Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (34 page)

Again, all three suspects, on advice of their counsel, refused to discuss the evidence. Ultimately, the judge hearing the case ruled that the recorded chat, while damaging, was not evidence enough to justify further detention and Joran, Deepak, and Satish were once again released.

*   *   *

Soon, Joran returned to the Netherlands and the casinos of Nijmegen. His father suggested a stint of missionary work in Africa, thinking such altruism would help his image as well as curb his sense of entitlement, but the idea was not pursued. Joran was cocky and confident after his latest legal victory. A chance encounter with a true self-styled “gangster” named Patrick Paul van der Eem was affirmation of his winning ways.

Patrick Paul van der Eem was a thirty-five-year-old native of Curaçao who had two drug convictions and carried himself like a brute from a
Dick Tracy
comic book. He looked like a rogue the mob would send to “have a talk” with a gambler who had welshed on a large bet. Van der Eem was muscular, stocky, and had a large scar that extended from the side of his mouth up through his left cheek. In criminal circles, the scar is called a “smiley,” the mark of a snitch. He bragged that he had gotten his
boca grande
(big mouth) years earlier for talking too much, but didn’t elaborate. He wore it like a badge of honor.

“Hey,
matón,
” Van der Eem said, using the Papiamento word for “murderer,” when he spotted Joran in a casino in Nijmegen in the fall of 2007.

Joran smiled. The guy was a ruffian
and
he spoke in Papiamento. Despite the derogatory reference, the former Papiamento pimp liked him immediately and they became quick friends.

Or, rather, they were two Dutch Caribbean compadres with similar interests, outcast gamblers in the Old World, speaking Papiamento on the side. Van der Eem later claimed he knew that he was going to befriend Joran the moment he saw him. He recognized him from his infamy. However, he befriended him for justice.

For seven months, Van der Eem and Van der Sloot spent hours together and built a trust. They partied, gambled, hung out, shared stories, and on occasion, they shared drugs. Van der Eem wanted Joran to trust him enough to confess what had happened to Natalee, motivated by no particular agenda of his own.

When the opportunity seemed right, he contacted Peter de Vries, the television reporter and Joran’s bane. He had a proposition. He knew De Vries from his coverage of the Holloway case, and he offered himself as a double agent in the “confession” plot.

The Dutch reporter was thrilled to be in on the undercover scheme. Joran hanging himself with his own words would finally lead to justice for Natalee.

Together, he and Van der Eem rigged the gangster’s Range Rover with an array of hidden cameras and microphones. On a night when Joran and his Papiamento pal were out cruising the town and sharing a joint, the plan was activated and the tapes and cameras started to record.

Joran told his scar-faced friend what many believe to be his honest confession of what had happened the night Natalee disappeared. Joran said that he and Natalee had been having sex on the beach when Natalee suddenly suffered a seizure. She was unconscious and when she didn’t come around, he panicked, Joran said.

His attempts to revive Natalee failed. “I tried to shake her, I was shaking the bitch. I was like ‘What is wrong with you, man?’ I almost wanted to cry,” Joran told Van der Eem. “Why does this shit have to happen to me?”

Joran claimed that Natalee died in his arms. Instead of calling for help, however, Joran said he found a payphone on the beach and summoned a friend with a boat. Natalee’s body, he claimed, had been dumped at sea.

“How do you know she was dead, Joran?”

Joran shrugged his shoulders, and said he just knew. “Patrick, I had absolutely no bad feelings about it. I have not lost one night of sleep over it.

“I think that I am incredibly lucky that she has never been found because if she had been found I would be in deep shit.”

Van der Eem gave the recordings to Peter de Vries and on February 3, 2008, De Vries aired them to more than seven million viewers, the highest-rated news broadcast in Dutch television history. The footage was stunning, Joran completely unaware he was being recorded, sitting in the passenger seat comfortably toking a joint. His confession was chilling, methodical, emotionless, and shockingly succinct.

De Vries’s broadcast was recognized for its brilliance with the International Emmy Award for Best Current Affairs Program. (In September 2008, Natalee’s mother joined De Vries in Manhattan to attend the awards ceremony, where he dedicated the Emmy to the memory of Natalee Holloway.)

