The young Dutch poker professional, 22 year old Joran van der Sloot, was arrested yesterday in Chile and held for his involvement in at least one murder involving a Peruvian woman last week. Van der Sloot slipped across the border after he allegedly killed Stephany Flores Ramirez in a hotel room in Lima. Her body was found the following day and the police immediately issued a warrant for van der Sloot after the room was found to be registered in his name and hotel staff confirmed that they were last seen together.
Van der Sloot’s name may be familiar to many due to him being a suspect in the murder of Natalee Holloway in 2005 – exactly five years to the day of the new murder case. At the time, camera footage shows Holloway leaving a bar with van der Sloot in Aruba. However, although the teen never showed up to rejoin her group the following day, her body was never found and van der Sloot managed to be released after being arrested and questioned twice, simply through lack of evidence.
In 2008, van der Sloot was caught by an undercover investigator selling Thai women into sex slavery after duping them into believing that they were going to become exotic dancers in the Netherlands. He made $13,000 per woman yet somehow avoided arrest on these counts as well.
Van der Sloot is well known on the live poker circuit and was in Chile to attend the PokerStars Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT). He is known to be a sharp and talented young player.
Yesterday, van der Sloot’s lawyer tried to portray his client as a victim of the media and said: “He’s a popular suspect, he’s someone who people believe – people have very strong opinions about this – that he got away with murder, literally, in Aruba which, the evidence says otherwise, the judges have said otherwise. But he’s someone who is easy to point the finger at, he wears a bulls-eye on his back.”
