SAN FRANCISCO—A serial killer who was currently on death row, was found unconscious in his prison cell on Thursday, October 17.  Anthony McKnight, 65, a former Navy sailor was serving time for the deaths of five women in 1985. He was arrested and found guilty in 1987 and serving a 63-year sentence for the deaths of several young women.

Authorities linked his DNA to the murders of Alita Dixon, 13, Diane Stone, 17, Monique Davis, 18, Betty Stuart, 22, and Beverly Bryant, 24. While being sentenced, Judge Jeffery Horner of Alameda County Superior Court indicated that McKnight butchered his victims after he had beaten them to death.

During the course of McKnight’s trial, three other women came forward and testified against the suspect. Special circumstances led to McKnight being sentenced to death row because he committed multiple murders, in the process of rape and sodomy.

He was sentenced to Death Row in 2008 at the San Quentin State Prison, and convicted of kidnapping to commit a sexual offense, assault with a deadly weapon, rape with force, attempted murder, and oral copulation.

After being found inside his cell, McKnight was later pronounced dead, the cause of McKnight’s death is unknown and under investigation. An autopsy has been ordered to determine a cause of death.