Warning Signs Everyone Ignored About Joran Van Der Sloot

The most shocking aspect of the Joran van der Sloot case is that despite everything pointing toward the Dutchman being a murderer whose violent and deceptive past was plain to see, he somehow evaded justice long enough to kill again. In 2005, van der Sloot, who was then a teenager living on the island of Aruba with his wealthy family, was accused of murdering 18-year-old Natalee Holloway, a tourist from Alabama whom he had met in a casino. Holloway's body was never found, and van der Sloot was released due to lack of evidence. His behavior in the years that followed was deeply suspicious, and it turned out that there had been signs that he was capable of violence in his early years, but no one had intervened.

Van der Sloot was convicted of the murder of another woman, Stephany Flores Ramirez, who was found dead in van der Sloot's hotel room in Lima, Peru, in 2010. He is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence in Peru for the murder and has been convicted of extortion and wire fraud after soliciting money from the Holloway family in exchange for details about the location of their daughter's remains. A proffer letter released in 2023 in which van der Sloot admits to the murder is now held as evidence by the Holloway family that he killed Natalee. Van der Sloot has also recently confessed to cocaine trafficking. Here are the warning signs about Joran van der Sloot that suggested he truly was capable of the crimes that later came to light.

Joran Van der Sloot had a privileged upbringing and young adulthood. Born in the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands, his father Paulus was a lawyer specializing in government law, who had aspirations to be a judge. His mother, Anita, was a teacher. Van der Sloot was one of three brothers.

After practicing in the Netherlands for several years, in 1991 Paulus relocated his family to Aruba, an island in the Caribbean Sea which is a constituent island country of the Netherlands. Van der Sloot was 4 years old at the time, but according to the Crime Library's "Inside the Mind of Joran van der Sloot," as he began to grow into his teens on the island he developed some troubling behaviors, which one of his brothers has claimed his acquiescent parents were powerless to stamp out. He was violent with his brothers and schoolmates, pushing one through a plate glass window, and he stole money wantonly from his father. He became utterly in control of his parents.

Though van der Sloot was given counseling to try to control his behavior, Paulus continued to indulge his son's unruliness. Bafflingly, van der Sloot was given free rein to drive on the island even as an early teen (the legal driving age on Aruba is 18), and he was given cash by his father to gamble in casinos despite being underage. It doesn't take much psychology training to see how the future murderer could come to the point where he believed he could do anything he pleased.

Reports claim that while in Aruba, Joran van der Sloot developed some disturbing habits when it came to sex. Clearly as blunt in pursuing his sexual desires as he was taking money for his own or manipulating and intimidating his parents and siblings, he allegedly approached couples arriving on the island on cruise ships looking to exchange sex for money.

Joran van der Sloot was a frequent fixture at the poker tables of Aruba casinos and the island's wider nightlife. Starting from an early age, Crime Library reported he was suspected of spiking the drinks of women he encountered in bars. One woman who may have been drugged by van der Sloot was identified by investigators but refused to be interviewed by police.

It is believed that around this time van der Sloot also started to get in trouble with the Aruba police for his usually drunken behavior, which also included an assault on a homeless man who van der Sloot threw in the sea. However, there is some evidence that van der Sloot's father, Paulus, may have used his legal expertise and connections on the island to keep the law away from his son, and no details of police investigations into his violent and sexually deviant behavior have been made public.

Investigators have claimed that Joran van der Sloot is a man characterized by the belief that he is superior to the people around him. This includes his family and friends, his victims, and those investigating his crimes.

After first being identified as a suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, Van der Sloot attempted to pervert the course of justice and hinder investigations by changing his story regarding the events leading up to her disappearance. He initially told Holloway's family that he had been with her and a couple of his friends driving around Aruba, before dropping her at her hotel. His version of events led to the arrest of his friends, though his story later changed to say they had met in a bar and went to a beach before parting ways.

The brazen changing of his story and his willing incrimination of those around him should have come close to confirming van der Sloot's guilt, but despite his suspicious behavior, the lack of a body meant that he was never charged. He later spun another story to a private investigator: that Holloway had died from a seizure after the pair had sex on the beach, and that a friend had helped him dump her body in the ocean. Some now believe that around this time, van der Sloot was purposefully looking to increase his notoriety to generate money from the media which he could then use to gamble. It took for van der Sloot to already be behind bars and wrangling for a plea deal for him to finally admit the truth: that he bludgeoned her to death after she rejected his sexual advances and pushed her body out to sea.