LIMA, Peru – Angry Peruvian onlookers shouted “Disgrace!” and “Murderer” at Joran van der Sloot on Friday after a judge ordered him jailed on first-degree murder and robbery charges in the violent killing of a 21-year-old Lima business student.
Prosecutors said the Dutchman, who was taken to a segregated block of an eastern Lima prison, acted with “ferocity and great cruelty” in killing Stephany Flores in his hotel room after they met playing poker.
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Van der Sloot, 22, remains the lone suspect in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway on the Caribbean resort island of Aruba, and Peru’s criminal police chief says the defendant told interrogators he knows where her body is.
Aruba’s attorney general, Taco Stein, said Friday he is skeptical that Van der Sloot was telling the truth about Holloway’s body. He said Aruban officials will decide whether to send investigators to Peru to question Van der Sloot once they learn exactly what he is offering.
Lima Superior Court Judge Juan Buendia issued a detention order before dawn for Van der Sloot on the murder charge. He was first taken with other prisoners in an armored truck to Lima’s judicial palace, then alone to the maximum-security Castro Castro prison.
Police manhandled Van der Sloot as they ushered him to the judicial palace, his hands cuffed behind him.
Police say Van der Sloot brutally murdered Flores three days after meeting her at a casino. He broke her nose, strangled her and threw her to the floor, then emptied her wallet and drove away in her SUV, said Gen. Cesar Guardia, chief of the criminal police.
The 6-foot-3 Van der Sloot took about $300 worth of Peruvian currency, two credit cards and Flores’ national ID card, Guardia said. He said the suspect abandoned her car in Lima before fleeing south to Chile by bus.
If convicted on the murder and robbery charges, Van der Sloot would be sentenced to between 15 and 35 years in prison, court spokesman Luis Gallardo said.
“The aggravating factors are having acted with ferocity and great cruelty,” said a court news release that announced the charges.
Flores was killed three days after meeting Van der Sloot, police say. Guardia said “a wealth of evidence” against the Dutchman includes closed-circuit video tracking him leaving the casino with Flores, entering his room with her and then leaving alone.
The police chief said Thursday night that when Van der Sloot confessed to killing Flores, investigators asked him about the Holloway case.
“He let slip that he knew the place where this person was buried,” Guardia said.
Guardia said Van der Sloot confessed that he killed Flores, the daughter of a circus promoter and former race car driver, because she found out about the Aruba case by using his laptop without his permission.
Van der Sloot’s newly hired Peruvian attorney, Maximo Altez, has asked Buendia, the judge, to declare his client’s Monday confession void on the grounds it was made in the presence of a defense lawyer appointed by police.
Altez refused to discuss the case.
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