Peru allows Natalee Holloway's killer multiple conjugal visits for his mental health, rehabilitation
Peru's prison population has a constitutional right to conjugal visits, official says
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Joran van der Sloot, who murdered Alabama teen Natalee Holloway when she refused his sexual advances and then killed Peru business heiress Stefany Flores exactly five years later, is currently seeing up to three women in conjugal visits in his Peruvian prison.
A Peruvian official with knowledge of the situation told Fox News Digital that every inmate's right to conjugal visits is protected by the country's constitution.
"That Joran van ser Sloot is having free rein to have sexual encounters [is] nothing strange," he said. "Within the intraprison environment, the inmate's sexual relationship is important for his rehabilitation and resocialization."
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"So much so that the intimate or conjugal visit is part of the sexual rights of every inmate, which is why it must be conceived as a right due to its implication, one that does not have to be limited, much less linked to any conditioning element for its concession, and that it will have its manifestation of a constitutional right, since it is part of the development of the human person," the official added.
In the United States, only California, Connecticut, New York and Washington currently allow conjugal visits for inmates – as a privilege and not a right, according to David Gelman, a New Jersey-based defense attorney and former prosecutor.
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"It’s a slap in the face to the United States judicial system," he told Fox News Digital. "He should be in a federal facility, not in Peru enjoying leisure and women, multiple women."
The federal prison system, which van der Sloot avoided as part of his plea deal on extortion charges, does not allow them. And that was a likely factor in his decision to plead guilty, Gelman said.
"He took this deal in the United States knowing he would probably never see the inside of a federal cell in the United States of America -- for this exact reason," he said.
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This is a slap in the face, and it’s just sticking the dagger in the heart of the Holloway family. They’ve been through so much with this individual – and calling him an individual is being a little nice.
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Van der Sloot murdered Flores in 2010 and pleaded guilty but refused to fess up in Holloway's case for nearly 20 years. He claimed he killed her in a fit of anger after she learned about his connection to Holloway's disappearance. They met in her father's casino in Lima, and he beat her to death in his hotel room the following morning.
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He finally admitted in October to killing her with a cinder block on an Aruba beach as part of a plea deal for an extortion case in which he tried to shake down the victim's mother for $250,000.
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Despite a documented history of murdering women, van der Sloot got married in prison to Leidy Figueroa in 2014 while serving a 28-year sentence for Flores' death.
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Figueroa was seven months pregnant when they tied the knot. His Lima-based lawyer, Maximo Altez, told Fox News Digital in May 2023 that she was divorcing him after he had years tacked on to his sentence for smuggling drugs into the prison with the help of another girlfriend, Eva Pacohuanaco.
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"He’s a player, and has always been a player," his childhood friend, Cas Arends, told the New York Post. "Women have always been attracted to him for some reason."
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Armando Regil Velasco contributed to this report.