Today Show – NBC – 09/07/10
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Joran van der Sloot interviewed on Dutch TV
Birmingham, Al (WIAT) Joran van der Sloot is still waiting to find out if a three judge panel will throw out his murder confession, but he’s been using some of that time to be interviewed by Dutch TV.
According to Radio Netherlands Worldwide, van der Sloot has been interviewed by a Dutch crime reporter, John van den Heuvel, at the infamous high security Miguel Castro Castro prison in the Peruvian capital Lima.
Click here to read entire article
Appeals panel considers van der Sloot’s confession
By the CNN Wire Staff
August 20, 2010 6:39 p.m. EDT
(CNN) — A panel of Peruvian judges is considering whether to uphold the confession of Joran van der Sloot, who is accused of killing a 21-year-old woman.
The three-judge appellate panel is expected to hand down a decision in about a week.
“We believe we did a good job demonstrating that there wasn’t an official translator and that his attorney (at the time of the confession) did not have a document accrediting her as his attorney,” van der Sloot’s attorney, Maximo Altez Navarro, told In
Session on Friday.
Van der Sloot is jailed pending trial on charges of first-degree murder and robbery in the May 30 death in of Stefany Flores, a 21-year-old student.
Joran van der Sloot: Crazy Like a Faux
August 3, 2010
It seems that Joran van der Sloot, having claimed, fruitlessly, that his detailed confession to the murder of Stefany Flores was a) coerced, b) improperly translated/misunderstood by his translator, is now going for c) an insanity defense.
It won’t work.
Maximo Altez, Joran’s lawyer, has stated that Joran is a sick fellow. Well, (more…)
Van der Sloot showing ‘psychopathic tendencies:’ Peru doctors
AFP
July 19, 2010 6:15 PM
LIMA – Joran van der Sloot, the Dutchman indicted in the murder of a Peruvian woman and prime suspect in the disappearance of an American girl in Aruba, is showing “psychopathic tendencies,” a media-quoted medical report said Monday.
Van der Sloot, 22, is being held in a maximum security prison in Lima where he was examined by doctors from Peru’s Institute of Legal Medicine, who found him to be “impulsive and showing psychopathic tendencies,” El Comercio daily said on its website.
The medical report was turned over to judge Carlos Morales Corcova, who is presiding over the case, the daily added.
Van der Sloot is being held pending trial for allegedly beating to death 21-year-old Stephany Flores in his Lima hotel room in May. He is the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway in the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba.
A U.S. grand jury in the southern state of Alabama, where Holloway lived, indicted van der Sloot on June 30 for wire fraud and extortion — he allegedly asked Holloway’s mother for 250,000 dollars to tell her where to find her missing daughter’s remains.
Van der Sloot was twice arrested in the Holloway case and spent three months in jail but was never charged. Holloway’s body has never been found.
He traveled in May to Lima, where he allegedly killed Flores when she stumbled on his computer files with information on the Holloway case.
Van der Sloot Update: Where is Stephany Flores’ Missing $11,000?
July 13, 2010
NEW YORK (CBS) Police sources in Peru have disclosed to CBS News that Stephany Flores, Joran van der Sloot’s alleged Peruvian murder victim, had won approximately $10,000 at casinos in the week leading up to her death and also had been given $1,000 from her father to purchase a laptop that she never got a chance to buy.
But police sources say that this money has never been found.
Flores reportedly kept her money in the glove compartment of her car. Police documents dated June 3 obtained by CBS News show the results of the search of Stephany Flores’ car: no money was found in it.
Did Joran van der Sloot take that money?
The sources say that this was the true motive for the brutal murder of Flores: van der Sloot was after her money. Police say this means that van der Sloot’s alleged murder of Flores was premeditated.
But in van der Sloot’s confession – which he subsequently recanted in a Dutch newspaper – police say he told them that he became enraged after Flores found information on his laptop about his links to the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway.
According to Peruvian newspaper La Republica, van der Sloot told police, “I did not want to do it. The girl intruded into my private life. She had no right. I went to her and I hit her. She was scared. We argued and she tried to escape. I grabbed her by the neck and I hit her.”
Crimesider spoke with ex-FBI agent Paul Lindsay, who worked for many years investigating serial killers. Lindsay believes that if reports of van der Sloot’s confession are accurate, van der Sloot created the story of the e-mail and the confrontation as a way to justify his actions.
