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Convicted serial killer Gary Lee Sampson dies in prison at 62

In this 2004 file photo, Gary Lee Sampson, center, is escorted into Hillsborough County Superior Court in Nashua, New Hampshire. (Jim Cole/AP)
In this 2004 file photo, Gary Lee Sampson, center, is escorted into Hillsborough County Superior Court in Nashua, New Hampshire. (Jim Cole/AP)

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 at a medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. They would not say his cause of death.

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 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 for that crime.

Rizzo's father, Michael Rizzo, told WBUR on Thursday that he held out hope that Sampson would be executed. Still, he's glad Sampson is gone.

"It's the end of a very long fight, almost 20 years for us," he said. "And while it didn't end exactly the way we had maybe hoped for, we're happy that it's over."

He said the family gathered Wednesday after they got the news to share some of Jonathan's favorites: pepperoni pizza and Bud Light.

"So we had one of those and said Merry Christmas and told him we did the best we could," Rizzo said.

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 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.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for Massachusetts, which prosecuted the case, issued a statement Thursday saying its thoughts are with the Rizzo, McCloskey and Whitney families.

"Their resilience is extraordinary," the statement said.

Michael Rizzo said he hopes people remember his son's kindness and close friendships.

"He sort of epitomized that motto from B.C. High of a becoming a man for others," Rizzo said. "That's kind of the way he carried himself."

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. WBUR reporter Ally Jarmanning contributed to this report. 

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