MIAMI - Claudine Ryce, the mother of a 9-year-old boy whose 1995 murder received national attention, died Wednesday. She was 66.
A spokeswoman for Jimmy Ryce's family said the boy's mother died of a heart attack.
Jimmy Ryce was kidnapped after getting off a school bus near the family's rural Miami home. Claudine Ryce and her husband, Don, participated in the three-month search.
Authorities arrested ranch hand Juan Carlos Chavez after the boy's backpack was found in his trailer. Chavez confessed to raping Jimmy, shooting him and then dismembering the body, placing it in planters and sealing them in cement.
Chavez was found guilty of murder. He is on death row pending appeal.
A state law bearing the boy's name keeps sexual predators in custody even after they finish their sentences if they are considered a danger.
Florida's Governor Lawton Chiles, seated, hands the pen he used to sign the Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment for Sexually Violent Predators' Treatment and Care Act into law to Jimmy's mother, Claudine Ryce, during a ceremony in Homestead, Fla. Tuesday, May 19, 1998.