Inside Joran Van Der Sloot’s Prison in Peru
Dec 19, 2011 7:40 PM EST
The Daily Beast gets a tour of the tough, overcrowded Peruvian prison housing accused murderer Joran van der Sloot,
whose murder trial begins on Jan. 6.
When Jose Luis Perez Guadalupe steps into Peru’s Miguel Castro Castro prison, the inmates greet him affably. They’re well aware that as the government’s most senior prison official he can order an unexpected search in the middle of the night and he can decide where they’ll serve the rest of their sentences. But they also remember his efforts in the tumultuous early 1990s that helped improve conditions at the prison. Thirteen years of volunteering as a pastoral officer at the chaplaincy appear to have helped create something of a bond between him and the prisoners.
“I like to talk to people. I speak to them and keep them calm,” says Perez Guadalupe. “They know that if they mess up, I will enter with full force.”
This is the man who has almost absolute control over the daily life of Joran van der Sloot, the notorious 24-year-old Dutchman accused of killing a 21-year-old Peruvian woman named Stephany Flores in 2010. Van der Sloot is currently incarcerated in Castro Castro. He is also suspected of killing Alabama teen Natalee Holloway in 2005 in Aruba, where he lived and where she was vacationing with high school friends. He was the last person to be seen with her; her body has never been found. Van der Sloot began something of a world tour, partly because his face and name were so well known and he was so widely reviled and suspected of killing Holloway. He ended up in Peru in 2010, drawn there by a large poker tournament. In Lima he met Flores, who also liked gambling. Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile days after the discovery of Flores’s battered body in his hotel room in Lima. He was quickly handed over to the Peruvian police. Since then, Castro Castro has been his home.
The prison, in the Lima neighborhood of San Juan de Lurigancho, was built to hold 1,142 prisoners, but the latest head count was 1,875, a reminder of the massive overcrowding prison authorities face. Van der Sloot is one of five inmates who occupy their own wing—a special place for the most hated, and most at risk, prisoners.
A prison cell, similar to one where Dutch murder defendant Joran van der Sloot is staying while in custody, is seen at the Miguel Castro Castro prison in Lima, Tuesday, June 22, 2010. Van der Sloot has refused to speak to the Peruvian judge handling his case, while a Dutch newspaper has reported that he has retracted his confession., Karel Navarro / AP Photo; Inset: AP Photo
According to two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, van der Sloot is addicted to video games, and uses **** that keeps him up at night. Perez Guadalupe would not confirm those reports.
Perez Guadalupe’s recent appointment may have ended van der Sloot’s alleged happy days. “He’s in this area with four others,” says Perez Guadalupe as we ascend to the second floor of a small block of cells. I enter the area where van der Sloot currently lives. It consists of two sections. There’s a small kitchen counter on the right where inmates can store and prepare food. There’s a door that leads to a small bathroom. A gate opens into a hallway, where the five cells stand in a row.
Perez Guadalupe refers coolly to Van der Sloot as “uno más”—just one of the 53,000 people imprisoned in Peru. But in truth, Van der Sloot is not just another inmate. The new prison boss, only four months into the job, recites the Van der Sloot plan like a well-memorized poem: “He will endure his trial in these present conditions and once he is sentenced, the decision will be made” on where to house him.
Perez Guadalupe, a criminologist, sociologist, and theologian, has brought a disciplined hand to Castro Castro. About a month ago, he launched a general search in the middle of the night. In the carefully planned operation his handpicked team of 300 confiscated five guns and 141 cell phones.
“We can’t risk having him go into the ceramics workshop or the bakery, so whatever he does, will have to be from within his area.”
As we walk down the hallway of van der Sloot’s cellblock, an Asian man waves hello from just outside one of the cells. A Mexican they call Don Pepe is his neighbor. It’s noon and it’s bright outside, but Van der Sloot’s dim burrow reeks of human sweat and the heavy breath of oversleeping as improvised drapes made out of bedclothes hang from the bars. Van der Sloot’s cell was located at the end of the hallway; Perez Guadalupe would not allow me to get too close.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/19/inside-joran-van-der-sloot-s-prison-in-peru.html
