Saturday, January 12, 2008

Joran van der Sloot loses temper after Dutch TV interview



(photos are copyrighted by francisco van jole, at full resolution on his Flickr feed http://www.flickr.com/photos/fvjole/2187264074/in/photostream/)

Friday night was supposed to be Joran van der Sloot's "final" goodbye interview with the Dutch press. He appeared with both his parents and left most of the talking to them. Nothing much interesting was said, or done, until the moment the "live" cameras stopped rolling.

Then, Joran threw his glass of wine in the face of one of the show's other guests, crime reporter Peter R. De Vries.

De Vries had zeroed in on several uncomfortable inconsistencies in Joran's story, and hammered on him being a liar. Of course Joran himself has admitted he lied to police in the early part of the investigation into Natalee Holloway's disappearance, but it apparently angered him to have his nose rubbed in it.

For background, De Vries is known in the Netherlands as kind of a real life "Tintin." He has a TV show where he cracks cases where the police have given up or failed. He went to Aruba to solve the Holloway's disappearance, but didn't unearth much new.

He does say he believes Van der Sloot knows what happened to Natalee.

An eyewitness account of the incident:
"There really wasn't very much discussion, because De Vries wasn't given any room for it by the hosts.
"Joran presented himself very calmly, but apparently he was boiling with rage within and couldn't control himself."
...
(after the wine was thrown:) Panic. De Vries yelled that it was stinging his eyes, his wife went to get water. Joran disappeared quickly from the studio with his father, and the audience was saying 'ooh' and 'aah' and 'why on earth'?"

Van der Sloot's mother was left to try to smooth things over:
(Quotes and photo from Corrie Gerritsma http://www.camathome.com/ but it's Dutch language; http://www.flickr.com/photos/camathome/2185737245/ for full resolution. De Vries is on far left.)

NOS news interviewed De Vries about the incident.

"This says something about Joran of course...he can't doesn't have complete control over his behavior. His parents did their best during the program to underline that he had manners, that he treated girls properly, and that there are some things that he really wouldn't do. Now, this is something that if you had asked them before the show, they probably would have said, 'my child wouldn't do that'."

Joran declined to be interviewed about the incident.

"His mother of course, looked very foolish. She had just done her best to protect him, to portray him as a well-raised boy; and at the moment that he does something like that, all their efforts are negated in an instant."
-De Vries.



De Vries was strongest when questioning why Joran decided to lie, and co-ordinate a lie, with his friends, from the very start.


Again, for a nice website on evidence in the Holloway case without any nutso raving, I recommend:

http://www.hollowaycase.com/



No comments: