Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (6 page)

Joran told the four friends he was a Dutch tourist visiting Aruba from Holland, and like them, was staying at the Holiday Inn. It was the first of many lies he would spin that night in his attempt to become more appealing to the young women. He knew they were leaving the following day, so he was just looking to hook up. He needed to act fast.

While he tried not to show it, Joran was attracted to the shapely blonde in the white tank top and floral-print skirt standing between Ruth and him. She told him her name was Katherine, but her friends called her by her middle name, Madison. Madison was definitely Joran’s type; she was petite and bubbly with naturally highlighted hair.

Leaning in close, Joran quietly inhaled the faint blend of coconut oil and sea salt that lingered from a day in the surf as Madison quizzed him about his background in her soft Alabama drawl.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Nineteen,” Joran lied. He didn’t want to seem like a kid.

There was another blonde at the table who was thinner than Madison and didn’t seem to care about gambling at all. “My name is Natalee,” she said, tilting her head back and smiling.

In between hands, Ruth told Joran this was her last chance to gamble on the island and she didn’t want to end on a losing note. She and her friends were catching a morning flight back to the U.S.

Lee Broughton, who was standing just behind Ruth, jumped in on the conversation. The statuesque brunette stood a head taller than her three friends, and spoke excitedly about their plans to spend their last night partying at Carlos’n Charlie’s, a lively bar and nightclub.

Carlos’n Charlie’s had become an instant favorite with the Mountain Brook seniors. The club was part of an international chain with outposts in Acapulco, Cancún, Cozumel, and other Mexican tourist spots. There were even two in the U.S., in Austin, Texas, and Lake Mary, Florida. The bar in Aruba catered to thirsty tourists stepping off the cruise ships that docked just steps away in the busy harbor. On weekends, the place pulsated with teenage testosterone, catering to scantily clad kids and serving supersize drinks with names like the “Poison Kiss,” the “Guava Colada,” and the “Ticket to Fly.” The Mountain Brook students had been going there since discovering it their first night on the island.

After learning where the visitors were from, the house DJ had started playing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” whenever they showed up at the bar. Hearing the opening guitar chords blasting though the bar’s state-of-the-art sound system, the kids would go crazy. “Turn it up,” they screamed in unison as the Southern rock anthem reverberated through the bar, across the beer-soaked dance floor.

“Carlos’n Charlie’s sucks on Sunday nights,” Joran said.

While the girls didn’t pick up on it, he was speaking from experience. Joran was no tourist visiting the island from Holland. He was an island boy and he and his friends were regulars at Carlos’n Charlie’s. Joran explained that the bars and nightclubs downtown tended to be more crowded on the weekends when the cruise ships were in. Sunday nights, however, were a bust.

But the plans were already set. The teens were meeting at least sixty of their classmates at the bar for one last party.

Joran’s gambling strategy seemed effective. Soon, Ruth was up $100 and Joran told her she should walk away. She was reluctant. She was riding high on her victory and wanted to press her luck. But her friends convinced her she should heed his advice and cash out. While he’d done well for Ruth, Joran’s game was off. The girls noticed that he’d lost U.S.$250 at the table. Parting ways, they invited him to join them at Carlos’n Charlie’s.

“I’ll do my best to come,” he said.

Not long after leaving the casino, Joran bumped into the Alabama teens at the sports bar inside the Holiday Inn. The young women were sitting on barstools, drinking and laughing so he walked over to say hello.

“You’d better come tonight,” they teased, giving him a gentle ribbing.

Joran smiled. In his mind, he was already there; he just needed to line up a ride to get downtown. He was happy to share the wealth with anyone who gave him a ride. It didn’t really matter who drove him, there were plenty of girls to go around.

*   *   *

It was nearing 10:00
P.M.
when Joran left the sports bar on foot and made his way to the McDonald’s on the corner of Palm Beach Road. The fast-food restaurant was the halfway point between the hotels of Palm Beach and his family’s home in Noord. It normally took him about twenty-five minutes to walk home. But his father had promised to pick him up when he was done at the casino, so he called to let him know he was ready.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Paulus told his son.

