Ex: Joran Was 'Romantic, Honest'

Melody Granadillo texted Van der Sloot just before he left for Peru
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 17, 2010 2:29 PM CDT
Ex: Joran Was 'Romantic, Honest'
Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot gets a medical check-up at the police station near the border with Chile, in Tacna, Peru, Friday, June 4, 2010.   (AP Photo)

Before he was the man who calmly ate breakfast next to the body of the woman he's accused of murdering, Joran Van der Sloot was an "amazing" and "romantic" teenage Romeo—at least to hear his onetime girlfriend tell it, which she does in an ABC interview airing tomorrow night. Melody Granadillo was 16 when she met Van der Sloot, and the pair traded love poems, letters, and "liked looking in each other's eyes" over the 7-month period they dated.

But perhaps inevitably, there was a darker side just beginning to show: "He would lie for no apparent reason at all ... and if you caught him at it ... he would double down and be even more serious about the story," says Granadillo, now 23. And as for those eyes she used to gaze into? "It's not connectable. You can't connect that. It's not the same person," she says. "You see he's hurt. You see he's in trouble." (More Joran Van der Sloot stories.)

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