Joran van der Sloot Pelted With Rotten Vegetables on Way to Court
Police: Dutch playboy ate pastries with corpse of Peru murder victim.
June 11, 2010 -- Confessed killer Joran van der Slootwas pelted with rotten vegetables today and a judge ordered him kept in jail because his murder of a Peruvian woman was carried out with "ferocity and great cruelty."
Van der Sloot's alleged cruel streak was on display when he told Peruvian authorities that he'll confess to where he put the body of missing American teenager Natalee Holloway if officials from Aruba will come visit him.
A Peruvian police general said that van der Sloot, charged with the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramirez, will not receive any type of leniency or plea bargain for information on Holloway.
A Peruvian judge today ordered van der Sloot held in jail on charges of robbery and first degree murder, saying the young Dutchman acted with "ferocity and great cruelty."
Police manhandled van der Sloot as they escorted him out of a truck into the courthouse with a blanket draped over his head.
"Disgrace!" and "Murderer!" bystanders yelled. Some threw rotten vegetables at him.
In the week since his capture, while fleeing in Chile, grisly details have emerged about how he says he killed Flores.
"Joran, he said, struck Stephany repeatedly, strangled her, shook her, threw her on the ground," Gen. Cesear Guardia told "Good Morning America" in Spanish. "And, when he saw that she was still breathing, he used his own shirt to suffocate her."
Van der Sloot also told police, Guardia said, that when was captured on hotel surveillance video leaving his room to get coffee and pastries, Flores was already dead. Guardia said he believes van der Sloot ate his breakfast in the hotel room next to Flores' body.
His motive, Guardia said, was robbery.
"When he left his room that morning," Guardia said, "Joran took Stephany's cash, jewelry, credit cards, ID, and her car, which he abandoned a few miles away."
Though one of van der Sloot's lawyers has said that his client's confession was coerced, Guardia said it was "totally legal."
It is unclear if or when van der Sloot will release information about Natalee Holloway. In the past he has told several versions about what happened to the 18-year-old, who disappeared in 2005 while on a school trip.
Investigators recently searched a beach in Aruba after van der Sloot said he buried her there as part of an extortion attempt in which he was given $25,000 for information about Natalee. Nothing was found in the location he provided.
"He is ready to discuss this whenever officials from Aruba can come here," Guardia said.
Once in the Castro Castro prison outside Lima, van der Sloot will be separated from the other inmates for his own safety.
But his Peruvian attorney Sandro Monteblanco isn't happy about the move, calling the prison "Dante's Inferno."
"You hear people talk about Turkish prisons and what not, because they haven't been to a Peruvian prison," he said.
Van der Sloot Involved in Brazen Extortion Plot Ahead of Peru Murder
Van der Sloot's plan to extort money from Holloway's parents was so brazen that he demanded her mother sign a contract pledging tens of thousands of dollars for information about where her daughter's remains could be found, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed Thursday.
But in a heartless act of greed and deception, the Dutch playboy accepted $25,000 from Holloway's mother and then lied to her about where her daughter was buried, the affidavit states.
On the day he was arrested for murder, U.S. prosecutors in Birmingham, Ala., issued an arrest warrant for van der Sloot charging him with extortion.
The federal affidavit spells out for the first time how the alleged extortion scam unfolded.
U.S. prosecutors say van der Sloot contacted a person known to Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, in March, and negotiated a price for showing him the location of her daughter's remains.
Van der Sloot initially demanded $250,000, but later agreed to show the family's proxy the location of the body in Aruba for $25,000 up front and a promise of more to come.
The affidavit does not name the proxy, referred to by the government as a "cooperating witness."
During the negotiations with Twitty's go-between, "van der Sloot insisted that a written contract between him and Mrs. Twitty be prepared by the cooperating witness," according to the affidavit.
The contract was signed by Twitty, who faxed it back to the cooperating witness in New York.
Offices for lawyer John Kelly, who represented Twitty in her 2006 wrongful death civil suit against van der Sloot, are located in New York.
"Van der Sloot indicated to the cooperating witness that unless Mrs. Twitty paid the money demanded he would not tell where the remains of her daughter were hidden, nor provide any information regarding the circumstances of her death," the affidavit states.
Joran van der Sloot Lied to Natalee Holloway's Mother
On May 10, Twitty's go-between flew to Aruba to meet van der Sloot, who signed his name to the contract and was paid $10,000 cash from the witness.
"Next, the cooperating witness called Mrs. Twitty, who immediately wire transferred $15,000, the balance of the initial payment, from her bank account in Regions Bank in Birmingham, Alabama, to van der Sloot's bank account in the Netherlands. Van der Sloot confirmed to the cooperating witness that the wire transfer had occurred," according to the affidavit.
With the money in his hands, Van der Sloot took the witness to a house where he said Holloway's remains were buried in the foundation.
"Van der Sloot then told the cooperating witness that van der Sloot's father, Paulus van der Sloot, had disposed of Natalee's body by burying her remains in the gravel under the foundation of the single story house," read the court documents. The senior van der Sloot died last year.
Van der Sloot says he remained in the car while his father concealed her body in foundation and did not actually see where the body had been dumped.
Van der Sloot also claimed that he had been with Holloway on the night she died and "that he had thrown her to the ground after she had attempted to stop him from leaving her," according to the affidavit.
Van der Sloot claimed that when she fell, she hit her head on a rock and died as a result of the impact.
It quickly became apparent that van der Sloot's story was a lie. The contractor who built the house said it was not under construction in 2005, and aerial photos of the area at that time confirm the house was not under construction at the time.
After the witness left Aruba, he received an email from van der Sloot on May 17 admitting he had lied about the location of the remains.