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Portrait of a Monster: Joran van der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery - Softcover
Portrait of a Monster
Lisa Pulitzer
From a pair of New York Times bestselling authors with unparalleled access comes an in-depth account of the manhunt for Joran van der Sloot, one of the most reviled accused criminals in the world
In May 2005, Natalee Holloway disappeared from a high school trip to Aruba. Five years to the day later, twenty-one-year-old Stephany Flores was reported missing in Lima, Peru. Implicated in both crimes was one young man: Joran van der Sloot.
A twenty-three-year-old Dutchman, Van der Sloot has become the subject of intense scrutiny by the media and the public in the years since 2005. He was arrested and detained by Aruban authorities in connection with the Holloway disappearance, only to be released after questioning. In 2008, during a Dutch sting operation, he admitted to being present for Holloway's death---but later recanted his statement.
In 2010, on the five-year anniversary of her disappearance, a young business student in Peru named Stephany Flores disappeared, only to be found dead three days later in a hotel room---registered to Van der Sloot. He was arrested for the murder and confessed, but he later claimed he was coerced.
This is the first book to offer a probing look at the man tied to two of the most sensational cases of the decade. It draws from:
· Interviews with members of the families of Joran, Stephany, and Natalee
· Never-before-seen photographs of the crime scene in Peru, fingerprint files, hotel records, and more
· Internal communications between Interpol, the FBI, Aruban officials, and officials in Chile and Peru
· Never-before-seen police files from Chile, Peru, and Aruba
Portrait of a Monster offers an unflinching look into the workings of an international manhunt and a chilling portrait of an alleged killer.
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About the Author:
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
LISA PULITZER is a former correspondent for The New York Times. She is the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books, including the bestselling Stolen Innocence. COLE THOMPSON is the co-author with Catherine Crier of A Deadly Game, a #1 New York Times bestseller about Laci and Scott Peterson.
ONE
MAY 30, 2010 LIMA, PERU
Ricardo Flores was an early riser, even on Sundays. Cracking open the door to his daughter’s bedroom, he saw that she hadn’t come home from her night out with friends. Her bed was still made and arranged with the stuffed teddy bears she loved and collected.
The fifty-eight-year-old remembered his youth when kids still had curfews. These days, the parties continued well past dawn. He only had a few ground rules with Stephany but checking in was one of them. She hadn’t even left a message about her whereabouts. She was going to get an earful when she did report in.
The last time Ricardo had spoken to his daughter was the previous evening. He’d reached her on her cell just before 10 P.M. to invite her to an impromptu family dinner at a grill not far from the Floreses’ home in Santiago de Surco. Stephany told her father she was hanging out with friends in Larcomar, a three-level mall of boutiques, eateries, and movie theaters carved into the cliff at the edge of Miraflores, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
By day, Miraflores was a bustling place full of foreigners eager to see the sights. A half-hour drive from Jorge Chávez International Airport, Miraflores catered to both well-heeled travelers residing in four-star hotels on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean and backpackers flopping in cheap hostels. Special tourist police and English-friendly information booths sought to give the place a feeling of calm and safety amid the polluted chaos that was greater metropolitan Lima.
In the district’s central square, Parque Kennedy, olive-skinned women in colorful Indian garb sold traditional indigenous paintings, tapestries, and other knickknacks. “Hey Mee-stir” or “Hey Lay-dee,” they would call out, employing the little English they knew. Camera-toting travelers from all points of the globe would stand in line, tickets in hand, for seats on the red double-decker Mirabuses to explore a myriad of museums, pre-Incan ruins, and even catacombs buried deep beneath an ancient Spanish monastery farther downtown. At lunchtime, barkers with broad friendly smiles would stand on the sidewalks corralling hungry foreigners into relatively inexpensive cafés to feast on enormous plates of ceviche, pinchos, and Chifa, a wild fusion of traditional Peruvian and Chinese cuisine. Restaurants were equipped with special hooks on the underside of tables to keep purses, knapsacks, and cameras away from street thieves.
The intoxicating smells of lunchtime, the biggest meal of the day, almost masked the thick odor of exhaust that hovered over the city; trapped between the cool winds of the Pacific and the foothills of the Andes on the other side of town, the sickening, damp, polluted air had no place to go. To say the air quality was poor was an understatement. From June through December, a thick, gray fog, known as “la garúa,” hung over the city, obscuring what would otherwise be spectacular views of the Pacific coastline.