Prosecutors in Aruba added the secretly recorded confession to their growing case against Joran van der Sloot. Unfortunately, however disturbing, the tape in and of itself was not enough to warrant another arrest. It was not a sworn confession, it might not be admissible in a court proceeding, and none of the claims that Joran had specified could be verified.

Police couldn’t confirm the call Joran had supposedly made from a payphone or the boat driver that he claimed to have found on short notice in the middle of the night. However, the tape provoked outrage against Joran in Holland and he no longer considered his homeland to be a safe harbor.

He had already quit the university because of his poor grades. With no reason to stay, he briefly checked himself into a psychiatric hospital before fleeing to Thailand.

TWENTY-ONE

BANGKOK, THAILAND
JULY 2008

Rangsit University, where Joran again found himself studying international business, is located in Muang Ake, a small suburb about twenty miles north of Bangkok.

Rangsit was a college town, with narrow, congested streets filled equally with mopeds and cars. Lush, tropical vegetation surrounded beautiful town houses painted in pastel shades of pink, yellow, and white. Traditional Buddhist temples were flanked by modern amenities; 7-Eleven stores seemed anchored on every block. The air was hot; the humidity was relieved by brief, welcome sun showers.

The campus of Rangsit University sprawled through town much in the style of a large, American university. Two bustling open-air markets catered to townspeople and students alike. During the day, vendors sold trinkets, clothing, colorful Thai silks, and aromatic treats from pushcarts and small collapsible stands. At night, when the heat had subsided, students shopped for strings of jasmine flowers and inexpensive edibles—sweet corn, grilled seafood, and green papaya salad.

Joran’s parents had arranged his enrollment at Rangsit University, a private institution accredited in 1990 that has a reciprocal exchange program with a Dutch university. The situation seemed ideal. Inside the very large student body of 25,000, he would have anonymity; in the subcommunity of Dutch students and compatriots, he would have familiarity.

More than three years after Natalee Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba, Joran still generated enormous ratings for American true-crime programs. His notoriety was so desirable to American news programs that he always had a market. Even though he had just been burned by Peter de Vries and his double-crossing friend, Patrick van der Eem, if he needed money, marketing a story was always an option.

When he contacted Fox’s Greta Van Susteren in the summer of 2008, he told the cable TV host that he had stunning details, never before revealed.

With titillating clues, he claimed that he had sold poor Natalee into sexual slavery. He had traded her to a man he had met in a casino on Aruba’s Palm Beach strip for $10,000. Joran insisted he hadn’t hurt the blond beauty, but had merely delivered her to a waiting cigarette boat destined for Venezuela, presumably to work in a brothel.

He claimed to have the paperwork in his possession that would prove it. He had wire transfer records documenting that the slave trader had paid him an additional $10,000 once the case exploded in the news, just to keep him quiet.

Joran said he would include a bonus, a “licensed” tape recording of conversations between his father and him on Skype. He said the calls contained evidence that the elder Van der Sloot knew about Natalee’s fate and had paid off two Aruban police officers to cooperate.

Joran’s story was dubious, but Greta dispatched field producers Steph Watts and Cory Howard to Thailand to gauge its credibility nonetheless.

After collecting their luggage and cameras at the airport, the two checked into the Mandarin Oriental, a five-star hotel on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. They had flown to this city of more than nine million with one goal in mind—to investigate Joran’s pitch. If it looked promising, they had instructions to close the deal for an “exclusive” interview with Van Susteren.

The producers’ initial contact with Joran was by e-mail. They had offered to meet the Dutchman in Rangsit, but Joran had not wanted to disclose his address. Instead, he told Steph he would call him at the Mandarin when he arrived in Bangkok.

Steph, a forty-year-old Canadian with silvery-blond hair and piercing blue eyes, had been working as a field producer for Greta van Susteren’s
On the Record
since 2006. This was not his first assignment on the Natalee Holloway case. He had covered the story extensively for the
Nancy Grace
show on CNN’s Headline News when it first broke in June 2005. Over the years, he had come to know both Beth Twitty and Dave Holloway personally. But this would be his first time meeting Joran.

