Joran Van der Sloot Was Stabbed in Prison: Wife

But Peru prison official says she's lying
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 3, 2014 11:26 AM CST
Joran Van der Sloot Was Stabbed in Prison: Wife
In this June 4, 2010, file photo, Joran Van der Sloot, top, is escorted by police officers outside a Peruvian police station, near the border with Chile in Tacna, Peru.   (AP Photo/Karel Navarro, File)

Joran Van der Sloot has been "seriously injured" in a stabbing at the Peruvian prison where he's serving a sentence for murder, according to his wife, but a top prison official says Leidy Figueroa is lying. Figueroa told a Netherlands CNN affiliate that her husband was stabbed twice—in the shoulder and waist, both about three-quarters of an inch deep—at the maximum-security Miguel Castro Castro Prison, and that she smuggled his bloody shirt out of the facility after visiting him yesterday. Van der Sloot's lawyer also says his client was stabbed and suffered "wounds that are definitely two inches deep," USA Today reports, citing local media.

But Jose Perez Guadalupe, director of Peru's National Penitentiary Institute, told local media that Figueroa, who gave birth to Van der Sloot's baby in September, is a "compulsive liar" and that there's no truth to the story. He added, "For starters, no woman in her right mind goes to a maximum-security prison and marries the biggest killer there." Van der Sloot was convicted of murdering Stephany Flores in 2012, but he's also been linked to the disappearance of US teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005. Van der Sloot's lawyer says a Peruvian prosecutor is investigating the alleged stabbing. (More Leidy Figueroa stories.)

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