Joran Van Der Sloot's Wife Was His Most "Devoted" Fan — Then He Dumped Her
Joran Van Der Sloot told his wife he wanted a divorce after 7 years of marriage in order to be with his "prettier and younger" girlfriend.
Updated Feb. 27 2024, 2:02 p.m. ET
It’s rare that a longstanding murder case with little evidence gets a satisfying conclusion but on Oct. 18, 2023, it finally happened. Dutchman Joran Van der Sloot confessed to killing Natalee Holloway in 2005. For years, authorities believed that Van der Sloot was guilty but they didn’t have enough evidence to convict him. However, another murder kept him behind bars.
In May 2010, Van der Sloot killed 21-year-old Stephany Flores after she won big time in a casino where they met. He confessed in June and was sentenced to 28 years in prison in Peru. But while he was in prison, he had the opportunity to meet women — more specifically, a woman named Leidy Figueroa, who would later become his wife. That didn't last.
Joran van der Sloot and his wife, Leidy Figueroa, divorced earlier in 2023.
The year 2023 was huge for Van der Sloot — first, he got a divorce and then, he got extradited to the U.S. for a trial. While the trial was initially because Van der Sloot attempted to sell Holloway’s whereabouts to her family for $250,000, he ended up confessing to her murder in a proffer letter. Perhaps he has been softened throughout his years in prison, or perhaps, he doesn’t want to face his many romances in the outside world.
Van der Sloot and Figueroa met in 2010 while she was selling goods and visiting a friend in the Miguel Castro Castro maximum security prison, where Van der Sloot was separated from the general prison population. During their relationship, Figueroa got pregnant, so the two wed in a private ceremony at the Piedras Gordas maximum security prison in July 2014. Later that year, Van der Sloot was transferred to the Challapalca prison in the mountainous South of Peru.
How did Joran Van der Sloot have a child?
Due to the jail's policy of allowing conjugal visits, Figueroa was able to have intimate visits with Van der Sloot while he was behind bars. In one of these visits, they conceived a child. According to USA Today, Van der Sloot said that Figueroa was on the birth control pill, but had forgotten to take it the day of the visit, and didn't want to have an abortion due to her Catholic faith.
While he was locked up, Figueroa gave birth to their daughter in November 2014, and they named her Dusha Trudie van der Sloot after Van der Sloot’s grandmother, Trudie. In 2020, Van der Sloot was accused of bringing drugs into Challapalca with the help of another girlfriend, Eva Pacohuanaco.
Van der Sloot’s lawyer, Maximo Altez, told Daily Mail, “Leidy continued seeing him for a while. Joran had a bunch of girlfriends … lots of girls used to visit him … but Leidy was the most loyal.” That’s how they ended up married in the first place. But by 2021, Van der Sloot asked Figueroa for a divorce to be with his “prettier and younger” girlfriend, Pacohuanaco, who was just 22 years old at the time.
Joran Van Der Sloot took advantage of Eva Pacohuanaco.
In February 2024, Peacock released a documentary titled Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot. In it, Pacohuanaco detailed how the two met. Apparently he appeared during a "chaotic" time in her life. The father of her child had recently left the two of them, and Pacohuanaco was struggling with self-esteem issues. A friend of hers was dating someone at the Peruvian prison where Van der Sloot was confined, and she suggested the two meet. It would all seem very normal if it wasn't anything but.
"Joran was a refuge for me," said Pacohuanaco. While visiting him in prison, she always felt more at peace because he made her "feel special." Pacohuanaco described the letters Van der Sloot wrote, giggling as if she was a teenager. He always drew little hearts and stars all over them which Pacohuanaco said was "very romantic."
One day a strange man called Pacohuanaco and asked her if she wouldn't mind bringing him a few things from the outside world. Pacohuanaco didn't think anything of it and assumed they knew Van der Sloot. While bringing them into the prison, guards discovered 297 grams of cocaine hidden in beets, as well as 140 grams of marijuana. Pacohuanaco was arrested but left the country after she was able to get out thanks to lawyers Van der Sloot hired. There is still an arrest warrant for her in Peru.
