Amigoe.com
02/07/2008
Family Van der Sloot with left, Anita van der Sloot. Joran has two younger brothers.
ORANJESTAD – The mother of Joran van der Sloot, Anita, wants to clear up the rumours that Joran has a half brother; he does not; this half brother does not exist. She told the Amigoe this yesterday.
Amigoe reported yesterday that the Dutch current affairs column and the local radio transmitter Cool FM assumed that a certain Lorenzo van R. was the person that helped murder-suspect Joran dispose of Natalee Holloway’s body with a boat. Daury Rodriguez’s name was mentioned earlier as the ‘boatman’, but Rodriguez denied this. Joran van der Sloot said in the talked-about footage of Peter R. de Vries that he was helped by ‘Daury’.
Also in the early stages of the investigation, family Van der Sloot has rebutted this rumour. “Justice has investigated it at that time and could ascertain that nothing tallies. But the media is digging into it again. How are Joran’s brothers going to understand this now? They asked me if what is in the Amigoe is true; that they have a half brother. This is on top of everything that has already happened.”
Also Lorenzo’s family had already told a newspaper in the past that this story about half brother is not true. The two families had contact with each other right after family Van der Sloot moved to Aruba in 1990. “They had an auto-repair shop and we have taken our car to them a few times. Lorenzo was five or six years old at that time and Joran two-and-a-half.”
‘Joran-shows’
The Netherlands as well as the United States are keeping a close track of all the latest developments in the Holloway-case. The Netherlands that was the first to broadcast Peter R. de Vries’ footage last Sunday, noted a viewing record of seven million people. ABC has broadcast the footage on Monday and at least 12 million Americans watched it, which is 11 percent of the TV-viewers at that moment.
De Vries has meanwhile left for the US to appear in several prominent talk shows. Aruban televiewers could watch the footage on ABC via cable for the first time on Monday. They have already seen and heard fragments via local radio- and TV-transmitters and on internet earlier.
Patrick van der Eem, the man that encouraged a confession from Joran van der Sloot on a hidden camera, seems to become ‘the big hero’ in the Netherlands and in the US, confirmed the office of Peter R. de Vries. The telephone hasn’t stopped ringing and several bouquets were delivered ‘out of appreciation’.
