Andrew G. Hodges, M.D.

Understanding Joran Van der Sloot and the murder of Stephany Flores

Understanding Joran Van der Sloot and the murder of Stephany Flores

Who is Joran van der Sloot?

To understand Joran van der Sloot—charged with the May 30, 2010 murder of Stephany Flores Ramirez in Peru—to fathom the motives of the man previously suspected in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway we must put things in context and follow his tracks.

Such a suspect can be best understood by applying my cutting-edge approach to forensic documents and statements to read his deeper unconscious messages. Once decoded, his own words will tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

Background:

We must appreciate the discovery of an unconscious super intelligence. Pioneering psychiatrist Dr. Robert Langs first put forth the idea of a deeper intelligence at work in the mind, an unconscuiouly driven voice of reason that cuts to the chase and delivers its healing messages in stories replete with images and metaphors. Langs discovered this deeper intelligence while working with patients who would tell stories about others, stories that were actually about themselves. For instance, a man would discuss his daughter who planned to drop out of college, when in reality he was pointing out that he himself contemplated ending his theapy sessions, a plan just as inadvisable as his daughter’s.

Participating in the clinical research that validated Langs’ discoveries, in the 1990s I wrote a book about this phenomenon titled The Deeper Intelligence (which I now call the super intelligence). More recently, I’ve applied the knowledge we’ve gained about the super intelligence to the analysis of forensic documents such as ransom notes, suicide notes and statements by suspects in criminal cases. My resulting thoughtprint decoding method has been recognized by law enforcement officials, criminologists, attorneys and forensic psychiatrists/psychologists. This new way of profiling forensic documents adds a crucial dimension to the field of psycholinguistics.

The unconscious mind communicates constantly and typically hides its messages in verbal or written communication generated by the conscious mind. We don’t always say what we mean. These unconscious communications are what I call thoughtprints.

The capabilities of the super intelligence has been highlighted most clearly for the public by author Malcom Gladwell in his 2005 best-seller, Blink. Gladwell clearly established that the unconscious mind possesses rapid cognition, the ability to read situations in the blink of an eye, and reveal what it was instinctually picking up. For instance, Gladwell related the story of four art experts who for two months independently examined a supposedly ancient Greek statue to determine its authenticity. Their conclusion: the object was authentic. Three other art experts using a rapid-cognition “blink” take, studied it for no more than 30 seconds each stated it was a phony—which in fact it was. The brilliant unconscious mind—which Gladwell called the “dazzling adaptive unconscious”—had proven its vast superiority.

Gladwell is a reporter, however, and not a hands-on clinician, and he mistakenly concluded that instincts were the final pathway from the unconscious, otherwise a closed door. Unbeknowst to him, Dr. Langs’ earlier clinical research in psychiatry revealed that the brilliant adaptive unconscious mind communicated in a symbolic language all its own. In other words, the brilliant unconscious intelligence described what it was observing.

We had learned to access or—more accurately—listen to people when they were accessing the unconscious intelligence which I now call the super intelligence.

As noted previously I developed thoughtprint decoding, a forensic approach which reads the super intelligent language of criminal suspects who, as research shows, are prone to guilt and confession. In law-enforcement terms, these criminals have sentenced themselves to “the prison of the mind.” Using this method I was the only profiler to decode written messages from the Wichita serial killer Dennis Rader, a.k.a. BTK, to predict that he was on the verge of killing again shortly before he was apprehended. At the time I was ridiculed by other profilers, but I wasn’t floating a wild guess. I was reading and translating the distinct language of his super intelligence found in BTK’s own written communications.
Joran van der Sloot

Ever since the disappearance of Natalie Holloway on the island of Aruba on May 30, 2005, I have focused my forensic attention upon prime suspect Joran van der Sloot. I wrote an extensive profile of the case entitled Into The Deep—The Hidden Confession of Natalee’s Killers—based on my decoding of unconscious communications from the three suspects, Van der Sloot and two brothers, Deepak and Satish Kalpoe.