Strolling past the shops and sidewalk vendors along J. E. Irausquin Boulevard selling merchandise only a tourist would buy—shot glasses, wind chimes, hammocks, and T-shirts—Joran punched the number of his friend Jaime into his cell phone. He had a group of guys he hung around with, and Jaime “Beto” Carrasquilla Caceres was part of the gang. Even though he attended an expensive private school, Joran considered himself an islander. Most of Joran’s friends were locals who attended the public schools; many were older than Joran. His friend Jaime was from Colombia and lived with his parents in Alta Vista, a small village in the northeastern hills overlooking the blue-green waters of the Caribbean Sea.

While Joran’s parents hoped he’d make friends with the children of the other ex-pats living on Aruba, Joran and Jaime were part of a group of local guys who liked to prowl the beaches and hotel pools along the Palm Beach strip, hoping to hook up with tourist girls. Of the group, Joran’s English was the best so he usually did most of the talking. It was a numbers game. With so many hotels lining the beach, their choices were limitless. If rebuffed by one of the dozens of bikini-clad teens sunning on hotel lounge chairs, they could just walk farther down the white sand of the “turquoise coast” and try again.

Joran told Jaime that he’d just met a group of American girls at the casino inside the Holiday Inn and they had invited him to go out. “Would you like to come along?” he asked, knowing his friend was usually good for a ride. Jaime wanted to join them, but he wasn’t sure he could make it. He had to work at a restaurant that night and said he would get back to him.

“Okay, I’ll call Deepak,” Joran said before hanging up. Scrolling through his contacts, he dialed his Surinamese friend. It was an imperfect plan. Deepak wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man. With dark skin, a square chin and chiseled features, he was not a bad-looking guy but he was awkward around females, preferring the anonymity of online chatting to real-life interactions. It didn’t much matter to Joran. The simple reality was that the driving age on Aruba was eighteen, and while Joran’s father permitted him to drive, he didn’t have a car or a license. But his friend Deepak Kalpoe did.

Deepak was twenty-one, and had a tricked-out gray Honda Civic with tinted windows, custom wheels and tires, and a body kit to make the car look more aerodynamic. The vehicle was about six years old, but he took care of it as if it were brand new. According to Joran, Deepak treated the four-door sedan like a girlfriend. He wouldn’t drive it on unpaved roads and washed it regularly, at least once a week.

He’d installed two TV screens hooked up to a DVD player, all tied into an expensive sound system. Joran described it as a “unique” car, and said the mufflers made a lot of noise. Initially, Joran’s parents were curious as to how the youth was able to afford such an expensive car. After all, he worked at a cyber café. The dark-skinned teen told them it was a used car that he’d customized himself, buying parts cheaply.

Joran had known Deepak for about five months. Deepak’s younger brother, Satish, had introduced them. Satish was eighteen, and attended Colegio Arubano, the same public school as some of Joran’s other friends.

Since meeting Deepak the past January, the Kalpoe brothers and Joran had been hanging out on weekends, going to bars, casinos, and movies. Joran admitted that he and his friends sometimes used Deepak for a ride. He had a really cool car, and was the only one of the group with a full-time job, which meant he could buy rounds of drinks at the bars. Mixed drinks on the island were cheap, costing not much more than a beer.

Deepak was just getting off his shift at the Cyberzone Internet Café in Oranjestad and didn’t have to be back at work until the following afternoon. “I’m going home to take a shower and I’ll come pick you up,” the twenty-one-year-old said.

Arriving at McDonald’s, Joran stepped into the air-conditioning and ordered a McFlurry milkshake, and then settled into an empty booth to wait. His father would be there soon.

His living arrangements at home afforded him a certain amount of personal freedom that even his mother was not aware of, and that most teenage boys could only dream of. His parents had given him the private apartment located between the garage and the swimming pool. It was completely detached from the main house, and had its own private entrance, which allowed Joran to discreetly come and go as he pleased. A line of trees obscured Joran’s apartment from the main house, making it easy for him to slip in and out without his parents knowing.

