Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery (9 page)

The nearly all-white bedroom community was a maze of streets lined with grand homes and carefully manicured lawns. People who lived outside the wealthy enclave jokingly referred to it as “the tiny kingdom” because of the disparity of wealth between Mountain Brook and the rest of Birmingham.

“Jug, something’s happened to Natalee. I need your help,” Beth pleaded. She told her husband she wanted to get down to Aruba immediately and asked if he could arrange a charter flight.

At first, Jug thought his wife was overreacting, just being a nervous mother. “She probably just missed the flight,” he told her.

But Beth was insistent. “You know Natalee, she’s never been late for anything. Something’s wrong.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Hanging up with Jug, Beth and her two friends dialed anyone they could think of who might have access to a plane. But it was Monday of Memorial Day weekend and many of the private pilots had already had a few beers at backyard barbecues, rendering them unable to fly. As the women made their calls, Linda continued to drive but was so upset that her driving was becoming erratic.

“Let me take the wheel!” Beth insisted. Ignoring the posted speed limits, Natalee’s mother raced toward Birmingham. The crumbling red soil of cotton and soybean fields filled the side windows, the few trees along the shoulder a tangle of green, strangled by kudzu, an invasive Asian vine. Steering wheel in one hand, cell phone in the other, Beth fielded calls from Natalee’s friends who were at the airport and about to board their flight. She learned that her daughter was last seen at a bar called Carlos’n Charlie’s.

Hearing that, Beth grew even more alarmed. She had spoken to Natalee about this very place in the days before her departure. Beth had been told by one of the Mountain Brook students who had been on a previous trip to Aruba of local men who trawled the bar, targeting tourist girls and luring them out of the nightspot.

Beth listened in horror as one of the students told her that Natalee had climbed into a silver or gray Honda with a person from Holland whom she had met at a casino. It was almost too much to process. She needed to get to that island. Pressing harder on the gas pedal, Beth gunned the engine. Not wanting to endanger anyone else on the road, she dialed 911 and asked for a police escort. “I’m doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour in the left lane,” she said, reading out her location to the dispatcher.

Natalee’s brother, Matt, had received the news as well. Convinced that something horrible had happened to his big sister, he called his mother and advised her to call the FBI, feeding her telephone numbers for the various offices as she raced down the highway.

Dialing number after number, Beth couldn’t get anybody on the line who seemed to be in a position to help. It was Memorial Day weekend and all the agents were home celebrating with their families. Beth’s cell phone continued to ring with calls from the Mountain Brook students relating what little information they had.

One of them was Jug’s nephew, Thomas, also a senior at Mountain Brook and on the class trip. He had actually seen the guy who had left with Natalee from Carlos’n Charlie’s. He shared a poker table with him at the Excelsior Casino during the trip. The young man told Thomas he was from Holland and staying at the Holiday Inn. Thomas also remembered his first name. “It’s Gerran or Juran or something like that. I don’t think he would hurt Natalee. He seemed like a regular guy, like me.”

*   *   *

The private jet carrying Beth and Jug Twitty hit the tarmac of Aruba’s Queen Beatrix International Airport at 10:00
P.M.
on Monday, May 31. Also on board were Madison Whatley’s father, Matt, and Ruffner Page Jr., the owner of the jet. Ruffner’s daughter had also been on the trip. Beth’s friend, Jodi Bearman, the travel agent who had booked the travel for all 124 students and seven chaperones, was also on the flight.

Ruffner had arranged for private handlers to meet the party at the airstrip to assist with customs, ground transportation, and anything else they might need. The two local men were waiting at the airport as promised, and quickly ushered everyone into a white van.

The group’s first stop was the Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort, where Natalee and her friends had spent their holiday. Hurrying into the hotel lobby, the Twittys spotted Paul Lilly, the Mountain Brook chaperone who had stayed behind in case Natalee returned to the hotel. He was seated uncomfortably on a wicker couch to the left of the reception desk talking with a dark-skinned American man.

Amid a lobby abuzz with laughing tourists sipping piña coladas, the grim-faced gym teacher looked Beth straight in the eyes and sadly shook his head. The look said it all. He had no news about Natalee. Striding over, Beth immediately noticed her daughter’s purple duffel bag on the table next to him.

