LA PAZ, Bolivia " A convicted hotel bomber from California who modeled himself on a fictional vampire has died after becoming ill in prison, officials said Tuesday.
Twenty-six-year-old Tristan Jay Amero was serving a 30-year sentence for bombing two low-rent hotels in the Bolivian capital of La Paz in 2006. Two Bolivians died in one of the attacks.
Juan Carlos Limpias, a senior official in the national prison service, said Amero complained of stomach pains Monday night in his cell and was taken to a hospital, where he died. An autopsy was being performed.
The native of Placerville, Calif., Amero adopted the name of Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo " a variation on a character in Anne Rice's vampire novels.
Also convicted in the bombings was Amero's Uruguayan girlfriend, Alda Ribeiro Costa, 47.
Amero's case briefly caused a bizarre kink in Bolivian-U.S. relations when President Evo Morales referred to him as a terrorist.