The apartment was added some time after the family bought the house in the early nineties, as was the garage, two bedrooms in the main house, and the swimming pool. For a time, a Jamaican housekeeper resided in the apartment, and kept watch over the Van der Sloots’ three sons while their parents were at work. As the boys grew older, and needed less supervision, the family released the housekeeper and rented the apartment. But after a bad tenant stiffed them on a rent payment, the apartment went to Joran.

Joran knew his father wouldn’t go to sleep until he knew his son was in for the night. He accompanied his dad to the main house where he worked on an English paper on the computer in the living room. He was writing an essay about
The Life of Pi,
a novel by Yann Martel.

As soon as his father went to bed, Joran dialed Deepak to make sure he was still planning to pick him up. It was just before midnight.

“I’m in your room,” Deepak informed him.

Joran was busy printing his school assignment in the living room, and told his friend he’d be right there. His father was fast asleep when he quietly walked across the backyard to his apartment where he found Deepak and his younger brother, Satish.

Satish had been the one to pick up his brother at work earlier in the evening, as he did most nights. Because Deepak had pimped out the Honda, he didn’t like to park it downtown for fear it might be scratched so he had Satish shuttling him to and from work. Like always, the Kalpoe brothers had parked Deepak’s four-door Civic on the dirt road a half block away from the Van der Sloots’ orange stucco home, so the loud rumble from the car’s customized exhaust system wouldn’t wake up Joran’s parents.

Climbing into Deepak’s car, the group set off for town.

Like Joran, Satish also had school in the morning. He was three years younger than his brother, and a senior at the Colegio Arubano, a public junior and senior high school with two campuses on the island. The boys’ mother would have been furious if she knew that Satish was going out with Joran and Deepak to party. But she was not home that night.

The Kalpoe brothers lived with their mother, stepfather, and younger sister in Hooiberg, a town named after Mount Hooiberg, or “haystack” as it translates in English. At 541 feet, Mount Hooiberg was a well-known landmark and the highest point on the island; on a clear day, Venezuela could be seen from its summit. The surrounding community of single-family homes was located at the center of the island, far removed from the tourist district and inhabited mainly by working class locals.

Their mother worked in a steakhouse at an island resort. She and her husband were still at work and unaware of the two boys’ whereabouts.

It wasn’t unusual for Deepak and Satish to go with Joran to Carlos’n Charlie’s to hook up with a fresh batch of tourists. Joran or one of their other friends, Freddy, often made the first move.

Like wolves, they hunted in a pack and Joran, with the best English of the group, was the alpha male. Joran and his friends admired the older island’s “players,” who often bragged about their sexual escapades, and they aspired to be like them. Aruba’s nightclubs throbbed with sexual energy and Joran and his Pimpology Crew were fast learners. If they struck out, which they often did, they were relentless. With an everchanging cast of young women on the island, their efforts would eventually pay off. Sometimes, these encounters would go no further than kissing on the dance floor of Carlos’n Charlie’s, but on lucky nights, they’d drive their conquests back to their hotels where they’d have sex.

Joran was always quick to share the lurid details of his latest exploit, once bragging that he was given a blow job by an American girl on the balcony of a rented hotel room while Deepak was in the bathroom with another tourist girl, and a third friend was in the main room with another. If all went well, they’d have stories to share about the girls from Alabama in the morning.

*   *   *

Last call was less than an hour away when Joran flashed his VIP pass to the bouncer at Carlos’n Charlie’s and ushered his two friends into the noisy nightclub. The place closed at 2:00
A.M.
on weekends, but it was Sunday and that meant the doors would shut promptly at 1:00
A.M.

Music was blaring. About sixty people, mostly young Americans, were dancing and drinking outlandish alcoholic concoctions from plastic neon-colored, yard-long glasses.

Making their way to the bar, the three ordered a round of whiskey and Cokes and a couple of shots of Bacardi 151. As they stood downing their cocktails, Joran noticed Natalee, the quiet blonde who had stayed at the blackjack table only a few minutes before wandering off to socialize with friends. She was dancing on the stage near the front entrance, wearing the same outfit she’d had on earlier in the evening, a short denim skirt and a cute bandana-style halter top. Her long blond hair was pulled to one side in a barrette. She was full of energy, and had the rhythm and moves of a professional dancer.