home.

“‘What the fuck is wrong with that bitch?’” Deepak related that Joran said, referring to Natalee. “Then he said to me that if police asked any questions we should say the following: That we left together with the girl when we departed Carlos’n Charlie’s; that we drove around; that Joran had kissed and fingered her; that she fell asleep in the car; and that we had returned her to the hotel.”

Joran realized he only had a few minutes to come up with a story, with Deepak and Satish as his alibi. Deepak admitted that Joran had heard his father when he told him to wait at the Wyndham, but had disregarded his instruction. He said he and Joran were still in the parking lot preparing to go into the casino when the call came. Joran insisted to Deepak they drive back to Montanja Street rather than wait for his father and the police. He didn’t want the embarrassment of a confrontation in a public place. Also, he needed time to craft a story and make sure Deepak was on the same page prior to any questioning by police.

Deepak described Joran ordering “get your brother on the phone” as they pulled up to his house.

Deepak said that he then told Satish exactly what he was supposed to say if anyone tried to question him. The two men came up with the idea about directing suspicion toward a security guard
after
the confrontation in front of the Van der Sloot home.

“Be sure that Satish adds that piece to his story,” Deepak recalled Joran telling him.