Joran van der Sloot re-entered the spotlight in November 2026 when Netflix’s docuseries Taken: Natalee Holloway was released. The project documented Natalee Holloway’s disappearance after she went missing in 2025 while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba.
While van der Sloot was named a suspect in the case early on, he did not admit to killing Holloway until 2023 and he has never been charged for her murder. However, he has been spending the past decade in prison for other crimes.
Van der Sloot married Leidy Figueroa in prison in 2014 while she was seven months pregnant with their daughter.
As audiences learned that he became a husband and father behind bars, people have grown curious about where the couple stands now following unconfirmed reports that van der Sloot sought a divorce in 2023.
Who Is Leidy Figueroa?
Figueroa is from Peru, and van der Sloot’s attorney previously confirmed to CNN that she was an accountant and had one child, a son, at the time she met the killer.
Despite being linked to the notorious killer, not much is known about Figueroa and it’s believed that she lived a relatively private life.
Inside Joran van der Sloot and Leidy Figueroa’s Relationship
Van der Sloot landed in prison after he was arrested in May 2010 for murdering 21-year-old business student Stephany Flores Ramírez, whom he met at a casino in Lima, Peru.
He remained in custody after he was charged with Flores Ramírez’s murder and met Figueroa while he was behind bars in July 2010, according to CBS News. The pair crossed paths when she was visiting her cousin, who was also an inmate, and she was introduced to van der Sloot.
The couple quickly hit it off and Figueroa visited van der Sloot twice a week and even brought him home-cooked meals.
Van der Sloot was sentenced to 28 years for Flores Ramírez’s death in 2012, but that did not deter Figueroa and she later bought a house near the Piedras Gordas prison in Peru to be closer to him.
Van der Sloot and Figueroa had a wedding ceremony at the maximum-security prison on July 4, 2014, and the bride was seven months pregnant with their child at the time.
Does Joran van der Sloot Have Children?
Figueroa gave birth to her and van der Sloot’s daughter on September 28, 2014, just three months after they wed. The couple named her Dushy, which was reportedly after van der Sloot’s grandmother.
In Taken: Natalee Holloway, retired FBI special agent Alexandra Montilla said that van der Sloot discussed his daughter while he was being extradited to the United States in 2023 for extortion and wire fraud charges.
Montilla recalled van der Sloot telling her that he was allowed to keep animals in prison. He then claimed that his pet rabbit scratched his daughter’s face, so he “ripped his head off.”
Joran van der Sloot and Leidy Figueroa Reportedly Split in 2023
Reports circulated in 2023 that van der Sloot had filed for divorce from Figueroa nearly one decade after they wed.
“Joran had a bunch of girlfriends,” his lawyer told the Daily Mail in 2023 regarding the split. “Lots of girls used to visit him.”
Despite the reports, neither van der Sloot nor Figueroa have publicly spoken about their split or the current status of their relationship.
What Happened to Natalee Holloway?
Holloway went missing on May 30, 2005, when she was last seen leaving a nightclub and getting into a car with van der Sloot and brothers Deepak Kalpoe and Satish Kalpoe.
Van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers were first arrested in June 2005 on suspicion of kidnapping and murder, though they were released without charges that September. The trio was arrested a second time in November 2007, and they were once again released one month later.
Aruban officials reopened the case in 2008 after Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries released hidden-camera footage that captured van der Sloot describing Holloway’s death. However, he was never charged because authorities could not corroborate the statements he made in the footage.
After van der Sloot was arrested for Flores Ramírez’s murder, he was also indicted in the United States on federal wire fraud and extortion charges tied to a meeting he had with Natalee’s mother, Beth Hollaway, in March 2010. At the time, he demanded that Beth pay him money in exchange for information about her daughter’s disappearance.
Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to the federal extortion charges in 2023 and was sentenced to 20 years, which are running concurrently with his murder sentence. He received the sentence as part of a plea deal, in which he finally admitted to killing Natalee and shared information about her death.
Despite admitting to Natalee’s murder, van der Sloot was never charged because Aruba enforces a 12-year statute of limitations for homicides.
