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Joran Van der Sloot: His Chilean Version, The Sting and Unanswered Questions

By Jeralyn

According to El.commercio.pe, when Joran Van der Sloot was questioned by the Chilean police, he provided quite a different version of the events that transpired the night Stephany Flores accompanied him to his hotel room. (Google translation here.)

In the Chilean version, Joran and Stephany were stopped by two men in a white car as they were leaving the casino. The men were wearing police uniforms, put them in the white car and demanded money. When Joran and Stephany later got to his hotel and went inside, there was a man in the bed with a gun in his belt. A second man came out of the bathroom with a knife. One of the men hit Stephany in the face. The men were the same two men dressed as police that had stopped them earlier. [More...]

As to how he met Stephany: Joran allegedly told the Chilean police she sat at the table and started talking to him. She told him her father had money, she was a student and she wasn't interested in boys.

Anyone think the Chilean version is more credible than the Peruvian confession?

On a related note, here's a pictoral timeline of events. (Just click to enlarge, and although it's in Spanish, it's pretty easy to follow.)

What's still not known is why Stephany decided to go to the casino at 3:20 a.m., whether she was playing with both Elton Garcia and Joran or just Joran and why agreed to go to Joran's hotel room in the first place.

I can only think of two reasons she would have gone to Joran's room: Either they were going to get high, or one of them owed the other money after the poker game (even though that shouldn't happen at a casino where people play with pre-paid chips) and they went back to the room. If Joran owed her money, he probably told her it was back in his room. If she owed him money, she probably agreed to go to his room where his laptop was to engage in an online banking transaction and transfer money to him. It was early Sunday morning, and the banks wouldn't open until Monday.

In other words, it could be either she owed him money and promised to log onto her bank account back at his room and transfer some to him, or vice versa. Maybe he came back from getting coffee and she refused, or told him she forgot her password or the transaction wouldn't go through, and he snapped.

I'm sure the nice police and prosecutor interrogating him explained that if money was the motive, he's looking a life sentence, if sex is the motive, he's looking at 35 years, and if he just inexplicably lost it, and confesses right now, he's only looking at 12 to 20, and he'd get 1 day good time for every day served. Meaning he could be out in 6 years.

I don't believe whatever transpired in the room had anything to do with her googling him for information. The Holloway angle to the confession sounds like it was created by the police as a means of offering him a path to a lighter sentence, and after they described life in a Peruvian prison, he probably felt that was his best if not only option.

Maybe they also promised him that if he also finally confesses to Holloway's murder, they will agree to let him leave Peru to plead guilty in Aruba, and serve his sentence in Aruba before the sentence in Peru -- and when he was done in Aruba, they wouldn't extradite him back to serve the Peruvian sentence. Peru may prefer that because of the difficulty keeping Joran safe in their prison system. They don't need that headache, especially when they've been making strides towards reforming their system the past few years. A foreigner being killed in their prisons would be a black mark on their reform record.

Stephany Flores' father might have agreed. He's been linking his daughter's death to the Holloway case, and because the Holloways have suffered longer, he might be persuaded Stephany's death did not go unpunished if it results in Joran admitting guilt in the Holloway case and getting a long sentence in Aruba.

The Aruban Attorney General has confirmed he's talking to Peru and hoping their interrogation helps them solve Holloway's disappearance. My prediction: A Global plea agreement is coming.

Anyway, given the continued conflicting reports, that's my current best guess.

As to the FBI sting, which I called a sting the day it was reported, it's sounding more and more to me like the idea originated in the Holloway camp, and Joran took the bait. The FBI says private funds were used, not their money. I don't doubt that. But I do think the idea originated with the Holloways or their private investigators and attorneys, who thought after Joran's father died, he might need money and be willing to tell them what happened for money -- including whether his father had helped him hide the body.

Here's one version of how that went down. If Joran contacted Holloway's lawyers, I bet it was only after their private investigators put out feelers and got word to Joran that the Holloways were willing to pay and he should contact Kelly. (Kelly was his legal adversary, the lawyer who filed the civil suit in New York that the court dismissed.)

Peruvian authorities have announced a press conference for tomorrow. Presumably they will announce the filing of charges against Joran.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 09, 2010 (boomark / email).