Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (40 page)

Before the interrogation ended, Callan offered Joran’s defense attorney an opportunity to ask questions.

Joran’s current court-appointed attorney, Luz Romero, posed two. “Did you turn yourself in of your own volition or were the Pisconte brothers and Euribe Pretil the ones that suggested you turn yourself in?” was the first.

“I turned myself in voluntarily,” Joran claimed. “It was my decision,” contradicting any evidence.

Romero’s second question was broad. “Do you have anything else to add, change, or modify in this statement?” Romero asked her client.

Here, Joran seized the opportunity to focus on Natalee. “First, I want to have the possibility of talking about Natalee Holloway’s case five years ago, and the possibility of requesting that the proceedings are fast so that I can be extradited to Aruba.

“I want to speak of the case, but not right now. It’s a case that has gone on several years and I would prefer to speak with the police in Aruba about the possibility of closing the case. I would like to clarify things in the case.”

Joran the manipulator was on stage. The idea of a lengthy and dangerous prison sentence in Peru was unpalatable so he was his own plea-bargainer, seeking to have himself extradited to Aruba. He alone knew what happened to Natalee, he offered, and he would tell Aruban authorities the truth, but only on Aruban soil.

His bargain was unsuccessful. The interrogation concluded and a transcript was typed up and signed by all parties present. Callan noticed that Joran’s signature had changed overnight, dramatically different from the previous interview’s autograph. That signature, identical to his passport, was an illegible inch-long script. Now, he signed his confession with a tiny scribble resembling the letter “P.”

Luz Romero later explained that Joran’s two signatures were calculatedly different, leaving him the possibility that he could argue one wasn’t his. That option was nullified, however. In addition to the signatures, all parties agreed to the veracity of the transcript by providing an impression of their right index fingers.

Joran’s confession hadn’t ruined his appetite. He and the detectives sat down for a late lunch ordered from the sixth-floor cafeteria. They all indulged in helpings of
lomo saltado,
a classic Peruvian favorite of stir-fried beef and vegetables over rice.

At 7:15 that evening, Joran was permitted to call his mother in Aruba from a pay phone on a third-floor hall. The call, made in the presence of his defense attorney and a public ministry representative, lasted six minutes. Joran informed his mother that he had given a statement regarding his involvement in the murder of Stephany Flores.

TWENTY-THREE

JUNE 7, 2010
LIMA, PERU

Captain Juan Callan was confident in his evidence, but he worried about the psychological profile Joran might present. He had reached the conclusion that the Dutchman was calculating, manipulative and evil, but was he sane? The idea of him shirking responsibility in a murder with an insanity defense distressed him.

Callan knew Joran had slithered out of accusations and confessions in the Holloway case. He had made a personal vow that the snake would be convicted in Peru.

The following morning, Joran met with Silvia Rojas Regalado, a forensic psychologist from the Peruvian National Police. Regalado had a reputation for getting inside the minds of criminals. When not assisting in criminal investigations, she taught forensic psychology at the Escuela Iberoamericana de Desarrollo Social, the Latin American School of Social Development. The university is home to Peru’s premier criminal justice program.

Regalado was already familiar with the Flores case. She had been briefed by Callan’s team and had read a detailed report on Van der Sloot’s history before sitting down with him that Monday. Nevertheless, she needed to build her own profile of the suspect, one that would hold up in a court of law.

Joran was escorted into the room at 11:25
A.M.
amid a tight circle of police. His face had a serene expression that masked his fear; his body was trembling. His posture was stooped but he walked with deliberate coordination.

After he sat, he sustained eye contact with her. In her official report, she remarked that his gaze was fixed and sad.

Speaking in Spanish, Dr. Regalado asked Joran a few questions—his name, his age, did he know where he was and why he was there?

Joran answered all her questions lucidly and cooperatively, without hesitation. He had a thick foreign accent, but spoke Spanish well.

