A Florida man who came forward last year, claiming to have helped dispose of Natalee Holloway’s body, is now dead,
according to police.
John Christopher Ludwick, 32, was fatally stabbed Wednesday during a failed kidnapping attempt in Sarasota County.
He had been trying to abduct a young woman outside her home as she was getting out of her vehicle, cops said.
The North Port resident fought back and apparently plunged a knife into Ludwick several times, causing him to flee on foot.
Cops found him nearby with multiple stab wounds and rushed him to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The incident comes just months after Ludwick appeared in the Oxygen television series “
The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway” — in which he claimed to have helped his pal, Joran van der Sloot, dispose of the high schooler’s remains.
“The idea was to crush everything to the point where it wasn’t recognizable as her bones or skull or anything like that,” Ludwick said during the show.
According to him, van der Sloot murdered Holloway on the day of her disappearance in 2005 and then buried the Alabama high school senior on a steep hill in Aruba, where she was vacationing.
He then allegedly paid Ludwick $1,500 to dig up her body in 2010 and have it cremated.
Ludwick later led investigators to the spot where he hid what he said were Holloway’s remains, but DNA testing showed that the bone fragments and samples actually belonged to someone else.
Cops said Ludwick knew the woman he was trying to kidnap Wednesday.
“They are familiar with each other,” officials explained in a statement on Facebook.
North Port police are aware of Ludwick’s history and comments surrounding Holloway’s disappearance and have informed the appropriate parties involved about his death.
“The correct authorities who are working that case have been notified,” police said. “Our investigation in this local case is ongoing.”
