The man who claimed to have cremated Natalee Holloway's remains was stabbed to death in western Florida.
John Christopher Ludwick died Wednesday morning at a Sarasota County hospital after being knifed by a woman he knew, North Port police said in a Facebook post.
The 32-year-old victim was trying to kidnap the woman as she got out of her car, cops said.
Ludwick was stabbed during the ensuing scuffle and fled the woman's driveway.
Cops later found a bleeding Ludwick away from the scene, airlifting him to the hospital where he died that morning.
Ludwick made waves less than a year ago, when he discussed his role in Holloway's 2005 death in Aruba.
The Alabama teen vanished that May while on a high school graduation trip, sparking relentless searches.
Ludwick claimed suspected killer Joran Van der Sloot paid him $1,500 in 2010 to dig up and cremate Holloway's buried remains.
"The idea was to crush everything to the point where it wasn't recognizable as her bones or skull or anything like that," he said on the Oxygen network's "The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway" last fall.
But neither Ludwick nor Van Der Sloot _ who was convicted for the 2010 murder of another woman in Peru _ were charged for the incident, because there wasn't enough to back up the account.
A forensic scientist who tested the bones Ludlow burned declared in October that they didn't belong to Holloway.
Cops in Florida reached out to those in charge of the nearly 13-year-old Holloway case about Ludwick's death.
"We are aware of Mr. Ludwick's history and comments surrounding the disappearance of Natalee Ann Holloway in Aruba during May of 2005," North Port police said in the Facebook post. "The correct authorities who are working that case have been notified."
