BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) - In the stranger than fiction world of Joran van der Sloot, will the accused killer get a sneak peek at a Natalee Holloway movie...in the comfort of his Peruvian prison cell?
The movie by Dutch film maker Paul Ruven is set to debut September 22 at the Utrecht Film Festival in the Netherlands. Me and Mr. Jones on Natalee Island is Ruven's fictional account of an investigative reporter determined to break the real story of what happened when Mountain Brook teen Natalee Holloway disappeared on a graduation trip to Aruba.
Holloway was last seen leaving an Oranjestad bar with van der Sloot and two friends, the Kalpoe brothers. All three were questioned by Aruban authorities but never charged.
Five years after Natalee vanished, van der Sloot was back in the news when the corpse of a Peruvian student was found in his Lima hotel room. He later told investigators he killed Stephany Flores in a fit of rage because she was snooping on his laptop and found material relating to Natalee.
In one of many macabre twists in this tale, Ruven was back on Aruba filming his movie when news of van der Sloot's latest misdadventure broke.
Van der Sloot has been in Peru's Castro Castro prison since he was arrested in Chile days after Stephany's body was discovered. His stay there has been a bizarre parade of incidents including charges he was selling drugs, allegations he had fathered a child with a frequent visitor, a controversial cell block picture of him mugging with a Colombian hitman and an accused murderer from Pennsylvania and even an apparently unauthorized TV interview with Natalee's mother Beth. That interview was turned into a two part program for Dutch TV.
Now, film maker Ruven tells CBS42 that Dutch crime reporter John van den Heuvel will fly to Peru to show van der Sloot a copy of Ruven's film.
In a possibly related story, van den Heuvel has denied he's flying to Peru for a scheduled preliminary hearing in van der Sloot's murder case. Van den Heuvel is quoted by the Dutch newspaper AD saying he isn't making a twelve hour flight for a hearing that van der Sloot may not even appear at.
Sounds logical. But there's little in the van der Sloot/Holloway/Flores saga that has followed logic. So don't be surprised if the next story out of Peru is about prisoner van der Sloot get a sneak peek at Ruven's film