Joran van der Sloot

"I don't trust the media, and I don't think, I don't really care, if the media trusts me or not."

Joran van der Sloot is a Dutch murderer, currently serving 28 years in prison for the 2010 killing of Stephany Flores in Peru, and the main suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway while vacationing in Aruba.

Background
Van der Sloot was born in 1987 in Arnhem, Netherlands, the first of three children born to Paul van der Sloot, a lawyer, and Anita van der Sloot-Hugen, an art teacher. The family moved to Aruba in 1990. Van der Sloot studied in the International School of Aruba, where he was a honor student and a star soccer and tennis player, but according to his mother, he also had a tendency to lie and sneak out of home to play in casinos from a young age.

Disappearance of Natalee Holloway
Van der Sloot and two Surinamese friends, brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, were arrested on June 9, 2005 for their suspected responsibility on the May 30 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a 18-year-old American tourist that was last seen leaving a nightclub and getting on a car with the trio around 1:30 AM. They offered conflicting and ever changing stories about Holloway's disappearance, blaming it initially on other people (who were also arrested briefly) and eventually on each other. The Kalpoes claimed that they visited the beach together and later dropped Holloway and Van der Sloot at her hotel, while Van der Sloot claimed that he had been dropped alone at the beach while the Kalpoes drove Holloway away. Van der Sloot was the primary suspect from the beginning, and was the only one to remain under arrest for the whole four-month period of the initial investigation. After all suspects were released due to lack of evidence, he returned to the Netherlands to study a degree on international business management.

In 2007, Van der Sloot published a book, The Case of Natalee Holloway, in which he admitted lying in his early statements and recounted yet another version of the Holloway disappearance. The book spurred a new search for Holloway's body in Aruba, and the re-arrest of Van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers. Van der Sloot returned to Aruba for a court hearing, but all three were released again, free of charges, in December. In January 2008, a sting operation set by Dutch journalist Peter R. de Vries filmed Van der Sloot admitting to being present during Holloway's death. According to Van der Sloot, Holloway suffered a seizure while they were having sex at the beach (something that he had denied vehemently). After failing to revive her, he contacted a friend named "Daury" that volunteered to load her body on a boat and dump it in the ocean, without making sure if she was dead or still alive. The video was considered admissible before court, but insufficient to justify Van der Sloot's new arrest without additional evidence. Van der Sloot claimed to have lied again, this time to impress the covert journalist interviewing him, and after briefly checking in a mental institution, he moved to Bangkok, Thailand. The claimed motive was to study business in Rangit University, but he dropped out soon and bought a restaurant near the campus. In November, a new sting operation by De Vries filmed Van der Sloot in what appeared to be preparations for the traffic and prostitution of Thai women in the Netherlands. Around the same time, Van der Sloot conceded an interview to Fox News's On the Record, where he claimed to have sold Holloway into sexual slavery and implicated his own father, the Kalpoes and two agents of the Aruban police, but he retracted it later. A purported recording of Van der Sloot and his father discussing human trafficking on the phone, aired concurrently with the interview, was later identified to have been done entirely by Van der Sloot himself, who had imitated his father's voice.

Van der Sloot returned to Aruba after the death of his father, in February 2010. He contacted the legal representative of Holloway's mother Beth and offered to reveal the location of her body for $250,000. The information provided was false, and Van der Sloot escaped to South America with the first payment of $25,000 despite Aruban police and the FBI setting a joint operation to arrest him.

Death of Stephany Flores
Van der Sloot arrived in Lima, Peru on May 14, in theory to take part in the Latin American Poker Tour, though he never paid the entry fee. On May 30 (deadline to pay the fee and fifth anniversary of Holloway's disappearance), he played cards with 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a casino and took her to his hotel room, where he murdered her. Van der Sloot then fled Peru with $11,000 from Flores, her ID, credit cards and jewelry, but was arrested four days later near Curacaví, Chile and handed over to Peruvian authorities. Van der Sloot again told conflicting versions of what had happened to Flores and offered to release the location of Holloway's body in exchange for being transferred to an Aruban prison, which was not considered as there is no extradition treaty between Peru and the Netherlands. In 2012, Van der Sloot pled guilty to the murder and robbery of Stephany Flores and was sentenced to 28 years in prison. After the end of his sentence, he will be extradited to the United States to face charges for the extortion of Beth Holloway.

Modus Operandi
Van der Sloot googled information on the Holloway case before going to the casino and playing cards with Stephany Flores. After taking her to his room, possibly after using date rape drugs (though they had no sex), he punched and bludgeoned her with a tennis racket, breaking her neck, and asphyxiated her by undetermined means. After that, Van der Sloot went to buy coffee (two cups, that he took back to the room, to make it look like Flores was still alive inside) and googled information about Chilean-Peruvian relations and bus departures to Chile before robbing Flores and leaving the body and murder weapon in the room. Because he was found with an oceanic current chart of Peru when he was arrested, it is speculated that he planned to hide the body in a suitcase and throw it into the sea, but desisted because he would have had to check out of the hotel, risking a premature discovery of the murder by the staff.

Profile
A 2010 report by Peruvian forensic psychologist Silvia Rojas Regalado determined that Joran van der Sloot has average intelligence and is not a psychopath. However, he also "presents an anti-social personality characterized by the ease with which he establishes superficial interpersonal relationships, indifference when it comes to others’ well being and the capacity to maintain a fraudulent social style; deficient social conscience that shows in the violation of rules and the mixing in events that affect others’ rights, looking only to advance his own interests. He shows social irresponsibility, the enjoyment of superficial activities, in general a libertine and hedonistic lifestyle in search of new sensations in order to be stimulated. [He has] low tolerance to frustration, [being] unable to stand inconveniences and a tendency to generate a vengeful attitude. [He is] emotionally immature which prompts sudden changes in his behavior that can go from simple criticism, to out of control emotions, which makes him prone to commit acts against the lives of others. [He] shows certain dominance over the opposite sex with the devaluation of the feminine figure."

Confirmed

 * 2010:
 * May 10, Oranjestad, Aruba: Elizabeth Ann Holloway, 49
 * May 30, Lima, Peru: Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramírez, 21

Possible

 * Oranjestad, Aruba, 2005:
 * May 30: Natalee Ann Holloway, 18
 * Bangkok, Thailand, 2008: Unnamed women

On Criminal Minds
In the Season Seven episode Hope, Reid mentioned Van der Sloot's extortion of Holloway's mother as an example of criminals reaching out to their victims' relatives and interacting with them. Van der Sloot was mentioned a second time in the Season Ten episode Beyond Borders, where he was compared to the case at hand, an international criminal (later revealed to be Dutch) that kills people in different countries but always on the same time of the year. In the same episode, Lily Lambert claims that her team provided a profile pointing to Van der Sloot, but that this was ignored by the Aruban police.

In the Season Six episode J.J., that adapts elements of the Holloway disappearance, Van der Sloot seems to have inspired characteristics in both case suspects, Syd Pearson and James Barrett. Like Van der Sloot, main suspect Syd is the more dominant, charismatic and successful with women among the suspects, comes from a wealthy family, enjoys sports, and seems to revel in the attention given to him by the media and law enforcement. However, the real unsub turns out to be James, who went back to Kate's room after dropping her there (just like Van der Sloot is believed to have returned to Holloway's room) and later threw her off a boat and into the sea (like Van der Sloot claimed to have done to Holloway in the first De Vries sting video).