Joran van der Sloot Children: His Daughter With Leidy Figueroa and What Is Publicly Known

Netflix’s Taken: Natalee Holloway, released on November 4, 2026, has renewed attention to Joran van der Sloot’s life in prison, including his marriage and daughter. The series revisits the disappearance of Natalee Holloway and the confession that emerged during his 2023 federal case.

Van der Sloot has one publicly reported biological child: a daughter born to Leidy Figueroa in 2014. Her birth followed their wedding inside a Peruvian prison in July of that year.

Figueroa also had a son before the relationship. That is a separate family connection, and it should not be used to describe van der Sloot as having two confirmed biological children.

The daughter is still a minor. Public coverage provides a basic family timeline, but little reliably verified information about her present life. Her father’s notoriety does not make unverified details about her appropriate to repeat as fact.

How many children does Joran van der Sloot have?

Current reporting consistently identifies one daughter from his marriage to Figueroa. Her name is usually rendered as Dushy or Dusha, with variations appearing across English-language reports.

The year of birth, 2014, is more consistently documented than the exact day. Some profiles give different late-September dates, so there is no need to select one without a stronger primary record.

Reports at the time of the marriage said Figueroa was pregnant. The daughter was born later that year, establishing the sequence of wedding and birth without relying on conflicting details in retrospective profiles.

Figueroa was already the mother of a boy when she met van der Sloot. Reporting about that earlier child should be kept separate from the daughter they had together.

There is no confirmed public evidence in the sources reviewed of another biological child. Relationships attributed to van der Sloot after the marriage do not independently establish fatherhood.

Search results can mix marriage announcements, divorce reports and stories about other prison visitors. Those are different subjects, and combining them can produce an inaccurate family count. The confirmed public record remains much narrower.

Who is the mother of his daughter?

The daughter’s mother is Leidy Figueroa, a Peruvian woman who developed a relationship with van der Sloot while he was incarcerated. Their wedding took place at Piedras Gordas prison in July 2014.

His attorney confirmed the marriage to reporters at the time. Accounts of their first meeting vary, but consistently place the relationship within the system of visits to the prison where he was being held.

Figueroa was described in contemporary coverage as connected with accounting studies or work. Her later career and private circumstances are not reliably established by the reporting available.

In 2023, van der Sloot’s lawyer said he was seeking a divorce. Recent coverage often refers to Figueroa as his ex-wife, although the public sources reviewed do not include a final divorce judgment.

The distinction between an announced separation and a documented legal decree is relevant to the adult relationship. It does not change the basic fact that they had a daughter together.

It also provides no reliable basis for describing the child’s custody arrangements or contact with her father. Those questions concern private family circumstances that cannot be resolved by assuming how prison visits must have worked.

What is known about his relationship with his daughter?

There is little verified public information about the relationship today. Reporting establishes the birth, but does not provide a dependable account of how frequently father and daughter communicate or whether they have an ongoing personal bond.

Van der Sloot’s incarceration is relevant context, but prison rules alone cannot answer those questions. A policy permitting visitors does not prove that a particular person visited or explain the nature of a family relationship.

His legal history also needs to be described accurately. He was convicted in Peru of murdering Stephany Flores Ramírez, who was killed in Lima in 2010. That case is separate from Natalee Holloway’s disappearance in Aruba.

In 2023, Peru temporarily surrendered him to the United States for a federal case involving Beth Holloway. He admitted extortion and wire fraud and received a 20-year sentence after seeking money in exchange for information about Natalee.

His confession to killing Natalee became public through those proceedings. The American convictions were for fraud and extortion, and should not be described as a murder conviction for her death.

He returned to Peru after the proceedings. The federal sentence was ordered to run concurrently with his existing imprisonment, rather than creating a new family situation outside prison.

The Netflix release explains the current interest in those older events. It does not establish a recent birth or confirm new children. The daughter discussed in current coverage is the child born in 2014.

For readers looking for a straightforward answer, van der Sloot has one publicly documented daughter with Figueroa. Beyond that basic history, the available record does not support detailed claims about the child’s home, education or present relationship with either parent.