By night, Miraflores was another place entirely. Cars would race by at breakneck speeds, making the simple act of crossing the street a dangerous endeavor. Neon signs advertised McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks and might seem out of place, but the American fast-food establishments were always packed with budget travelers and locals. The action started late and typically began with a round of pisco sours, Peru’s national cocktail made from brandy, lemon juice, and sugar, topped with frothy egg whites and a drop of Angostura bitters. The drink, surprisingly strong, tasted a bit like margaritas and fueled the laughter, loud conversations, and occasional bar fights. Nightclubs and casinos sprang to life when the sun went down.
After dusk, the district of Miraflores was party central and the revelry often spilled into the streets as bleary-eyed packs of tourists stumbled from bar to bar. Patrols of heavily armed police officers in black flak jackets kept a careful watch over the foreigners, wobbly from the excesses of the evening and vulnerable to petty crime.
Ricardo was aware of Miraflores’s wild nightlife, and although he worried about his daughter’s absence that morning, he also realized she was twenty-one and an adult.
Annoyed that she hadn’t touched base with the family, Ricardo dialed her cell phone. It rang a few times and then went to voice mail. Clearly the phone was on, but she wasn’t answering.
Ricardo had always been a little overprotective of Stephany. The father of five children, he only had one daughter, his baby girl. As Stephany was growing up, he was rarely seen without his little nenita in tow.
When Stephany was two years old, the family owned a circus. It was a good, old-fashioned tent circus, complete with trapeze acts and a menagerie of exotic animals. Stephany loved to be around the elephants, bears, and tigers. Because her mother, Mariaelena, was the manager, she was able to spend her days hanging out with carnival workers who shared their strange and curious world with the tiny brown-eyed brunette. The performers loved Stephany and saw her as a kindred spirit. Like them, she was a bit mischievous and utterly fearless.
One day, Ricardo received a call from his wife asking him to head over to the main tent. When he arrived, there was a rehearsal in progress. He nearly passed out when he saw his two-year-old dressed in a frilly, pink tutu seated atop an elephant making its way into the arena. It was an unforgettable moment. Ricardo felt pride tinged with horror as he admired his tiny daughter’s courage. She was all smiles balanced atop the giant pachyderm. It turned out she’d been practicing for weeks without his knowledge under the direction of the circus’s veteran animal trainer. And his wife was a co-conspirator.
Years later, Stephany would be involved in another daredevil stunt, this time with her father. The two of them decided to keep Mariaelena in the dark. Ricardo was a well-known race-car driver, a good-looking older man with thick jet-black hair, deeply tanned skin, and a cleft chin, and his televised skills on the rally racing circuit had earned him near-celebrity status in Peru. His team’s name was Riflo, a contraction of his first and last names. The team had won the internationally famous Caminos del Inca Peru Rally in 1991, a 2,700-kilometer (1,680-mile) circuit divided into five grueling stages. The race placed tremendous pressure on both the car and driver. The Andean leg took drivers and their vehicles to altitudes of 15,000 feet, about 4,500 meters, and required that participants carry oxygen on board. Speeding up and down steep mountain roads, past high cliff walls lacking any safety rails, an unlucky driver could easily slide off a crumbling embankment into the abyss. Certain death lay below. The danger, the speed, the steely grins of the racers who had survived the sometimes deadly course generated female groupies. These men were superstars in their own right.
In the years following his victory, Riflo enjoyed this celebrity status. He also served two terms as president of the Peruvian Automobile Club. Off the track he wore tailor-made suits that hung gracefully from his lean, well-toned body. His look was classy and successful but he had a gangster’s edge and carried himself with a confidence that would serve him well from the racetrack to the boardroom.
Rally drivers were always accompanied by a navigator whose job was to shout out the unseen course in front of them. The navigator had to know the route and read from written notes as he simultaneously watched for the dips and turns in the road ahead. He had to know every curve and elevation change. It was a position with no margin for error. The slightest miscalculation could send a driver over the edge of a high cliff wall before he even realized he’d reached it. The driver and navigator had to be in sync and must have complete faith and trust in one another. On and off the racecourse, Ricardo Flores loved being behind the wheel and insisted on being in the driver’s seat. Even when he was out with his family he did all the driving. He selected a navigator with great care.
Stephany was in her teens when she first expressed an interest in racing, and she and her father hatched a plan to get her into the navigator’s seat for a real race. Normally, Team Riflo wore red fireproof racing suits, red being the team color. But Ricardo had two blue uniforms custom-made for him and Stephany. They would also register using pseudonyms.
In a sport dominated by men, it would be unheard of for a driver to use his sixteen-year-old daughter as a navigator. And he was sure his wife would object. The plan went awry when Mariaelena caught the two sneaking the suits out of the house. Admitting everything, Ricardo pleaded with his wife to let him take Stephany. He promised to keep his daughter safe.
