Joran van der Sloot biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Infamous person. Born Joran Van der Sloot August 6, 1987, to parents Paulus and Anita Van der Sloot in Arnhem, Gelderland, Netherlands. Joran grew up in an affluent household; his father worked as a prestigious lawyer, and his mother was a socialite and school teacher. The family often traveled to exotic locals to keep up with Paulus' jobs. The eldest of three brothers, Joran was an honors student who took an avid interest in soccer and hoped as a teenager to play for a college in Tampa, Florida.

At 16, van der Sloot and his family relocated to Aruba, so that Paulus could accept a five-year contract as a judge for the local government. With a father as one of only four judges on the island, and a family friend as acting police chief in the area, Joran lived a life of privilege and acted with impunity. He regularly gambled on a $5,000 line of credit his father set up for him, partied with friends and picked up women. Anonymous sources later told media outlets that they believed van der Sloot was dosing the women he met with date rape drugs around this time, though these allegations have yet to be proven.

Meeting Natalee Holloway

Van der Sloot became a household name in 2005, when he met Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway while she and her friends vacationed on the island of Aruba. Holloway, 18, was celebrating her high school graduation on an informal field trip with nearly 100 other classmates from Mountain Brook High School in Birmingham, Alabama. She and her friends met van der Sloot while they were gambling at a local casino. They invited their new Dutch friend to meet them later, at an Oranjestad, Aruba, bar known as Carlos & Charlie's. Joran agreed. He then called two friends, brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, and asked that they pick him up that night and accompany him to the bar.

That evening van der Sloot snuck out of his family's large compound to meet with Natalee and her friends. According to later testimony, the three young men headed to Carlos & Charlie's, where Holloway began dancing with van der Sloot and drinking heavily. At the protests of her friends, Natalee jumped in the car with van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers.

Investigation

After Holloway didn't arrive at her hotel the next morning, police began an island-wide search for the teen. A week later after collecting their initial evidence, police arrested Joran, Deepak and Satish as suspects in Holloway's disappearance. The boys' testimonies initially coincided, saying that they all went to the beach with Holloway and then dropped her back off at her hotel. This story soon dissolved, however, when video surveillance tape of the hotel revealed that the Kalpoe brothers' car never dropped Holloway back home.