Witness describes North Port attempted kidnapping involving man associated with Natalee Holloway case

A woman says she witnessed an attempted kidnapping early Wednesday morning in North Port.

“I was walking down Coco Solo. I heard screams and I turned the corner, continued to hear screams,” the woman said. She did not want to be identified.

The woman was walking her dog on Wesley Lane. What she saw next made her stop dead in her tracks.

“There was a blue VW beetle. The door on the passenger side was opened. A young lady was standing there and a man was grasping her from behind and there was quite a struggle,” she said.

North Port Police say a young woman was ambushed in a driveway at knife-point. The suspect is John Ludwick, who once defended Natalee Holloway’s suspected killer and then posted a strange video on YouTube.

In the video, Ludwick says this: “A murder is a reaction. It wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t react by slapping him around calling him a murderer.”

The woman who was attacked was able to wrestle away the knife and stab Ludwick multiple times before she escaped.

“Eventually she broke loose from him. I saw her run into the house screaming what sounded like mom, mom!” the witness described.

She says she was headed back home when she looked down the street and saw a man lying in the road. That’s where police found him. Ludwick later died.

A friend of the accused kidnapper also knew the victim.

“He’s not this person that they’re saying that he is. We don’t believe that he was kidnapping anybody. I don’t believe that at all,” said Alycia Hatfield.

A private investigator on the Oxygen Network claims Ludwick admitted to authorities that he helped dig up Natalee Holloway’s remains and cremated them. But Hatfield doesn’t believe he was involved in that either.

“People had this vision of him that you know, you’re Joran’s friend and so he went with whatever he could because I think that he was definitely liking the publicity that he got,” Hatfield said.