The Arizona Department of Corrections says a 31-year-old inmate convicted of killing two women in the Tucson area and trying to kill a third is dead, possibly due to homicide.
The department says a criminal investigation is underway into the death of Apollo Ortega and that he was in his assigned housing at the Eyman prison complex in Florence when he was found unresponsive Monday.
Ortega in 2009 was sentenced to two life terms without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder convictions in the 2008 killings of Margie Ortiz and Norma Jean Conner.
He also was serving a 20-year term for attempted first-degree murder for an attack on a third woman, who was stabbed and badly beaten.
The women all were attacked over a 19-day period.