Seeing the bag, Beth’s mind flashed back to Thursday morning when Natalee had carried it out of the house just after 3:00
A.M.
to catch her flight. She had been so excited. The farthest from home Natalee had been before the Aruban adventure was to Austria with her mother. But this would be her first time out of the country without a parent to accompany her. Natalee’s mother had set aside money so that her daughter could attend. She felt Natalee had worked hard in school and deserved the trip.

Her stepson, George, had gone on the senior trip to Aruba two years earlier. Natalee’s stepcousins, twins named Thomas and Hunter, were joining her on this celebratory Caribbean getaway.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, Beth had attended meetings at which the role of the chaperones had been discussed. She’d even sat her daughter down and warned her to be careful, that there were predators out there, men who might try to pick her up or try to slip drugs into her drink.

With 124 students going on the trip, Beth had assumed there would be safety in numbers. Now standing in the lobby of the Holiday Inn, she realized she’d been wrong. Natalee was out there somewhere, alone and frightened, or worse.

The Mountain Brook chaperone explained that earlier in the day he’d reported her daughter’s disappearance to members of the Visibility Team, who were stationed at various locations around the resort.

Judging by their official-looking uniforms, he assumed he was dealing with law enforcement. For years, drug dealing and petty crime plagued the tourist zones, threatening the tranquil image of “One Happy Island” promoted by the tourism industry. In response, with funding from the private sector, a high-profile Visibility Team was created in 2002 to patrol the beaches along the high-rise strip, as well as other parts of the island.

Dressed in either white or baby-blue shirts and dark-colored shorts or slacks, team members wore baseball caps with the word “Police” written on them in large white lettering. Members of the Visibility Team, which included both police officers and private security guards, were hard to miss as they cruised the Palm Beach area atop blue four-wheel all-terrain dune buggies, walkie-talkies in hand. The Noord Police Station’s district commander was the Visibility Team’s supervisor.

In spite of the team’s exaggerated visibility, Lilly still described frustration at the procedure for reporting a missing person. No one seemed to know the chain of command. Finally, by accident, Lilly encountered Eric Williams, on vacation himself in Aruba, and now seated beside him. Williams said he was an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and offered Lilly his assistance.

Beth was relieved to hear he was from a U.S. federal agency, and promptly shared everything she had learned from Natalee’s friends. Williams made a few calls to police on the island and was told that on Aruba, just as in the United States, an adult must be missing for twenty-four hours before an official report can be filed. Natalee was eighteen and an adult in the eyes of the law.

It had been twenty-two hours since Natalee’s friends had last seen her hanging out the window of a car in the company of three young men, yelling the word “Aruba” back to her puzzled classmates standing outside of Carlos’n Charlie’s. Beth was beside herself. Time was of the essence.

Marching to the reception desk, the distraught mother approached the night manager, Brenda, with questions about her missing daughter and a possible companion. Did she know a hotel guest named Joran?

Brenda knew instantly who she was talking about. The young man was a regular at the hotel casino upstairs, and he liked to pick up young female tourists, especially blondes. Furthermore, he wasn’t a hotel guest; he was an islander and lived year-round on Aruba.

“He is a tall, good-looking boy,” Brenda volunteered. “Like a Dutch Marine.”

Beth’s apprehension was turning to fear. Nothing she had heard about this stranger appeared to be the truth.

FIVE

MAY 2005
ARUBA

Anita van der Sloot was worried about her seventeen-year-old son. Often, she felt like she was dealing with two different people with completely separate personalities. The transformation had been gradual but was now impossible to ignore.

At home, Joran had become difficult. The lies and inappropriate behavior had begun years before, but his mother hoped he would outgrow it as he matured. But puberty had brought on a new set of challenges that Anita could never have anticipated.

Almost overnight, Joran shot up physically, and became increasingly argumentative and aggressive. His younger brothers were fearful of him. Anita suspected her introverted husband was, as well, but he did his best to keep his distance. Paulus was not one for confrontation and tended to retreat to his work and let his wife handle the discipline.

However, the power shift in the Van der Sloots’ household was undeniable. With any reproach or criticism, Joran became so brooding and irritated that the family shrank away from him, terrorized by a young man they couldn’t comprehend.