After publicly offering multiple versions of what happened to Natalee, Joran and the Kalpoes all escaped prosecution. My conclusion, based on their thoughtprints, was that Natalee had suffered an accidental death while being entrapped and abused by the suspects, had died from aspiration, and her body had been discarded into the ocean. The super intelligent messages were convincing. Police authorities had secretly endorsed the same conclusion. With law enforcement actively investigating that scenario, in 2007 Dave Holloway and Tim Miller of Texas Equusearch obtained sponsorship for an extensive three-month exploration of the ocean for the body. Natalee’s corpse was believed to be in a large fishing cage which had gone missing—key evidence which I helped uncover. Texas Equusearch eventually identified approximately 170 potential underwater targets, but the search ran out of funds and the targets remain in place—waiting to be explored.
Joran’s various stories—same picture

Joran van der Sloot offered various stories regarding Natalee’s disappearance, the most stiking of which was the version obtained by Dutch journalist Peter de Vries who secretly videotaped Joran talking at length. That story told to his supposed friend, Patrick van der Eem, essentially confirmed the identical story which I had culled from Joran’s super intelligence. He had changed two facts: Joran claimed Natalee had voluntarily participated in sexual activity which led to her aspiration death, while she was actually raped; and Joran misidentified an accessory, the driver of the boat which took Natalee to her watery grave, while denying that the Kalpoes’ were involved. Following his various versions including his most prominent story to Greta Van Susteren in 2008, however, he returned to the familiar theme of Natalee’s body being last seen on a boat. In the Van Susteren interview, Joran clearly stated that the Kalpoes knew what happened and implied that her body had been dumped at sea. Most of his stories portray the identical super intelligent big picture: Natalee suffered an accidental death involving drug use, sexual activity and a head injury before the body was dumped into the sea.

In June 2007 I presented my work on the Holloway case at the newly formed Cold Case Research Institute in Atlanta where I predicted Joran would continue to demonstrate extreme self-sabotaging behavior either leading to his death or his being jailed (similar to O.J. Simpson) due to his deep hidden guilt.

Key interview—Dusseldorf 2009: Joran was interviewed yet again in summer 2009, but it was only released publicly in February 2009. There was a noticeable change in his tone. At the time, as the interview revealed, Joran was obviously feeling guilty over having discedited the legal career of his father, Paulus, due to the Holloway case. Joran was also extremely apologetic to the Holloway family, acknowledging for the first time the enormous grief he had caused them. Once again he told another version of the same story. He depicts Natalee alone with more than one guy, using drugs, dancing—entertaining the guys—and suffered a head injury from a fall causing her death leading Joran and his friend to bury her body in water—in this case, the deepest part of a pond. This is essentially a disguised version of the same earlier story. Remember that his super intelligence is wholly incapable of lying.
Paulus dies

A year after the Dusseldorf interview surfaced, Joran’s father died from a heart attack in Aruba in February 2010, a month after canceling his partnership at the law firm where he had been employed. Paulus was 57. When I profiled the Dusseldorf interview in March 2010 and discussed it with Dave Holloway, my impression was that Joran’s hidden unconscious guilt was now so overwhelming that we could expect extremely self-destructive behavior to follow shortly. Secretly guilt-ridden over Natalee’ death, Joran now felt responsible for his father’s death due to the stress he had inflicted on him in addition to costing his father his job. In the oppressive prison of his mind Joran was carrying two tons of guilt.
Extortion attempt reflects major self-sabotage

In April 2010, Joran attempted to extort money from Beth Holloway in exchange for the “real story” regarding the fate of Natalee’s body. The FBI in Natalee’s home town of Birmingham, Alabama and Aruba worked to set up a sting. Not unexpectedly Joran fell for it. More accurately Joran unconsciously sought it out. He was secretly videotaped in Aruba extorting the money and once again provided authorities with a phony story about the body’s location, claiming thath his now-dead fathr had buried it under the foundation of a house. The FBI decided to let Joran escape hoping they could obtain more facts about the Holloway case before closing in on him.

In just a few days, Joran had escaped the country with cash in hand and found his way to a casino in Peru. Shortly thereafter, he murdered Stepany Flores in his hotel room. Not coincidentally Flores’ slaying occurred on the fifth anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance and death.

