What goes around, comes around...

A few years ago, a story of my local interest made the international wires when young Birmingham (AL) high schooler, Natalee Holloway, was abducted, murdered and her body dumped somewhere off the shores of Aruba on her vacation.

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The perp long suspected of killing her, a Dutch sociopath by the name of Joran Van der Sloot has now been busted in Peru for robbing and strangling to death a local prostitute.  He confessed to that crime, and the speculation is that he has intimated details of Holloway's death and/or the location of her body. One of the incentives the local government has is the threat of the infamous ultra-violent Peruvian prisons of Castro Castro (where he's currently held), and the long-term facility that he'll likely die in, Lurigancho.

Why do I say that he'll likely die there? I didn't...his Peruvian lawyer did.

"The prison (currently housing van der Sloot) is one of the toughest prisons, along with Lurigancho," Griffith says. "I've been in prisons in over two dozen countries. In fact, I was the lawyer for Billy Hayes from the movie 'Midnight Express,' and the Turkish prison is a Ritz-Carlton compared to this. .."I'm not certain," Copeland says, "van der Sloot can do anything to assure himself that he's gonna survive this Peruvian prison system. …

This is his arrival at Castro Castro...

And, this is the Panopticon-style hellhole of Castro Castro...

How bad are these Peruvian prisons (as if the allusions to Midnight Express didn't clue you in)? Here's more from the CBS Story

There's about 10,000 prisoners for 3,000 spaces. This and another prison where he's gonna go afterwards, Lurigancho, has dormitories of about 600 prisoners in each. The showers run once a week for 15 minutes. There's only 12 showers. They're in rooms of about 25-by-15 (feet) with about 35 prisoners. About seven or eight sleep on the floor. There's a hole for a toilet.

"And it's a very, very brutal place." 

"In Lurigancho, you have the Shining Path guerillas. There's about 600 of them. They had a revolt one day, about 124 were killed by the police. When I went to visit a client of mine there, I had to hire two-guards to walk me through the Shining Path guerilla territory. The next day, I thought it would be better if my client visited me in the holding area - in the visiting area. And a prisoner got stabbed ten feet away from me.

 This is part of Lurigancho. You could say it's filthy...

In addition to being overcrowded...

and violent.

 

 

So there you are, Joran, Lurigancha: Your new home. There aren't 17 and 22 year-old girls to bully, here. Instead, there are the most psychopathic and vile that Peru has to offer. Ever heard of the Shining Path? A Peruvian, ultraviolent, ultra-Marxist terrorist group? Ever heard of what they did to people? Like schoolyards of areas the rebels didn't control?

It's wasn't pretty.  Especially with machetes.

 

 

 

 

But, you know what they say? What goes around, comes around. And, in the words of your lawyer, you're a dead man, "If they want to get you in this prison, they'll get you...I'd be very surprised if van der Sloot makes the seven or eight or ten years, whatever he'll get."

 

 

 

 

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