Father of Natalee Holloway suspect dies
Published on 11 February 2010 – 9:36am
Media on Aruba are reporting that Paul van der Sloot, the father of the main suspect in the Natalee Holloway disappearance case, has died.
Joran van der Sloot’s father collapsed on Wednesday evening when playing tennis at the Tierra del Sol estate on the Dutch Caribbean island. Emergency service staff were unable to resuscitate him. Paul van der Sloot was aged 57.
His son Joran is still suspected of involvement in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway on Aruba in May 2005. The case was brought back into the limelight when crime reporter Peter R. de Vries secretly filmed Joran van der Sloot claiming that he had dumped Natalee’s body in the ocean. The potentially incriminating statement was not accepted as evidence by the court.
Denial
The suspect, who is living in the Netherlands, was interviewed by Aruban police in Rotterdam early in 2008 and declared persona non grata shortly afterwards, making it practically impossible for Joran to return to Aruba.
Joran’s lawyer says that the TV admission was untrue; his client had only wanted to impress the man he was talking to, trying to gain some credibility in the crimininal world.
Later in 2008 the Fox TV channel in the US broadcast an interview with Joran van der Sloot. He told interviewer Greta van Susteren that he had sold Natalee Holloway on the beach to a Venezuelan for 10,000 dollars. The man was apparently looking for a blond sex slave. In the interview, Mr Van der Sloot also claimed that his father Paul had bribed policemen on Aruba to the tune of 50,000 dollars. These statements, too, have not been taken into account by the legal authorities.
Trainee judge
Paul van der Sloot, a lawyer who was training as a judge on Aruba, was repeatedly interviewed by the media in connection to his son’s alleged involvement in the case. It has never become clear to what extent Mr Van der Sloot knew what Joran’s role may have been.
