A former California police officer sentenced to death for the murders of six people in the 1980s died of natural causes on Friday, US authorities announced today.
Anthony Sully, 79, had been held at the rehabilitation center in San Quentin, California, since 1986, and the cause of death will be determined through an autopsy, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
Sully was sentenced to death in June 1986 for the 1983 serial murders of six people, Kathryn Barrett, 24, Barbara Searcy, 22, Gloria Jean Fravel, 24, Brendan Oakden, 19, Michael Thomas, 24, and Phyllis Melendez, 20. .
The victims were beaten, stabbed and shot in an electrical goods warehouse in San Francisco Bay. Three of the bodies were found in barrels dumped in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
Detectives found his fingerprints on some of the bodies.
Anthony Sully was a San Francisco police officer from 1966 to 1974.
When the verdict was read, he stated that he had not received a fair trial and said he was “not a monster, nor a maniac, nor a sub-human,” according to the Mercury News, citing news at the time.
Another death row inmate, Ronald L. Sanders, 71, died of natural causes Tuesday at the California Medical Center in Vacaville, prison officials said.
Sanders was sentenced to death in March 1982 for the murder of 29-year-old Janice Dishroon Allen.
Source: DN
