John Christopher Ludwick made headlines in the series The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway when he claimed he helped Joran van der Sloot dispose of the missing teen’s body. Ludwig, 32, was stabbed to death Tuesday as he tried to kidnap a woman from her vehicle in southwestern Florida, police said.
North Port police said Ludwick was roommates with the woman at one point and wanted a romantic relationship with her, but she didn’t want one with him.
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“He essentially ambushed her getting out of her car, going into her home,” North Port police spokesperson Joshua Taylor told CBS News.
The unidentified woman was able to wrestle a knife from Ludwick, then stabbed him in the abdomen.
“He then fled the area on foot,” police said in a statement. “He was found nearby suffering from the stab wounds. After being transported by air, he was pronounced dead at a local hospital.”
Ludwick was pronounced dead around 7 a.m. Wednesday morning. The woman won’t be criminally charged, Taylor said.
“From every ounce of evidence we have so far, she was a victim in this case,” he said. “We have nothing to say otherwise right now.”
Natalee Holloway disappeared in 2005 during a high school graduation trip to Aruba. Van der Sloot, the last person seen with the 18-year-old, was never charged with her death. He is currently serving a 28-year sentence in a Peruvian prison for the unrelated 2010 murder of a 21-year-old woman in his Lima hotel room.
Ludwick appeared on the Oxygen series that followed Holloway’s father and a private investigator as they chased a lead in the case, in which Ludwick claimed van der Sloot paid him $1,500 to dig up Holloway’s remains, cremate them and scatter them into the Caribbean.
“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 at the time. He added that Holloway’s skull was burned to eliminate any remaining hair fibers, saying: “It was doused in gasoline in a fire pit in a cave.”
Holloway was declared legally dead in 2012. No one has ever been charged in connection with her disappearance.
“We are aware of Mr. Ludwick’s history and comments surrounding the disappearance of Natalee Ann Holloway in Aruba during May of 2005,” North Point Police spokesman Josh Taylor stated. “The correct authorities who are working that case have been notified. Our investigation in this local case is ongoing.”