Dr. Regalado leafed slowly through Joran’s case file while the accused killer squirmed anxiously in his chair. As a precaution, officers stood guard in case he became enraged. For now, the psychologist was more interested in his actions and mannerisms than his case file. She wanted to observe him speaking as well as in silence, aware that he was an accomplished liar. Her plan was to focus not so much on what he said, but how he said it.

Perusing her notes, Regalado was amused when she arrived at the doctor’s notation about Joran’s “No Problem” tattoo. It was an unusual sentiment for such a problem-ridden young man. Her own physical observations took in his incredible height, well-manicured nails, and his neatly trimmed hair dyed a reddish blond.

“Why don’t you just walk me through what happened to Stephany,” Regalado suggested.

Joran became pensive and introspective. His body stiffened. “I met Stephany on May 28 at the Atlantic City Casino at approximately 6:00
P.M.
,” Joran began.

“She approached me. I was playing poker. She had heard I was a Dutchman and she said to me, ‘You’re the Dutchman who plays poker.’”

Joran explained that Stephany had told him that she was an amateur player herself and wanted to learn from an expert. He said that after talking for about five minutes he and Stephany exchanged phone numbers and Stephany promised to call him about getting together the following day.

“And the following day, May 29, she called me in the morning and said, ‘I am going to have coffee and I am going to play poker.’ I said ‘I’ll see you later,’” Joran explained.

Police learned that Stephany did indeed have Joran’s Peruvian cellular phone number programmed into her black Nextel phone. His number was listed as speed dial number 20, but Stephany had misspelled his name as “Johan.”

“Around 6:00
P.M.
I went to the Atlantic City Casino alone,” Joran continued. “From 6:00
P.M.
until two in the morning I played blackjack after which I went upstairs to the poker room and Stephany showed up at my table.

“I spoke with her and she asked me if I had a girlfriend. I told her that I was single and she said ‘I have a girl, I am a lesbian.’”

“I said, ‘It doesn’t matter; in Holland I have homosexual friends, lesbians.’ Afterwards I said to her let’s go to my room to play poker on my laptop.”

Joran admitted that he had consumed quite a few cocktails by this point. He said he’d begun with his trademark whiskey and Cokes and later moved on to pisco sours, Peru’s signature libation.

“I don’t know if she drank a lot, but she did drink wine,” Joran explained. “We were there up until five-thirty in the morning. After playing poker the two of us lost $1,000, which is not a lot of money. I had cash on me when I arrived.

“On May 28 I won $1,500,” he bragged.

“We went to the room. She went of her own accord, we entered the room and we sat on the bed, I opened my Facebook account and saw that I had received a message that said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’

“It was because of the Aruba case,” Joran explained. “They insulted me.”

Joran told Dr. Regalado that ever since the disappearance of Natalee Holloway he had frequently received vile and threatening e-mails from strangers. Stephany had apparently seen the message and wanted to know what it meant.

“I was chatting with Stephany, telling her about the Aruba case, that I hadn’t done anything wrong,” Joran told the psychologist.

He explained that during the uncomfortable discussion with Stephany, he had lost control and struck her on the nose. “I had an impulsive reaction,” he said, using psychological terms.

Joran rewound the narrative to make Stephany the instigator. “She struck first with her hand on my head,” he described. His next act was in self-defense, he said. He reenacted the gesture he had made that night, forming a fist and drawing back his arm.

The tremble the psychologist had first noticed when he arrived was markedly more pronounced. His legs were also in constant motion, bobbing up and down.

“We then began hitting each other,” Joran said. He complimented Stephany as being an admirable opponent. “She was strong,” he said.

Joran continued by pantomiming the act of strangling Stephany, and describing his fear when she wouldn’t die. “She began breathing heavily and I took her pants off,” he said. He then pressed his shirt on her face until all sounds coming from her stopped.

For the first time, the doctor noticed a tone of anger in his words.

He continued his account. He changed his T-shirt, but didn’t take a shower. He left the hotel in her car, but not knowing Lima, he abandoned the SUV and hailed a taxi. Before fleeing Lima, he dumped Stephany’s car keys in a trash bin at the airport. He confirmed no sex had taken place, nor was sex ever suggested.

