Birmingham, Ala (WIAT) The suspect in the disappearance of American tourist Robyn Gardner on Aruba will go to court there Monday trying to get out of jail.
Gary Giordano, Gardner's traveling companion on an island vacation, was arrested August 5 when he tried to leave Aruba after reporting Gardner missing. He says she vanished on a snorkeling outing. Meanwhile, it's been revealed his is the beneficiary of a $1.5 million insurance policy he took out on Gardner right before their trip.
Giordano's lawyers will argue there's not enough evidence to hold him and that Aruban police are being overly zealous in their investigation because of all the negative fallout from the Natalee Holloway case.
Natalee Holloway, a Mountain Brook teen, disappeared on a graduation trip to Aruba. She was last seen leaving a local bar with three local teens. Joran van der Sloot, one of the three, is still considered the prime suspect in Natalee's disappearance but has never been charged. There has been criticism of undue influence that may have been exercised by van der Sloot's late father who was a judge on the island.
Van der Sloot is under indictment here in Alabama for wire fraud and extortion for allegedly promising Natalee's family information about her fate. The FBI says he took the money but never delivered the information.
Van der Sloot is currently in prison in Peru awaiting trial on murder charges. The body of Stephany Flores was found in his Lima hotel room five years to the day that Natalee walked out of the Oranjestad bar with him...never to be seen again.
Peruvian investigators don't buy van der Sloot's confession that he killed Stephany in a fit of rage after she found material about Natalee on his laptop. They say the case is simply murder in commission of a robbery...that van der Sloot was broke and desperate and killed her for her recent winnings in a casino.
