Legal Commentary

Joran Van Der Sloot Arrested in Chile, Charged With Extortion in Alabama

By Jeralyn

Update: Wire service reporting Joran Van der Sloot will be extradited to Peru tomorrow. Sounds like either he agreed to it or he's not being extradited, but expelled. I'm getting more and more convinced he didn't kill anyone and the authorities know it.

Joran Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile today and is in custody awaiting a decision from Peru on how it wants to proceed.

Van der Sloot was also charged in federal court in the Northern District of Alabama with extortion and wire fraud. The amended complaint is here. He's accused of trying to sell information about the whereabouts of Natalee Holloway's body and how she died.

Authorities in Peru say he and Stephany Flores were seen going to his hotel room about 5:00 a.m. Sunday, and Joran was seen leaving the hotel alone four hours later. Flores' body wasn't found until Wednesday. There's no mention of whether he was bloody or disheveled when seen leaving the hotel, but the cab driver who took him to Chile doesn't mention his appearance being out of the ordinary.

In Lima, police Gen. Cesar Guardia said Flores, who had been seen with the suspect early Sunday, was found Wednesday lying face down on the floor of van der Sloot's hotel room. Her neck was broken, and she was fully clothed, with no signs of having been sexually abused, Guardia told The Associated Press. Authorities found no potential murder weapons in the room, Garcia said.

Chilean police did not handcuff Joran as they escorted him into the police station. Nor did he resist. The cab drivers' comments are here.

It will be interesting to see when medical examiners fix Flores' time (and day) of death. It may well turn out she was killed long after Van der Sloot left the hotel. All the speculation about date rape drugs seems unfounded if the victim showed no signs of sexual abuse.

Joe Tacopina, cautioned against a rush to judgment. "Joran van der Sloot has been falsely accused of murder once before. The fact is he wears a bull's-eye on his back now and he is a quote-unquote usual suspect when it comes to allegations of foul play," Tacopina said.

As for the Alabama case, the charges are that he offered to sell information upon receipt of payment of a large sum of money. There's still no evidence he had real information to sell. It may have been a money scam, particularly since the U.S. Attorney says he provided false information.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 04, 2010 (boomark / email).