Joran van der Sloot, the suspect in the disappearance of American tourist Natalee Holloway in Aruba, is today behind bars, but it’s not for Natalee’s case.
Rather, van der Sloot is serving a 28-year prison sentence in the murder of Stephany Flores, who was found dead in 2010 in his hotel room. Holloway vanished in 2005 but van der Sloot has never been charged in her suspected death. Holloway, from Alabama, was only 18 years old and celebrating her high school graduation with a school class when she disappeared, according to ABC News, which is featuring the case on an episode of 20/20 on November 22, 2019.
According to ABC News, the last sighting of Holloway was leaving Carlos ‘n Charlie’s in Oranjestad with van der Sloot, then 17 and a Dutch citizen, and two of van der Sloot’s friends. ABC reports that van der Sloot is today being held at “the notorious Miguel Castro Castro jail in Lima,” where he complained to the Dutch De Telegraaf newspaper that he’s in a cellblock with a “Colombian murderer, a corrupt Peruvian general” and rats.
Here’s what you need to know:
Van der Sloot Was Attacked in Prison in 2017, Where He’s Serving a Lengthy Sentence for Beating Another Woman to Death
Life behind bars hasn’t always been easy for Joran van der Sloot. According to Daily Beast, in 2017, he was stabbed twice by other inmates in the maximum-security prison in Peru where he is being held.
However, in some ways, he’s been allowed to have a life behind bars. Van der Sloot married a woman named Leidy Figueroa after meeting her in prison. She was pregnant by van der Sloot at the time of the prison wedding, CNN reports. She’s an accountant who met Van der Sloot while visiting the prison where he’s being held, according to CNN. She later gave birth to a baby girl.
Joran van der Sloot is accused of confessing to the Stephany Flores crime and what he told authorities was grisly. Van der Sloot claimed that he met Flores at a casino in Lima, and they started playing poker in his room “when an e-mail popped up on his computer linking him to the Holloway case,” ABC reported.
The hotel in Lima as seen on June 8, 2010, where Dutch Joran Van der Sloot, 22, confessed having murdered 21-year-old Peruvian Stephany Flores on May 30.
This made Flores upset and she hit him, claimed van der Sloot, who also alleged that he “smashed her in the nose with his elbow. Blood gushed out and she nearly fainted from the blow…He then grabbed her by the throat and banged her head against the wall… He finally used his shirt to smother her.”
His lawyers claimed he was “emotionally distraught” because of the police pressure from the Holloway case.
Holloway’s mother has never stopped in her quest to get answers from van der Sloot about what really happened to her daughter.
“He’s a monster. I know that he was responsible for the demise of Natalee. And I’ll never, never not believe that,” Beth Holloway’s Natalee’s mom, told ABC. “I made a pledge that I will share everything that I have learned. So, that’s what I did.”
Beth Holloway participates in the launch of the Natalee Holloway Resource Center on June 8, 2010 in Washington, DC.
According to ABC, over the years, van der Sloot went to school in the Netherlands, and gave an interview to the network denying that he had harmed Holloway.
In 2008, he was filmed by a Dutch crime reporter on hidden camera “describing Holloway’s death,” and the case was reopened, ABC reports.
The statements couldn’t be corroborated. That same year, he told American television personality Greta Van Susteren that he “sold Natalee Holloway into sexual slavery,” but later denied it.
In 2010, Beth Holloway’s lawyer said that van der Sloot, using a false name, asked him for thousands of dollars to lead him to Natalee’s body. The lawyer described Joran to 20/20 as a gambler. After receiving money from the Holloways, the lawyer says that Joran claimed he threw Natalee to the ground and her head hit a rock. He claimed that his now deceased father had buried her in a home foundation. However, van der Sloot later claimed that story was a lie too.
At that point, he went to Peru. According to ABC, Stephany Flores was a college student who was the “daughter of a presidential candidate.” She was beaten to death. He was arrested in Chile after a manhunt, and was also charged with wire and extortion offenses by U.S. prosecutors.
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010, a federal grand jury indicted van der Sloot, a citizen of the Netherlands, “on charges of wire fraud and extortion for soliciting money from Natalee Holloway’s mother on promises he would reveal the location of her daughter’s remains in Aruba and the circumstances of her 2005 death.”
The information he gave was false, the release states, adding, “The two-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court charges van der Sloot with extortion for exploiting Beth Holloway’s fear that she would never find her daughter’s body or know what happened to her unless she paid him $250,000. The indictment also charges van der Sloot with wire fraud for using false promises that he would reveal the location of Natalee Holloway’s body in order to induce Beth Holloway to make wire transfers of money.”
Demonstrators ask for life sentence for Dutch national Joran Van der Sloot, after a hearing, outside the Lurigancho prison in Lima on January 11, 2011.
CNN reports that there might be a link between what happened to Flores and Holloway because prosecutors believe that van der Sloot killed her when she found something relating to Holloway on his computer. Oxygen reports that he met Flores at a casino and confessed that he killed her when she “intruded into [his] private life” by reading articles about him and Holloway.
He received the 28-year prison sentence in 2012. Once his sentence is complete there, he faces extradition to the U.S.