Ultimately, Mariaelena acquiesced. She trusted her husband. When Stephany was a baby, the family had nicknamed him “Papá Gallana,” or Father Hen, because of the way he guarded over her. She accepted that he would not recklessly endanger their daughter’s life. Their shared passion for racing trumped the risk.
Now, standing in the hallway outside of Stephany’s bedroom, Ricardo felt his daughter slipping away. There was more to his concern than her failure to check in that evening. She had been spending a lot of nights out on the town. He’d recently discovered she was frequenting the casinos of Miraflores, and had gotten herself in over her head. He’d even bailed her out earlier in the year, buying her a new car after he learned that she’d sold her Mitsubushi in an online auction for the equivalent of U.S.$12,000 to cover her gambling debts. Ricardo was upset when he found out what she had done, and he settled the obligation, warning ...
MAY 30, 2010 LIMA, PERU
Ricardo Flores was an early riser, even on Sundays. Cracking open the door to his daughter’s bedroom, he saw that she hadn’t come home from her night out with friends. Her bed was still made and arranged with the stuffed teddy bears she loved and collected.
The fifty-eight-year-old remembered his youth when kids still had curfews. These days, the parties continued well past dawn. He only had a few ground rules with Stephany but checking in was one of them. She hadn’t even left a message about her whereabouts. She was going to get an earful when she did report in.
The last time Ricardo had spoken to his daughter was the previous evening. He’d reached her on her cell just before 10 P.M. to invite her to an impromptu family dinner at a grill not far from the Floreses’ home in Santiago de Surco. Stephany told her father she was hanging out with friends in Larcomar, a three-level mall of boutiques, eateries, and movie theaters carved into the cliff at the edge of Miraflores, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
By day, Miraflores was a bustling place full of foreigners eager to see the sights. A half-hour drive from Jorge Chávez International Airport, Miraflores catered to both well-heeled travelers residing in four-star hotels on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean and backpackers flopping in cheap hostels. Special tourist police and English-friendly information booths sought to give the place a feeling of calm and safety amid the polluted chaos that was greater metropolitan Lima.
In the district’s central square, Parque Kennedy, olive-skinned women in colorful Indian garb sold traditional indigenous paintings, tapestries, and other knickknacks. “Hey Mee-stir” or “Hey Lay-dee,” they would call out, employing the little English they knew. Camera-toting travelers from all points of the globe would stand in line, tickets in hand, for seats on the red double-decker Mirabuses to explore a myriad of museums, pre-Incan ruins, and even catacombs buried deep beneath an ancient Spanish monastery farther downtown. At lunchtime, barkers with broad friendly smiles would stand on the sidewalks corralling hungry foreigners into relatively inexpensive cafés to feast on enormous plates of ceviche, pinchos, and Chifa, a wild fusion of traditional Peruvian and Chinese cuisine. Restaurants were equipped with special hooks on the underside of tables to keep purses, knapsacks, and cameras away from street thieves.
The intoxicating smells of lunchtime, the biggest meal of the day, almost masked the thick odor of exhaust that hovered over the city; trapped between the cool winds of the Pacific and the foothills of the Andes on the other side of town, the sickening, damp, polluted air had no place to go. To say the air quality was poor was an understatement. From June through December, a thick, gray fog, known as “la garúa,” hung over the city, obscuring what would otherwise be spectacular views of the Pacific coastline.
By night, Miraflores was another place entirely. Cars would race by at breakneck speeds, making the simple act of crossing the street a dangerous endeavor. Neon signs advertised McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks and might seem out of place, but the American fast-food establishments were always packed with budget travelers and locals. The action started late and typically began with a round of pisco sours, Peru’s national cocktail made from brandy, lemon juice, and sugar, topped with frothy egg whites and a drop of Angostura bitters. The drink, surprisingly strong, tasted a bit like margaritas and fueled the laughter, loud conversations, and occasional bar fights. Nightclubs and casinos sprang to life when the sun went down.
After dusk, the district of Miraflores was party central and the revelry often spilled into the streets as bleary-eyed packs of tourists stumbled from bar to bar. Patrols of heavily armed police officers in black flak jackets kept a careful watch over the foreigners, wobbly from the excesses of the evening and vulnerable to petty crime.
Ricardo was aware of Miraflores’s wild nightlife, and although he worried about his daughter’s absence that morning, he also realized she was twenty-one and an adult.
Annoyed that she hadn’t touched base with the family, Ricardo dialed her cell phone. It rang a few times and then went to voice mail. Clearly the phone was on, but she wasn’t answering.
