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A white supremacist who tried to kill a Latino prisoner in the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City last year has died, apparently of suicide, in a Colorado prison.
Lance Vanderstappen - whom prosecutors called "a coldblooded, mean, dangerous individual, one from whom no one is safe" - was found hanging in his cell about 4:10 p.m. Monday in the high-security U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colo.
"During the 4 p.m. count, which is a stand-up count, Vanderstappen was not standing up. He was hanging from the inner grill of his cell," said prison spokeswoman Krista Rear.
Rear said the 26-year-old Vanderstappen, who was serving 25 years without the possibility of parole, used a bedsheet to hang himself in a cell he occupied by himself.
Corrections officers administered CPR and transported Vanderstappen to the local hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:20 p.m. The investigation remained open Friday, and Rear said the death likely will be ruled a suicide.
With a criminal history dating back to when he was 10, Vanderstappen was sentenced last September to 20 years in prison for attempted murder in the stabbing July 12 of a fellow inmate at the federal courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City.
Vanderstappen had been brought to court that day to be sentenced on a racketeering charge. Minutes after being sentenced to 63 months behind bars, he was returned to a holding cell, where he expelled a shiv, a homemade knife fashioned from a nail clipper, from his body.
He then singled out a Latino prisoner and began stabbing him until U.S. marshals intervened.
Vanderstappen admitted he had planned "to use the shiv to kill someone at the earliest possible opportunity," prosecutors said.
The inmate suffered superficial injuries.
Vanderstappen was one of a dozen men indicted in 2003 on charges that they carried out violent crimes for the Soldiers of the Aryan Culture (SAC), a white supremacist gang that operated a methamphetamine ring from inside and outside Utah's prisons.
Charges were dropped against two, and the rest eventually pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to 20 years.