Dr. Regalado notated that Joran van der Sloot had recounted the events of the investigation coherently, had responded clearly to the questions asked, and had accepted the blame for the criminal events for which he was now being investigated. Her job was not to suggest innocence or guilt.

When the psychologist turned the conversation to family, Joran became extremely volatile and began to cry. Before Natalee, he sniffled, he had enjoyed a good relationship with his family. He had recently lost his father, with whom he’d had better communication than with his mother. He was most emotional when talking about his youngest brother, Sebastian. As for his own childhood, he had positive memories.

“I was never beaten or abused as a child,” Joran told the psychologist. “I lived with my parents until I was seventeen, until I was accused in the death of a young woman in Aruba. After three months, the time it took to process the investigation, of which I was absolved, I traveled to Holland to forget the events, especially the time I spent in prison.”

Joran described living in Holland for two years while he studied international business. He claimed the Dutch government had even provided him with a stipend of 800 euros a month while he pursued his studies. “However, I didn’t take my studies very seriously,” he admitted, confessing obsessions with poker and tennis. “I abandoned Holland because I was filmed in a hidden camera interview by a friend about the death of the girl in Aruba,” he explained, never mentioning Natalee by name.

He said he traveled to Thailand, where he had his first real job, running a casual restaurant.

When he learned that his father had died, he returned to Aruba to be with his mother. He rented the SawadeeCup to a friend who promised to send him $1,500 every month.

Besides describing his adventures, he described himself. He said he had been a restless child but a model student, never skipping classes and succeeding academically. He never fought or argued excessively. His life had been close to perfect until “that girl” disappeared. Because he was falsely implicated, he was forced to abandon his dream of a higher education in the United States and now he wandered the world as an outcast.

His sex life was normal, he said. He was not shy. He had masturbated since he was fourteen, usually alone, but sometimes with a group of friends watching Internet porn. One of his first sexual experiences was with a male friend, who had performed oral sex on him. He lost his virginity around that same time and had enjoyed a steady stream of girlfriends. He bragged about experiments with sex toys with a girlfriend in Thailand.

Regarding drugs and alcohol, Joran lied, claiming his first drink was when he was eighteen. He had been drinking a lot since his father’s death, he admitted. In Lima, he had been drinking whiskey and Cokes or pisco sours daily.

He smoked pot occasionally, beginning in jail in Aruba. He liked the effects. Smoking pot hardened his sentimental side.

Healthy activities were explored next.

Joran explained that while he did enjoy sports, like soccer and tennis, his passion was poker. He grinned when he said that poker made him a lot of money. Cheating was acceptable behavior, as long as he was the one cheating.

Joran exaggerated his worth as a television personality, saying he was able to charge between $50,000 and $100,000 for interviews.

After the psychological exam, Dr. Regalado sat down to record her findings, making them part of the body of evidence that would be submitted to a judge. Her conclusions were as follows:

Joran van der Sloot, age twenty-two at the time of this exam, does not exhibit psychopathological disorders, which would impede his ability to evaluate reality. He exhibits an average intellectual level, which potentially could broaden his intellectual efficiency.

The examinee presents an anti-social personality characterized by the ease with which he establishes superficial interpersonal relationships, indifference when it comes to others’ well being and the capacity to maintain a fraudulent social style; deficient social conscience that shows in the violation of rules and the mixing in events that affect others’ rights, looking only to advance his own interests.

He shows social irresponsibility, the enjoyment of superficial activities, in general a libertine and hedonistic lifestyle in search of new sensations in order to be stimulated.

He shows certain dominance over the opposite sex with the devaluation of the feminine figure.

He exhibits a low tolerance to frustration, is unable to stand inconveniences and shows a tendency to generate a vengeful attitude. He is emotionally immature, which prompts sudden changes in his behavior that can go from simple criticism, to out of control emotions, which make him prone to commit acts against the lives of others.