Police say he smashed in the face of Flores, the student he met playing poker before leading her back to his hotel room. According to police, van der Sloot then strangled her, threw her to the floor and emptied her wallet.
Stephany Flores’ death occurred exactly five years after Alabama teen Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba, a case which van der Sloot is the main suspect. The Dutchman faces charges of first-degree murder and robbery for the May 30 death of Stephany Flores.
Joran van der Sloot led high-stakes life in South America
Now under arrest for the murder of a woman in Peru, Joran van der Sloot — the prime suspect in the Natalee Holloway case — led a life of high stakes.
BY SIOBHAN MORRISSEY AND JIM WYSS
jwyss@MiamiHerald.com
Joran van der Sloot was a gambler.
Even as the young man was hounded by suspicions and cameras for his role in the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway five years ago, he could be found at poker tables on two continents.
As he sat in a Chilean jail Thursday on charges that he murdered a young woman in Lima, Peru earlier this week, those who know him describe van der Sloot as an athletic and arrogant young man with a yearning for women and risk that led him across the globe.
Van der Sloot met Holloway when he was just 17 at a card table in Aruba. It was one of the last times she would be seen alive. Van der Sloot remains the prime suspect in that case. Five years to the day — on Sunday — video cameras would show van der Sloot leaving a poker tournament in Lima with 21-year-old Stephany Flores.
On Tuesday, she was found with a broken neck and wrapped in a blanket at a Lima hotel just a few blocks from the casino. Two days later, van der Sloot’s luck ran out when police in Chile detained the 22-year-old fugitive as he traveled between the resort town of Viña del Mar and the capital, Santiago.
Dressed in a black-hooded sweat shirt and with his brown hair closely cropped, van der Sloot was seen walking calmly and uncuffed into a Chilean police station escorted by three officers.
Van der Sloot’s attorney in New York, Joe Tacopina, cautioned against rushing to judgment.
“Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before,” Tacopina told The Associated Press. “The fact is he wears a bull’s-eye on his back now and he’s a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play.”
Also Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alabama received an arrest warrant against van der Sloot on wire fraud and extortion charges. Money was wired from a Birmingham institution in May to Joran van der Sloot after he requested $250,000 in exchange for the whereabouts of Holloway’s remains and the circumstances relating to her death, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys office.
The information he provided was false, the release said.
SEEN GAMBLING
Noah Acre was playing Texas hold ‘em in the Asia Pacific Poker Tour in Macau in 2009 when he saw van der Sloot sitting across the table.
Recognizing the tall Dutchman from the round-the-clock television coverage that the Holloway case generated, he recalls van der Sloot did not seem shy about his notoriety.
He wore a loud, multicolored jacket with the logo of L.A. Café — a seedy Manila bar and brothel — and was surrounded by an entourage of young men.
Acre asked van der Sloot why he kept dealing with the media after being burned by a Dutch journalist who released hidden-camera footage that seemed to show him confessing to disposing of Holloway’s body.
“Because they gave me money,” he responded.
“I am pretty good at sizing people up quickly,” Acre said of the man he spoke to several times during the week-long tournament. “He seemed like all he cared about was partying and getting girls. . . . The whole Natalee Holloway thing didn’t seem to weigh on him one bit.”
BIGGER PLANS
Things might have been different.
Van der Sloot, the eldest of three sons, had originally planned to attend university in Florida.
But after his arrest and subsequent release, he returned to his native Holland where he studied business. He didn’t stay out of the limelight for long. Hounded by tabloids and television cameras, he traveled to New York to give a televised account of his involvement with Holloway.
When Acre met him in Macau, van der Sloot claimed to live in Thailand. The same Dutch journalist who had taped him claims van der Sloot was in Bangkok selling Thai women into prostitution in the Netherlands.
As early as last summer, van der Sloot moved again.
“The last time I spoke to his mother, she said he was in South America,” Magda Frans, the secretary at the Aruba Racquet Club, told The Miami Herald.
Joran and his father, Paulus, played doubles tennis at the club, she said.
The night before he was arrested for the first time in Holloway’s disappearance, he played doubles tennis with his father in the Moet & Chandon Anniversary Cup tournament, Frans said.
