Birmingham, Ala (WIAT) It’s easy to forget how many families have been shattered by the Joran van der Sloot saga.

When van der Sloot returns to court in Lima, Peru Wednesday morning three women will be sitting in judgement.

One has to wonder if the Dutch self styled playboy and gambler is comfortable with that. But in van der Sloot’s world, women are frequently major characters.

Other than the three judges, the most important woman in his life right now is his murder victim, Stephany Flores.

He’s admitted he killed her eighteen months ago after she found material relating to Natalee Holloway on his laptop in his Lima hotel room. Her corpse was found on the five year anniversary of Natalee vanishing on a graduation trip to Aruba. The Mountain Brook teen was on a graduation trip when she left a bar with van der Sloot never to be seen again.

Natalee’s mother Beth has forged a career seeking information on what happened to her daughter. A cable reality show, speaking tours, book deals. She’s crusaded against van der Sloot world wide, appeared on Dutch TV specials and even confronted him in prison after gaining access with a Dutch television crew. This week Beth has declined comment.

Natalee’s father, long divorced from Beth, has said relatively little beyond pointing out the Friday postponement looked to him like more of van der Sloot gaming the system saying he felt he'd done the same in court appearances in Aruba surrounding his daughter's disappearance.
"He's done this many times before," Dave Holloway said. "I think this was all planned out."

Van der Sloot’s father, a prominent lawyer on Aruba is dead now but is widely believed to have manipulated the system there on his son’s behalf. Van der Sloot’s mother, Anita, had a falling out with her son in 2010, said she didn’t want to visit him in prison and, although still denying his guilt in the Holloway case admitted it looked like he had killed Stephany Flores.

Stephany’s mother has been very lowkey but her father has been a central figure in the case. Ricardo Flores has been critical of what he considers lenient treatment of van der Sloot in prison claiming the man who killed his daughter has “lived like a king”. More recently lawyers for the Flores family have tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to get prosecutors to change the charges so that van der Sloot would serve more time for the killing.

So what do all these family members have to look forward when van der Sloot returns to court? If the past six and half years are any clue, they should expect the unexpected.