Van Susteren, on the other hand, had developed a respectful relationship with Joran since his release from Aruba’s KIA prison in September 2005. She had been the first to sit down with Beth Twitty and Joran’s parents in Aruba in June 2005, and for a time had broadcast her show from the Caribbean island. In the spring of 2006, she had traveled back to Aruba to conduct a lengthy one-on-one interview with Joran that she touted as “unedited,” meaning no content had been taken out. Greta had been tough on Joran, but she was always fair.

Once in Bangkok, Steph was unable to reach Joran and grew worried. After numerous e-mails, he got a response. Still, Joran was cagey and evasive before finally agreeing to meet.

The first conversation between Joran and Steph took place in the Mandarin’s luxurious lobby amid breathtaking arrangements of exotic flowers. Steph had been summoned to the lobby by Joran in order to pay his irritated cabdriver. Joran was unable to pay the man himself, he said, because he was broke. That Joran was so desperate for money made Steph uneasy.

Joran was not the character Steph had expected. He was pudgy and unshaven, and was dressed like a tourist in shorts and a baseball cap. In spite of his grungy appearance, Joran was tall, handsome, and charming. His English, coated in a thick Dutch accent, was almost fluent.

Originally, Joran told Steph that he wanted $25,000 for just the documents supporting his story about selling Natalee as a sex slave. He said the price tag was justified because he himself was the provenance of the material. Greta, however, wanted to create interest in the story with an actual interview with Joran, a proposition he heartily resisted. Finally, after backing out several times, he agreed to include an interview. He grew agitated when he learned that Steph had come to Bangkok without any money and he was going to have to wait for a wire transfer from the States in order to provide Joran with $10,000, the first installment of his $25,000 “licensing” fee. Steph explained that $5,000 was the maximum amount allowable per day via wire transfer, and after some discussion, the two set off in a rickshaw, known locally as a tuk-tuk, for the Western Union office closest to the Mandarin Hotel to collect it.

Joran paced outside while Steph went inside to sign for the funds. He puffed on a cheap, locally made cigarette, rather than his preferred Marlboro Reds.

When Steph emerged, the two walked back to the hotel. Safely in Steph’s room, Joran sat on the edge of the queen-size bed and counted the money bill by bill. When he was satisfied, he stuffed it into his front pocket and made his exit.

Steph and Greta’s arrangement of paying Joran in installments assured he would be back. Steph had been in the news business for nearly twenty years. He had begun his career as a print reporter with the
Village Voice
and later worked for
Brill’s Content
. In July 1999, he made the switch to TV journalism when he joined Court TV, working as a producer on their daytime trial coverage. He thoroughly enjoyed covering the crime beat. But he had reservations about the Van der Sloot story he was now weighing. The senior producer abominated the idea of paying Joran—a person whom he believed was a killer—to tell more lies.

The following day, Steph and Joran returned to the Western Union office to retrieve the second $5,000 of Joran’s $25,000 “licensing” fee. This initial $10,000 was to seal the deal.

*   *   *

Steph and his assistant producer left Thailand with the understanding that they would be returning in two weeks to tape Joran’s interview with Greta.

When Steph returned to Thailand that July, he was carrying two TV cameras and cash: some of it Joran’s remaining “licensing” fee and $3,000 in expense money. Making contact with Joran again proved difficult, and when he finally showed up at the hotel, he again called Steph down to the lobby to pay for his taxi ride.

Greta would not be arriving in Bangkok for another several days, which meant that Steph needed to keep Joran close until the interview took place. The plan was for Joran to use an additional hotel room reserved exclusively for him. Settling Joran in his room was the next challenge. The Mandarin Oriental was a classy five-star compound, with 358 rooms, thirty-five suites, butler service, nine bars and restaurants, tennis and squash courts, two outdoor pools, and one of the best spas in the world. Rooms were pricey, $500 a night, but travelers were rewarded with great comforts and high security.

Joran wanted to use his accommodation, but he did not want to be a guest registering for the room. The receptionist explained that although Steph could be the responsible party for the bill, Joran still had to register, and that included providing identification, a passport. When the receptionist would not make an exception, Joran reluctantly complied.