“They lost,” she said.
The match took place at 7:30 p.m. June 8, 2005. Some 10 hours later, Aruban police arrested him. The day was supposed to be memorable for other reasons: He was to graduate with honors that evening from the International School of Aruba.
It was a double blow to his mother, Anita, who taught at the school.
When reached at her home, Anita van der Sloot sounded composed and tried to politely dismiss inquiries about her son.
She has two other sons, Valentijn and Sebastian. She is now a widow. Her husband died suddenly last February playing tennis.
“I don’t know anything,” Anita told The Miami Herald. “I haven’t been in contact with Joran for a long time, not since his dad died.”
Peruvian authorities say van der Sloot traveled to Argentina and Colombia before arriving in Lima on May 14 for the Latin American Poker Tour.
Stephany Flores’ father, Ricardo, said Thursday he hoped van der Sloot’s capture would bring solace to others beyond his family.
“This is not just about my daughter,” he told reporters in Lima. “There is also the case in Aruba that is pending and we don’t know how many more.”
On MySpace and Facebook pages that appear to have been created by van der Sloot, the young man seems to have the tastes of most men his age.
He is a fan of the South Park television show, scantily clad women, the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. and President Barack Obama.
He’s also a member of a Facebook page called “If I could turn back the time” where users share their biggest regrets. If van der Sloot had any, he didn’t show his cards there.
What makes van der Sloot tick?
Birmingham, Al (WIAT) What makes Joran van der Sloot tick? Perhaps more urgently, is he a crazed pyscho killer preying on young women?
Although two grieving families, one in Peru and one here in Alabama, would like answers of their own, a team of Peruvian psychologists will be grilling van der Sloot at Lima’s Castro Castro prison this week.
According to Peru.com, a team of experts were to visit the accused killer this week as part of the criminal proceedings unfolding against the Dutchman.
RadarOnLine.com says Van der Sloot’s Peruvian attorney said that the defense will submit their own psychological profiles on van der Sloot, dating back to his childhood.
As previously reported here on CBS42.com, van der Sloot’s own mother has questioned his sanity.
Van der Sloot is accused of murdering 21 year old Stephany Flores….found dead in van der Sloot’s Lima hotel room after spending time with him in a casino. Peruvian police have a ton of evidence including security camera video showing Flores going into the room but only van der Sloot coming back out. They also have a confession in which van der Sloot walked them through the murder scene. That’s a confession he is now trying to have thrown out claiming coercion and improper legal representation.
Van der Sloot is also the prime suspect in disappearance in Aruba of Mountain Brook teenager Natalee Holloway five years ago. The last person known to be with Natalee? Joran van der Sloot. He was questioned but never charged by Aruban authorities.
Van der Sloot Files Suit Against Initial Lawyer
(AP) – LIMA, Peru — Joran van der Sloot has sued the lawyer who represented him during a police interrogation on the day that authorities say the Dutchman confessed to killing a Peruvian woman, his current attorney said Saturday.
Maximo Altez told The Associated Press he filed suit Friday charging attorney Luz Romero Chinchay with misrepresentation, abuse of authority and conspiracy to commit a crime. Altez said the initial lawyer “pretended to be a public advocate when he is actually a private attorney.”
“We have searched the name of Luz Romero Chinchay in the list of public defenders provided by the Ministry of Justice and his name was not on that list. We do not know why the police called this lawyer. We want to know who paid for him because my client did not,” Altez said.
Under Peruvian law, a crime suspect who does not have private counsel is provided with a public defender who works for the Ministry of Justice.
Altez said he also has filed suit charging the same offenses against Col. Miguel Canlla, chief of the police homicide squad, who led the interrogation of Van der Sloot.
Neither Romero Chinchay nor Canlla could be reached for comment.
A motion by Van der Sloot seeking to throw out his confession was dismissed June 25. Van der Sloot recanted the confession in a jailhouse interview with the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, claiming it was made under duress.
On the night of June 7, police announced that Van der Sloot had confessed to the murder of the Stephany Flores on May 30 in his Lima hotel room. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 and 35 years in prison.
Van der Sloot also remains the sole suspect in the unresolved 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway on the Caribbean island of Aruba.
Today Show – NBC – 07/01/10
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