Joran van der Sloot is a Dutch serial killer who was convicted in the 2010 killing of Stephany Flores Ramírez in Lima, Peru. He is also the prime suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, an American teenager who went missing in Aruba in 2005.
Table of Contents
Early Life and Education
- Joran van der Sloot was born on August 6, 1987 in Arnhem, Netherlands. He has two brothers and his parents are Paulus and Anita van der Sloot.
- In 1990, his family moved to Aruba, where he attended the International School of Aruba. He was an honor student and a star athlete in football and tennis.
- He hoped to play for Saint Leo University in Florida, but his plans were shattered by the Holloway case.
The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway
- On May 30, 2005, Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old from Alabama, disappeared during a high school graduation trip to Aruba. She was last seen leaving a nightclub with van der Sloot and two other men.
- Van der Sloot was arrested twice in connection with her disappearance, but he was never charged due to lack of evidence. He gave several conflicting statements and false leads to the authorities and the media.
- In 2010, he extorted $25,000 from Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway, in exchange for information about her daughter’s death and the location of her body. He later admitted that he lied and spent the money on gambling.
- On October 18, 2023, he confessed to killing Natalee on a beach in Aruba and dumping her body in the ocean, as part of a plea deal in a US federal case. He will serve his sentence in Peru after his extradition.
The Murder of Stephany Flores Ramírez
- On May 30, 2010, exactly five years after Natalee’s disappearance, van der Sloot met Stephany Flores Ramírez, a 21-year-old student, at a poker tournament in Lima, Peru. He invited her to his hotel room, where he brutally beat and strangled her to death.
- He fled to Chile, where he was arrested and extradited back to Peru. He initially claimed that he killed her in self-defense after she discovered his involvement in the Holloway case on his laptop.
- On January 13, 2012, he pleaded guilty to qualified murder and simple robbery. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison at Challapalca prison, a high-security facility in the Andes mountains.
- In January 2023, he received an additional 18 years for trafficking cocaine while in prison.
Personal Life and Controversies
- In 2014, van der Sloot married Leidy Figueroa, a Peruvian woman who met him while visiting another inmate at the prison. They have a son named Dushyant.
- Van der Sloot has been the subject of international news coverage from prison, leading to controversies that resulted in the investigation and suspension of several Peruvian officials.
- He has also been accused of other crimes, such as rape, kidnapping, and human trafficking, but none of them have been proven.