Killer Hospitalized

A serial killer has apparently overdosed in his prison cell. Michael Ross, who has alternately cooperated with and opposed efforts to put him to death, was hospitalized this morning after an apparent overdose. Ross, 39, was discovered on the floor of his death row cell at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers around 1:25 a.m., Correction Department Capt. Scott Semple said. Ross was "unresponsive" when discovered by guards, Correction Department spokeswoman Christina Polce said. He was treated at the prison, then taken around 4 a.m. to the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. Hospital spokesman Patrick Keefe said Ross was being treated in a secure area of the hospital designed to handle prisoners. He said Ross was in "serious" condition, meaning that his vital signs such as pulse and blood pressure were unstable. Keefe said Ross appeared to have suffered from an overdose, but could not say whether his stomach had been pumped. Police told the newspaper that state police and the Correction Department's security division were investigating. She would not say if authorities were investigating the incident as a suicide attempt or whether other inmates were involved. Ross strangled at least six girls and young women in the early 1980s. He pleaded guilty to two killings in 1985 and was convicted of four others in 1987. Later that year, he was sentenced to death. In 1994, the state Supreme Court upheld his conviction but overturned his sentence because the trial judge had excluded part of a psychiatric report that might have helped him escape death. For several years, Ross pressed for his execution, claiming he wanted to spare the victims' families another trial. He changed his mind after the death agreement he signed with state prosecutors was thrown out in July. Last month, court papers were filed asking that Ross, a former Jewett City insurance salesman and graduate of Cornell University, be spared the death penalty because of what lawyers claimed is the "cruel and unusual" nature of lethal injections. Ross will be resentenced next year. Jury selection for that process is scheduled to begin Feb. 23.