A year earlier, when Joran brought home a new girlfriend, Melody Granadillo, his mother had been ecstatic. She was a dark-skinned beauty with curly black hair and a long, delicate neck. They had met at a birthday party in October 2003 and for a spell, Joran seemed truly happy. It was a typical teenage courtship. The two went to movies and concerts on the beach.

Anita loved seeing her eldest son so infatuated. He had been giddy with excitement the day he told her about taking his new girlfriend to the Japanese steakhouse Benihana’s for her birthday.

“I gave her a vase full of red Skittles,” he said, explaining that Skittles were Melody’s favorite candy. He’d purchased several bags of the multicolored candies and he picked out the red ones. “She was so surprised.”

In turn, Melody gave Joran a two-month-old boxer/Great Dane mix for Valentine’s Day. He named the puppy “Charro,” slang for “street person.” Charro joined Silly, a black-and-brown mutt that Anita had rescued from the streets.

Joran had had other girlfriends. When he was fourteen, he briefly dated an American girl whose father was in Aruba on business. He had enrolled his teenage daughter at Joran’s school, the International School of Aruba. Joran once confided to his mother that this girlfriend thought he was too sweet, and not strong enough for her liking. After she moved back to the United States with her family, Joran became involved with a local girl named Carmen. That relationship was short lived. His parents had never witnessed Joran so in love as he was with Melody.

However, after seven months the relationship was over. Melody discovered that the boy she so endearingly called “Chi Chi” or “Mr. Wiggles” was unfaithful. She had ignored her friends’ previous warnings about his lothario ways, but when she discovered he was having an affair with a classmate of hers, she dumped him over the phone.

His obsession with gambling was also highly disagreeable. He was known to incorporate gambling metaphors into love poems he wrote to her.

“You are my very own seventeen, the best hand ever dealt,” he opened one tender ballad saved in her blue scrapbook.

Most problematic of all were his relentless, fantastic, pathological lies. He lied about everything and then lied about lying, a perplexing and unacceptable situation to Melody.

For the narcissistic young teen, the alpha male of his Pimpology Crew, the breakup was devastating. Still, Melody remained an important person to Joran and they continued to stay in touch. Joran knew that his lies and cheating ways had been the reason for their breakup but he just couldn’t seem to help himself.

By May 2005, he was again juggling two different girlfriends and constantly seeking meaningless hookups on the side. Other boys at the Aruba Racquet Club, where his family actively enjoyed the facilities, saw Joran for what he was—a playboy and a bully. They couldn’t believe how popular he was with the ladies. Perhaps they were attracted to his bad-boy image.

On the court, Joran exhibited all the sportsmanship of an uglier version of a young John McEnroe, cursing, throwing his racquet and menacing other players. He was a regular at the club’s gym, where he worked out obsessively in the afternoons after his private tennis lessons, trying to sweat out the booze from the night before. But the late nights of partying were taking their toll. When Joran looked in the mirror, he saw the beginnings of a double chin. He’d been chubby as a child, and was terribly self-conscious about his weight. He wanted to be strong and sexually attractive.

Joran had been a quiet child, almost shy. However, because he was the oldest, he felt the need to be the little man of the house, especially when his father worked such long days, sometimes weeks away from the home.

Now, Anita found herself missing her little man. He had helped her when she was lonely. He had always listened to her and followed the rules she laid down. Even now, she held on to the belief that her son’s short temper, his rebelliousness, and his lies were all part of a misguided teenage attempt to exert his independence. He just needed to find his way.

Joran van der Sloot was born on August 6, 1987, in the city of Arnhem in the eastern part of the Netherlands, less than an hour’s drive from the German border on the banks of the Rhine River, and one of the few Dutch cities with hills. Located about sixty miles southeast of Amsterdam, Arnhem was the site of a famous World War II battle. Much of the city center had been rebuilt after it was nearly destroyed in the Battle of Arnhem, and as a result it was missing much of the Old World charm found in other Dutch towns. Only Rotterdam had sustained more damage.
A Bridge Too Far,
the World War II movie classic, was set in Arnhem. Today, an ever-dwindling group of veterans makes the pilgrimage back to Arnhem to see the famous John Frost Bridge, named for Britain’s legendary airborne officer.