According to authorities, a former California police officer who turned serial killer and was sentenced to death for killing six people in the 1980s has passed away naturally.
According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Anthony Sully, 79, passed away on Friday at a hospital outside of the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, where he had spent decades being confined.
Sully’s formal cause of death will be determined by the Marin County Coroner’s Office, the department announced in a news release on Monday.
In June 1986, Sully received a death sentence for the murders of Phyllis Melendez, 20, Kathryn Barrett, 24, Barbara Searcy, 22, Gloria Jean Fravel, 24, Brendan Oakden, 19, and Michael Thomas.
In a San Francisco Bay Area electrical supply warehouse in 1983, the victims were beaten, stabbed, and shot. According to the San Jose Mercury News, three of the remains were discovered crammed into barrels that had been dumped near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. His prints were discovered by the detectives on a few of the deceased.
From 1966 to 1974, Sully worked as a Bay Area police officer.
He argued that he was not given a fair trial at his sentence, telling the judge, “I am not a monster, not a maniac, not subhuman,” the Mercury News said, citing news reports from the time.
Ronald L. Sanders, 71, a different death row prisoner, passed away on Tuesday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville from natural causes, according to prison officials. In March 1982, Sanders received a death sentence for the murder of 29-year-old Janice Dishroon Allen.