Ricardo had always been a little overprotective of Stephany. The father of five children, he only had one daughter, his baby girl. As Stephany was growing up, he was rarely seen without his little nenita in tow.
When Stephany was two years old, the family owned a circus. It was a good, old-fashioned tent circus, complete with trapeze acts and a menagerie of exotic animals. Stephany loved to be around the elephants, bears, and tigers. Because her mother, Mariaelena, was the manager, she was able to spend her days hanging out with carnival workers who shared their strange and curious world with the tiny brown-eyed brunette. The performers loved Stephany and saw her as a kindred spirit. Like them, she was a bit mischievous and utterly fearless.
One day, Ricardo received a call from his wife asking him to head over to the main tent. When he arrived, there was a rehearsal in progress. He nearly passed out when he saw his two-year-old dressed in a frilly, pink tutu seated atop an elephant making its way into the arena. It was an unforgettable moment. Ricardo felt pride tinged with horror as he admired his tiny daughter’s courage. She was all smiles balanced atop the giant pachyderm. It turned out she’d been practicing for weeks without his knowledge under the direction of the circus’s veteran animal trainer. And his wife was a co-conspirator.
Years later, Stephany would be involved in another daredevil stunt, this time with her father. The two of them decided to keep Mariaelena in the dark. Ricardo was a well-known race-car driver, a good-looking older man with thick jet-black hair, deeply tanned skin, and a cleft chin, and his televised skills on the rally racing circuit had earned him near-celebrity status in Peru. His team’s name was Riflo, a contraction of his first and last names. The team had won the internationally famous Caminos del Inca Peru Rally in 1991, a 2,700-kilometer (1,680-mile) circuit divided into five grueling stages. The race placed tremendous pressure on both the car and driver. The Andean leg took drivers and their vehicles to altitudes of 15,000 feet, about 4,500 meters, and required that participants carry oxygen on board. Speeding up and down steep mountain roads, past high cliff walls lacking any safety rails, an unlucky driver could easily slide off a crumbling embankment into the abyss. Certain death lay below. The danger, the speed, the steely grins of the racers who had survived the sometimes deadly course generated female groupies. These men were superstars in their own right.
In the years following his victory, Riflo enjoyed this celebrity status. He also served two terms as president of the Peruvian Automobile Club. Off the track he wore tailor-made suits that hung gracefully from his lean, well-toned body. His look was classy and successful but he had a gangster’s edge and carried himself with a confidence that would serve him well from the racetrack to the boardroom.
Rally drivers were always accompanied by a navigator whose job was to shout out the unseen course in front of them. The navigator had to know the route and read from written notes as he simultaneously watched for the dips and turns in the road ahead. He had to know every curve and elevation change. It was a position with no margin for error. The slightest miscalculation could send a driver over the edge of a high cliff wall before he even realized he’d reached it. The driver and navigator had to be in sync and must have complete faith and trust in one another. On and off the racecourse, Ricardo Flores loved being behind the wheel and insisted on being in the driver’s seat. Even when he was out with his family he did all the driving. He selected a navigator with great care.
Stephany was in her teens when she first expressed an interest in racing, and she and her father hatched a plan to get her into the navigator’s seat for a real race. Normally, Team Riflo wore red fireproof racing suits, red being the team color. But Ricardo had two blue uniforms custom-made for him and Stephany. They would also register using pseudonyms.
In a sport dominated by men, it would be unheard of for a driver to use his sixteen-year-old daughter as a navigator. And he was sure his wife would object. The plan went awry when Mariaelena caught the two sneaking the suits out of the house. Admitting everything, Ricardo pleaded with his wife to let him take Stephany. He promised to keep his daughter safe.
Ultimately, Mariaelena acquiesced. She trusted her husband. When Stephany was a baby, the family had nicknamed him “Papá Gallana,” or Father Hen, because of the way he guarded over her. She accepted that he would not recklessly endanger their daughter’s life. Their shared passion for racing trumped the risk.
Now, standing in the hallway outside of Stephany’s bedroom, Ricardo felt his daughter slipping away. There was more to his concern than her failure to check in that evening. She had been spending a lot of nights out on the town. He’d recently discovered she was frequenting the casinos of Miraflores, and had gotten herself in over her head. He’d even bailed her out earlier in the year, buying her a new car after he learned that she’d sold her Mitsubushi in an online auction for the equivalent of U.S.$12,000 to cover her gambling debts. Ricardo was upset when he found out what she had done, and he settled the obligation, warning ...
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- PublisherSt. Martin's Paperbacks
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 125001185X
- ISBN 13 9781250011855
- BindingMass Market Paperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages352
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