A man who fatally stabbed a student on the Wichita State University campus 40 years ago has died.

Leonard Bell attacked 19-year-old Julie Ladd on May 15, 1977, when she interrupted him as he was trying to steal money from the coin-operated laundry machines in her basement dormitory.

The Wichita Eagle reports that Ladd already was serving a life term in Colorado for a 1981 killing when he was linked to Ladd’s death seven years later. A Sedgwick County judge imposed a similar sentence for Ladd’s slaying and ordered it be served consecutively to the Colorado case.

A Kansas Department of Corrections spokeswoman says Bell hadn’t yet begun serving the life term he received for Ladd’s stabbing when he died last month in a Colorado prison. He was 62.]