A former police officer who was on death row at San Quentin prison for six murders in the early 1980s has died of natural causes, authorities said.
Anthony Sully, 79, was pronounced dead around 2:20 a.m. Friday at a medical site outside the prison, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Monday.
The Marin County coroner’s office will determine the cause of death.
Sully was sentenced to death on June 3, 1986, for the murders of 24-year-old Kathryn Barrett, 22-year-old Barbara Searcy, 24-year-old Gloria Jean Fravel, 19-year-old Brendan Oakden, 24-year-old Michael Thomas and 20-year-old Phyllis Melendez.
The victims were beaten, stabbed and shot inside an electrical supply warehouse in Burlingame in 1983. Three of the bodies were found stuffed into barrels dumped at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
Sully, a police officer on the Peninsula from 1966 to 1974, maintained at his sentencing that he did not get a fair trial, telling the judge, “I am not a monster, not a maniac, not subhuman,” according to news accounts at the time.
In 2013, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Sully’s bid to overturn his convictions and death sentence.
The state has not carried out an execution in 17 years. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order instituting a moratorium on the state’s death penalty.