A drifter convicted of killing two Massachusetts men in carjackings in 2001 and sentenced to death has died, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The bureau said Gary Lee Sampson, 62, died Tuesday. A former attorney said he died at a medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, WMUR-TV reported.
Sampson was first condemned to die in 2003, but a judge later granted him a new sentencing trial after finding that one of the jurors at his first trial had lied about her background. A new federal jury sentenced him to death in 2017 for the killing of 19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo.
Jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision on Sampson’s penalty for the killing of 69-year-old Philip McCloskey, so Sampson was sentenced to life in prison for that crime.
Sampson’s lawyers said he was brain damaged and mentally ill when he separately carjacked Rizzo, a college student from Kingston, and McCloskey, a retired pipefitter from Taunton, stabbed them each more than a dozen times, slit their throats and left them to die in the woods.
Sampson later abandoned a stolen car in Quechee, started hitchhiking west on Route 4, then attempted to carjack a vehicle driven by a copier repairman in Bridgewater. The driver managed to escape, and Sampson was arrested later that day in the Windsor County town of Plymouth, Vt.
Sampson received a separate life sentence for killing a third man, Robert “Eli” Whitney, in New Hampshire.
Sampson pleaded guilty to the killings, so the jury was asked only to decide whether he should get life in prison or the death penalty.