John Ludwick, a former friend of Joran van der Sloot’s, claimed that his buddy admitted to killing Natalee Holloway and asked him to burn her remains, according to the woman who killed Ludwick in self-defense.
The 32-year-old Ludwick was fatally stabbed last month trying to kidnap his ex-girlfriend, who said he spilled the beans on van der Sloot’s admission.
“He told me that Joran did do it and hid the body,” former gal pal Emily Heistand, 23, said in a “Dr. Phil” interview that aired Monday.
Van der Sloot told Ludwick he met Holloway at an Aruba bar in 2005 and spiked her drink, Heinstand recalled being told.
They wandered off to a beach where Holloway had a bad reaction to the drugs van der Sloot secretly slipped her, and the Alabama teen started “foaming at the mouth,” Ludwick told Heinstand.
Van der Sloot is doing a 28-year stint in Peru for killing another woman there in 2010, but has never been officially accused of killing Holloway.
Heistand said Ludwick confessed to her that he helped van der Sloot get rid of Holloway, who went missing during a graduation trip.
Ludwick told an Oxygen network special on Holloway that he burned her body in 2010, but DNA testing later concluded the charred remains weren’t hers.
“He told me that if we were ever in Aruba and went in the national forest, he would be able to find them,” she said.
The couple became estranged after Ludwick revealed his deep ties to van der Sloot, and his recounting was always inconsistent.
“It was always a different story,” she said.
And whether Ludwick was telling the truth may never be clear, she added, because “Joran taught him to never be honest — never tell the truth — to always, always lie.”
Ludwick wasn’t ready to give up on their relationship, however, even though Heinstand tried to distance herself from him and started dating someone else.
A knife-wielding Ludwick tried to kidnap her as she arrived home early one mid-March morning in North Port, Fla.
“He had his arm around my throat and I just started swinging backwards,” she said on “Dr. Phil.” “And when I knew that he wasn’t letting go, I just put all my strength into it, and I was like ‘I’m getting away from this.’”
Heinstand recalled grabbing the knife by the blade and driving it into Ludwick, then running into her home.
Ludwick wandered off and later died at a Sarasota County hospital.
——
©2018 New York Daily News
Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
———
PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194):
—————
Topics: t000002458,t000027866,t000149877,t000027879
