One staple question among true crime consumers, which is a prevalent topic in criminal psychology is whether killers are born or made.
Well, the answer may depend on who we are talking about. In Joran van der Sloot’s case, there may have been some propensity for evil in his nature, but one can more easily see how nurture — or the lack of the right kind — could have contributed to enabling van der Sloot’s worst impulses.
Van der Sloot was born in the Netherlands, in August 1987, to parents Paulus and Anita van der Sloot, a lawyer and an art teacher respectively. In 1990, the family made the decision to move to Aruba, which is an island part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, making its inhabitants technically Dutch nationals. This major life choice may have been motivated by a legal battle Paulus had with the Dutch government due to a highway construction that would run through the family’s estate. In the end, the van der Sloots would win; but before their legal victory, they moved across the Atlantic.
Natalee’s murder and the van der Sloots’ permissible stance
About 15 years after their relocation, Joran van der Sloot would murder high school graduate Natalee Holloway, something he finally fully admitted to 18 years after the fact — the same amount of time she got to live on this Earth before her killer robbed her of a promising future.
In Aruba, the family was known to be wealthy and politically well-connected, and things would only be better when Paulus managed to move up the career ladder from attorney to judge. However, the family’s private life wasn’t as seemingly perfect, as Joran would display some problematic behavior even growing up, and his drug and alcohol use started early and would only spiral from there.
According to the Crime Library, which seems to hold the most extensive English-language account on the van der Sloot’s family dynamics, Paulus, at least once, indulged his underage son’s gambling habits by giving him money to waste at a casino, and would often let him drive around the island, both actions illegal for minors in the region. In 2010, People wrote about how Joran’s girlfriend when he was a teenager recounted that their relationship’s end was sped up due to his “problems with lying,” problems which came out to the public during the Holloway case.
At first, Joran’s initial story claimed the encounter with his soon-to-be victim had escalated to a sexual nature, which Anita decided to corroborate at the time to Holloway’s mother, Beth. In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, the two discussed Anita’s inconsolable (if slightly unhinged) behavior, including how the Dutch art teacher had said “that [Joran] was doing so well in his anger management classes.” Not nearly well enough it seems. For quite a while, Anita defended her son had not hurt Natalee, believing her lying child when he told her so.
Paulus was arrested in June 2005, on suspicion of also being involved in Natalee’s disappearance. CNN reported how the police interviewed him over the weekend, with a source within Aruban law enforcement saying that Mr. van der Sloot was being interviewed merely as a witness. In the aforementioned interview with Van Susteren, both Holloway’s mother and the interviewer discuss how they believe that the then-judge knew more about what his son had done than he let on. However, Paulus was released soon after being interviewed.
You can see a glimpse of Anita’s stance on the matter of her son’s alleged innocence and her husband’s arrest in the following June 2005 AP interview:
In February 2010, Paulus had a heart attack while playing tennis at his Aruban residence, collapsing on the court, and passing away. In the recent 2023 TV interview, Beth described the heart attack as having been caused by stress. In May of the same year his father died, Joran killed Stephany Flores Ramirez in Lima, Peru, for which he would be sentenced to 28 years behind bars. In the midst of this equally horrific case, Anita seemingly realized that willful blindness had its limits and, according to CBS, said: “I now believe that Joran may have indeed done something to Stephany in Peru.” however, Mrs. van der Sloot still could not put her mother’s bias completely to the side, as she also added her own speculation as to why her son had committed murder (again), “Maybe in a burst of anger… I don’t know.” That being said, this time she appeared to have taken a firmer stance and declared she would refuse to visit him in jail.
Anita didn’t show up for Joran’s recent court hearing in the U.S.
Speculation on the van der Sloots’ net worth
Clearly, the van der Sloots were very well off, taking into consideration that they took the Dutch government to court (and won), and moved to Aruba where they lived at a generous residence called Tierra del Sol. It has been reported that, despite the numerous issues that arose from Natalee’s disappearance, Paulus had close to $10 million towards the end of his life. Nowadays, speculation around these numbers point closer to $1 million, though there’s little way to verify this.
As for Anita’s current whereabouts, she is still living in Aruba and was last spotted and photographed on Mother’s Day 2023, accompanied by an unnamed man as she entered the Cas di Cultura Theatre and Cultural Center before the two returned to her home, according to Fox News. Anita no longer lives at Tierra del Sol, as the property is now a resort.
