It's deja vu all over again for Joran Van der Sloot—except this time there's a very bloody body. Van der Sloot was named the top suspect yesterday in the murder of Stephany Flores Ramirez, who was found "covered in blood" in a Lima, Peru, hotel room booked under his name. Barbie Latza Nadeau outlines salacious new details in the case for the Daily Beast: Ramirez's fully clothed body, found wrapped in a sheet and lying facedown in her own blood, had multiple lesions, say police.
The coroner's report is pending, but the probable cause of death is strangulation or asphyxiation, and the time of death is 8:30am Sunday morning—precisely 5 years to the day after Natalee Holloway disappeared. Ramirez, who came from a wealthy Peruvian family (father Ricardo Flores, a former racecar driver, lost a bid to be the country's president), was captured on video leaving a Lima casino with Van der Sloot early Sunday. The two were seen in the hotel by an employee soon after. Van der Sloot had been in the city for two weeks to participate in a poker tournament; border records show he entered Chile on Monday. (More Joran Van der Sloot stories.)