Joran Van der Sloot didn't know who he was messing with when he decided to take out his anger on the girl he claims was intruding into his private life. If 21-year-old Stephany Flores, whom he apparently met at a casino in Lima, Peru, before taking her to his hotel room, had been some anonymous citizen, her killing might have gone unsolved, like so many do in that country.

But the young girl happened to be the daughter of Ricardo Flores, a prominent businessman in the entertainment field, a former race-car driver and an ex-presidential and vice- 
presidential candidate. When her body was found and Van der Sloot was identified in the hotel's surveillance video, her family was instrumental in putting out a search warrant by Interpol.

According to published reports, the 22-year-old Dutchman admitted he and Stephany Flores had an altercation when he realized, upon returning to his hotel room from getting coffee at a nearby establishment, that she had gone into his laptop computer and looked up his background.

A smart thing to do, after the not-so-smart move of going into a hotel room with a stranger in the first place. But it was too late for her to rectify her mistake. The guy she had a fling with happened to be the same one who, five years earlier to the day, had spent the night with Natalee Holloway in Aruba. Holloway disappeared and is presumed dead, her body never found. Van der Sloot remains the main suspect in her disappearance.

In Aruba, many people believe, he was able to get away with murder, in part because of lax murder laws, not to mention that his own father was a judge. (Judge Paulus Van der Sloot passed away earlier this year.)

The Peruvian justice system is not necessarily the strongest. There is no death penalty, except for extreme cases, like genocide or crimes committed in times of war, and there is no life sentence. The details of the case have yet to be determined, but there's talk that Van der Sloot could face 15 to 35 years behind bars, or maybe less since he confessed. Either way, for the time he does spend in jail, he can expect to be living in Peruvian hell.

Van der Sloot reportedly was being held in a cell at the prosecutor's office under constant surveillance for fear that he might take his own life. But when the time comes for him to serve his time, it will be far from the luxurious life he has been used to in his gambling journeys around the world.

One possibility could be the Miguel Castro Castro prison in San Juan de Lurigancho, a maximum-security prison considered one of the most dangerous in the world. A 2009 U.S. State Department report denounced the harsh conditions in Peru's 71 active prisons. Among them were overcrowding, poor sanitation and inadequate nutrition and health care. Incidences of tuberculosis and HIV reportedly were near epidemic levels, according to the report. Inmates had only intermittent access to running water, the bathing facilities were inadequate and prisoners often slept in the hallways and common areas for lack of space.

Another jail, the Challapalca Prison in the Andes near the Bolivian border, is at an altitude of 15,000 feet above sea level, and is a six-hour drive down a dirt road. In this prison there is no electricity or running water, and temperatures go from extreme heat during the day to near freezing at night.

Could it have been worse? Maybe -- he could have faced the curse of the Peruvian Indian shamans who held a “spiritual punishment ritual” outside the prosecutor's office. Or he could have faced the enraged mobs that too often have taken the law into their own hands and lynched suspected perpetrators of crimes far less than the murder of a young Peruvian woman.

At this time, Van der Sloot must be wishing he had confessed, even if he didn't do it, to Natalee Holloway's murder instead of Stephany Flores'.

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(Maria Elena Salinas is the author of “I AM MY FATHER'S DAUGHTER: LIVING A LIFE WITHOUT SECRETS.” Reach her at www .mariaesalinas.com)

© 2010 by Maria Elena Salinas

Distributed by King Features Syndicate