Is it a game of a cat and mouse? And, if so, which one is the cat — and which one is the mouse?
But most citizens of the world have concluded who the louse is: 22-year old Dutch Joran van der Sloot, who has reportedly confessed to the slaying of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman who he picked up five years after the disappearance of Natalee Holloway…who many suspect he helped disappear. And now — the newest twist — Van der Sloot is telling police he knows where Holloway’s body is.
The questions arise: is it for real this time (some years ago while under suspicion he confessed, was caught on tape and later recanted his confession)? Or is he playing a game? Does he REALLY know where the body is (most people believe he does but the FBI affadavit says he lied in an alleged extortion plot to get money front Holloway’s family to reveal the body’s location) or not? And will he recant this assertion as well?
Here’s the AP video report:
Joran van der Sloot told investigators during an interrogation that he knows the location of Natalee Holloway’s body, but he would neither identify the location nor say what happened to her the night of her disappearance, a Peruvian police official told CNN.
“In the interrogation done to the Dutch citizen, he says he knew the location of the corpse of the American citizen, but that he was going to explain everything to Aruban police,” said Miguel Canlla, head of the homicide division of the Peruvian national police investigative unit, on Thursday.
Joran van der Sloot allegeldy told Peruvian police that he knows where Natalee Holloway’s remains are.
Keep in mind that van der Sloot’s lawyer has already asked the judge to throw out the reported confession. You might remember, too, that a Dutch TV reporter secretly recorded van der Sloot saying he’d dumped Holloway’s body at sea — and then van der Sloot later took it back, saying he’d made the story up to impress him.
Why would he make his situation worse by making such a claim? The AP story quotes the Peruvian chief, who said that van der Sloot would only talk about Holloway in Aruba.
The attorney for Holloway’s mother told the Today Show’s Mike Celizic that van der Sloot is a psychopath:
After spending more than six hours on two occasions trying to get Joran van der Sloot to divulge the location in Aruba of Natalee Holloway’s remains, an attorney for Holloway’s mother said he has no doubt that van der Sloot is a psychopath.
“You can look right into his eyes and see he’s cold as ice and pathological,” John Q. Kelly told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Friday in New York.
Van der Sloot, who is under arrest in Peru for the murder of the 21-year-old daughter of a prominent local family, has been suspected almost from the beginning of being responsible for Holloway’s death in Aruba five years ago.
Apparently desperate for money, the Dutch national contacted Kelly by e-mail in March, demanding $250,000 from Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, in exchange for leading Kelly to the teenager’s remains. He wanted $25,000 up front with the rest to be provided when the remains were recovered and proven to be Holloway’s, Kelly said.
The information was used to set up a sting operation on May 10 with the FBI and Aruban law-enforcement authorities. After taking $25,000 in exchange for information that turned out to be false, Kelly said van der Sloot could have been arrested for wire fraud and extortion. But authorities said that more work needed to be done to build the case and van der Sloot was not only left free, he was allowed to leave Aruba for South America, where he would meet Stephany Flores, the woman he confessed to killing, while participating in a poker tournament.
Kelly said he does not know why van der Sloot was allowed to remain free.
“That wasn’t my call,” he said.
Go to the link and read the story in its entirety.
On this latest twist — van der Sloot dangling the tidbit that he knows where the long-sought body is — People Magazine adds:
This is not the first time van der Sloot has confessed to knowledge of Holloway’s disappearance, though in the past he would also recant his story. According to an affidavit in an extortion investigation involving him, van der Sloot said his father, Paulus van der Sloot, “disposed of Natalee’s body by burying her remains in the gravel under the foundation of the single story home.” (Paulus van der Sloot was an attorney who died in February.)
The house he cited had not been built at the time of Holloway’s disappearance.
Peter Blanken, the public prosecutor in Aruba, told PEOPLE on Friday that he remains skeptical of anything van der Sloot has to say about the Holloway case. “He told us several times his story about his last contact with Natalee Holloway,” Blanken tells PEOPLE. “I don’t know now if he speaks the truth.”
…..”We will travel to Peru to interrogate van der Sloot … in due course,” says Blanken. He adds that Peruvian authorities “have to work first on their own case, and there is this case of the American authorities” looking into allegations that van der Sloot tried to extort $250,000 from Natalee’s mother, Beth Holloway, in exchange for information about Natalee’s death and whereabouts.
Meanwhile, CBS News offers this report on how the FBI sting against van der Sloot’s alleged extortion attempt was a sting gone wrong:
UPDATE: CNN’s report on van der Sloot’s claim that he knows where Natalee Holloway’s body is:
UPDATE II: ABC News’ report:
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.