Michael Bruce Ross

Michael Bruce Ross (July 26, 1959 – May 13, 2005) was an American serial killer who was executed by the state of Connecticut in 2005.

Ross was born in Putnam, Connecticut, on July 26, 1959, to Patricia Hilda Laine and Dan Graeme Ross.

He was the oldest of four children, having two younger sisters and a younger brother.

The family lived on a chicken farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut.

Ross's home life was extremely dysfunctional; his mother, who abandoned the family at least once, had been institutionalized, and beat all four of her children, saving the worst treatment for him.

Some family and friends have suggested that he was also molested by his teenaged uncle, who committed suicide when Ross was six.

He was a bright boy who performed well in school.

He graduated from Killingly High School in Killingly, Connecticut, in 1977, and graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he studied economics, in May 1981.

He became an insurance salesman.

He exhibited antisocial behavior from a young age.

Ross began stalking women in his sophomore year of college and, in his senior year, he committed his first rape followed by his first murder soon after.

Between 1981 and 1984, Ross murdered eight girls and women aged between 14 and 25 in Connecticut and New York.

He raped seven out of his eight murder victims.

He also was alleged to have raped, but not killed, a 21-year-old woman named Vivian Dobson in 1983 and a woman named Candace Farris in Indiana.

Plainfield police rejected the possibility that Ross had been Vivian Dobson's rapist.

They did not press charges and Ross made no confession.

Ross confessed to the eight murders and was convicted for the last four of them.

He became a devout Catholic after his arrest in 1984, meeting regularly with two priests through the years and praying the rosary each morning.

During his time in prison, Ross translated documents into Braille, acted as a mentor to other inmates, and financially sponsored a child from the Dominican Republic.

Although he opposed the death penalty, Ross strongly supported his own death sentence in the last year of his life, saying that he wanted to spare his victims' families any more pain.

According to Kathry Yeager, a Cornell graduate, Ross believed that he had been "forgiven by God" and that he would be going to "a better place" once he was executed.

She said: "He's not being punished. He's moving on to life eternal. That's what is ironic about the death penalty. He's looking forward to the peace."

Yeager also said that Ross had come to believe there was no way his death sentences would be commuted without forcing the victims' families to suffer through more legal hearings, and that he knew his life would be meaningful, even behind bars: "He's had a horrible life, and he's wanted to do good."

He was sentenced to death on July 6, 1987, in Connecticut by judge G. Sarsfield Ford.

In 2001, while on death row, Ross pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter for killing Paula Perrera in New York in 1982, and was sentenced to 8 and 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

Powers broke up with Ross in 2003 but still visited him until his death.

He spent almost 18 years on death row before his execution in May 2005.

During his incarceration, he met his fiancée, Susan Powers, of Oklahoma.

In spite of this, an hour before the execution was to take place in the early hours of January 26, 2005, Ross's lawyer, acting on behalf of Ross's father, obtained a two-day stay of execution.

Ross was then scheduled to die by lethal injection on January 29, 2005, at 2:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

However, earlier in the day, the execution was again postponed because of doubts that Ross was mentally competent; having fought against his death sentence for 17 years, he suddenly waived his right to appeal.

His attorney claimed that Ross was incompetent to waive appeals, as he was suffering from death row syndrome.

In his final days, Ross became an oblate, or associate, of the Benedictine Grange, a Roman Catholic monastic community in West Redding, Connecticut.

Ross was executed by lethal injection on May 13, 2005, at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut.

He was 45 years old.

Ross did not request a special last meal before facing his execution, thereby dining on the regular prison meal of the day: turkey à la king with rice, mixed vegetables, white bread, fruit, and a beverage.

When asked if he would like to make a last statement, he said, without opening his eyes, "No, thank you."

Ross was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. His remains were buried at the Benedictine Grange Cemetery in Redding, Connecticut.

He was the last person executed in Connecticut before the state ended capital punishment in 2012.

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional in 2015, converting the sentences of the state's remaining death row inmates to life in prison without parole.