Massive Development in Natalee Holloway Case -- Did Family Just Get Justice?
A man who for over a decade has claimed to have been involved in disposing of Natalee Holloway’s body after her murder in Aruba was killed Wednesday while attempting to kidnap his former roommate.
John Christopher Ludwick, 32, was stabbed in North Port, Florida, early Wednesday morning, WTVT reported. He was flown to a hospital for emergency medical treatment, but was pronounced dead on arrival.
Police told WTVT that Ludwick was stabbed while attempting “to kidnap a young woman in her driveway.” The young woman was not identified by name, but the outlet reported that she was a former roommate of the deceased.
Ludwick, the former “best friend” of convicted murdered Joran van der Sloot, had claimed to have recovered the body of Natalee Holloway and burned them, or at least the skull, to dispose of physical evidence in the case.
He later said van der Sloot paid Ludwick $1,500 in return, according to Fox News.
“(Her skull) was doused in gasoline in a fire pit in a cave,” he told an interviewer from Oxygen TV.
No connection between Wednesday morning’s crime and Holloway’s 2005 disappearance has yet been reported.
However, investigators in charge of the Holloway case, which remains open, have been updated on Ludwick’s death, police told WTVT.
“We are aware of Mr. Ludwick’s history and comments surrounding the disappearance of Natalee Ann Holloway in Aruba during May of 2005,” said North Port Police Department spokesperson Josh Taylor.
“The correct authorities who are working that case have been notified,” Taylor added. “Our investigation in this local case is ongoing.”
Ludwick lived in Port Charlotte, but had traveled to North Port specifically to kidnap his former roommate, police told WTVT, but she turned the tables on him.
Gabriel Madrigal, who claimed to be Ludwick’s friend, told the station that not everything Ludwick had said about the Holloway case was necessarily credible because he would sometimes change his story.
“John was an attention seeker,” Madrigal said. “He just wanted attention — attention on him.”
He added that the sometimes-suicidal Ludwick had nothing to do with Holloway’s murder, but that he had indeed burned her skull after the fact.
You can see local coverage here:
Var der Sloot remains imprisoned for murder in Peru after having been convicted of killing another young woman, Stephany Flores Ramírez, in Lima in 2010.
He is scheduled to be extradited to the U.S. in 2038 to stand trial in Holloway’s disappearance.
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