Police have found Joran in Santiago, Chile, while he was traveling by taxi. Three armed policeman promptly escorted Joran to prison, where a slew of reporters waited.
Upon entering the police facility, reports say van der Sloot remained unhandcuffed and walked "calmly" without speaking. Police on the scene say van der Sloot did not resist arrest and has remained calm while in detention with police. The manhunt is over for Joran van der Sloot, prime suspect in the murder of Stephany Flores Ramirez, found brutally stabbed earlier this week in Peru. Van der Sloot has been considered a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba.
Stephany Flores Ramirez was found Wednesday, murdered Sunday, in a Lima, Peru, hotel room registered to Joran van der Sloot. van der Sloot entered Chile by bus on Wednesday, from Peru, crossing the border. Peruvian Interior Minister Octavio Salazar Miranda says Peru has made arrangements with Interpol to extradite van der Sloot. Van der Sloot, 23, was traveling alone in a taxi near the Chilean central coastal city of Vina del Mar when taken into police custody. Van der Sloot was immediately transported to police headquarters in Santiago, Chile's capital. TV images show the Dutchman emerging from a black police SUV at the police station.
Van der Sloot apparently made attemtpts to change his appearance: his hair, previously black, was red and worn in a close-cropped crew cut.
In Peru, a wake was held Thursday in Lima for the dead woman Flores Ramirez, scheduled to be buried later in the day. There is "incriminating evidence" linking van der Sloot to the killing of Flores Ramirez, says Peruvian criminal investigator Cesar Guardia Vasquez. The young woman's bludgeoned body was found in Room 309 of the Hotel Tac in the Miraflores section of Lima, say police. She suffered blunt trauma to the head, suffered from a broken neck, and trauma to her torso and back, Peruvian police said today.
Van der Sloot had been staying at the hotel since arriving from Colombia over two weeks prior on May 14, police say. Room 309 was booked in van der Sloot's name, authorities said. Two Peruvian cab drivers had said they'd driven a man matching van der Sloot's description to a city on the other side of the Chilean border. "He paid me and I took him to Arica, to the [Chile and Peru] border," taxi cab driver Aparcana said.
The man matching van der Sloot's description was described by the driver as sitting in the front seat of the cab, smoking many cigarettes, Aparcana said. The passenger told the cabbies he used to live in Aruba, said the other driver, Carlos Alberto Uribe.
Van der Sloot's on the run from police, dyes his hair, takes taxis, but is stupid enough to tell taxi cab drivers where he's from?
The victim's father said he believes van der Sloot is responsible for the young woman's death. "I just think we need to take a step back before we get to the 'I told you so' stage, and let's see what the evidence is here," says van der Sloot's New York attorney, Tacopina. Tacopina said he is not representing van der Sloot and no longer has a good relationship with the family.
Ricardo Flores said police found his daughter's car about 50 blocks from the hotel where she was murdered. Inside her car, police authorities found pills like those used in date rapes. Ricardo Flores said he did not believe his daughter knew the Dutch citizen beforehand. Both of them speak English and they struck up conversation at the casino, he said.
Interpol had alerted its office in Chile and other bordering countries of the case and placed them on alert in case van der Sloot tried to leave that country.
Van der Sloot has long been believed to be involved in Natalee Holloway's disappearance and assumed murder. Van der Sloot, who was attending college in the Netherlands, was brought back to Aruba in 2007 concerning the Holloway disappearance. Judges ruled the new evidence, including an Internet chat the same day Holloway disappeared in which one of the three young men interviewed had said she was dead. Aruba didn't consider it enough to keep any of them jailed.
In 2008, prosecutors sought unsuccessfully to arrest van der Sloot a third time after a videotape surfaced on Dutch television-created by an investigatvie reporter . In it, van der Sloot tells a man he considered to be his friend that he had sex with Holloway on the beach after leaving the nightclub, then she "started shaking" and lost consciousness. He said he panicked when he could not resuscitate her and called a friend who had a boat. The two put Holloway's body in the boat, he said, and then he went home. The friend told him the next day that he had carried the body out and dumped it in the ocean. But an Aruba court ruled there was not enough evidence to re-arrest him. Aruban prosecutors said authorities had met with van der Sloot in the Netherlands, but in a two-hour interview he denied any role in Holloway's disappearance.