For a clear and concise look at Joran van der Sloot through the lens of his own super intelligence, consider the following questions and answers:
Was the murder of Flores connected to the anniversary of Natalee’s death?

Without question. Joran was unconsciously announcing to the world, In case you missed it I was responsible for the death of Natalee Holloway. In essence, Flores was a proxy for Natalee. She also apparently triggered his rage prompted by his deep guilt when she invaded his computer and discovered information about him and the Holloway case. In the back of his mind Joran was continually visualizing Natalee’s death—the brilliant super intelligence always knowing the precise date of her death. This day was an especially sensitive day for Joran when he would have been on the verge of exploding and punishing himself. And he was now also burdened by the deep guilt of having basically killed his father.
Was Joran truly guilt-ridden or a true sociopath?

Many news commentators and forensic professionals—because they’re unfamiliar with the super intelligence—have stated that Joran was a sociopath, a criminal narcissist who feels not an ounce of guilt. Nothing could be further from the truth. Law enforcement officials around the world recognize the universality of the prison of the mind, and Joran’s brilliant and honest unconscious makes it clear that he suffers extreme guilt and is desperate to confess—despite his arrogant demeanor. The slaying of Stephany Flores was a murder-suicide. Joran was so obvious, committed the killing so haphazardly and left himself no way of escaping the consequences that he basically sentenced himself to a prison term, one he knew he had deserved for five long years.
Should the FBI have arrested Joran?

Yes. After they invited him to dance, they really should have taken him home. After they balked at arresting him for fraud and hoping to get more information, he upped the ante and committed an even more serious crime, one which in many ways mirrored the murder of Natalee Holloway.

The FBI investigators did not appreciate what Joran was doing—that he was defrauding Beth Holloway to self-sabortage his own freedom. By committing such an obvious financial crime for which he knew he could be apprehended, Joran was covertly requesting to be arrested. Did the FBI agents think Joran didn’t know unconsciously he was secretly being taped? The super intelligence reads situations brilliantly.

His overt commission of a crime was a request to be incarcerated. Had he been arrested, he would have been extradicted to Alabama and, if he had been tried and convicted of extortion, would likely have served 6 to 8 years in prison, far less time than he’ll now face for Flores’ murder. What do you think about the FBI stating that they were letting case develop and hoping Joran would led them to more information about Natalee’s body?

Joran had repeatedly insisted to the world that he would tell one phony story after another and had no conscious intention of revealing Natalee’s whereabouts. His unconscious intelligence, however, had revealed over and over that her body was in the water and that friends had helped him dump it. The evidence was compelling enough that a sophisticated $1.5 million sea search for Natalee’s body took place off the shores of Aruba from December 2007 to March 2008.

A member of the Aruban investigator’s office had previously asked the FBI in Birmingham to interview me about my book, Into the Deep, which they did in September 2007. I later spoke with Hans Moss, the chief prosecutor in Aruba, who had been unfamiliar with my work and had been unaware that a staff member had been interested enough to involve the FBI. Moss later made plain to the leaders of the ocean exploration that he had no use for profilers like me.

The bottom line—law enforcement has a lot to learn about the mind and human motivation particularly how a suspect’s super intelligence will guide them to the solution of the case. Like other professionals in media and medicine who often resist change, law enforcement pros must become willing to seek answers outside the box, much like Gladwell’s instinctual art experts did when they rapidly intuited that the Greek statue was a fake.

The sad thing about the FBI’s reluctance to act before Joran traveled to Peru is that the agency very likely could have prevented the Flores murder if its agents had followed through with an arrest.

In medicine, after doctors and surgeons lose patients, we have death conference to examine how the death might have been prevented. Law enforcement should engage in similar post-event self-examination to brainstorm new and more effective ways to analyze the criminal mind.
Is Joran a serial killer?

He is an impulsive rage killer largely motivated by overwhelming unconscious guilt. The death of Natalee Holloway was an accidental killing as a result of drugging and gang-raping her along with the Kalpoe brothers.

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