Carjacking killer of 2 dies in Missouri prison hospital

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – The Federal Bureau of Prisons says a drifter convicted of killing two Massachusetts men in carjackings in 2001 and sentenced to death has died.

The Bureau said 62-year-old Gary Lee Sampson died Tuesday at a medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.

Sampson’s lawyers said he was brain damaged and mentally ill when he separately carjacked Jonathan Rizzo, a college student from Kingston, and Philip 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 received a separate life sentence for killing a third man, Robert “Eli” Whitney, in New Hampshire.