Michael Bruce Ross (July 26, 1959 – May 13, 2005) was an American serial killer who committed at least eight murders and was nicknamed "The Roadside Strangler". He was executed by the state of Connecticut in 2005.

Early life

Ross was born in Putnam, Connecticut, on July 26, 1959, to Patricia Hilda Laine and Dan Graeme Ross. He was the oldest of four children, having two younger sisters and a younger brother. The family lived on a chicken farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut. Ross's home life was extremely dysfunctional; his mother, who abandoned the family at least once, had been institutionalized, and beat all four of her children.

Some family and friends have suggested that he was also molested by his teenage uncle, who committed suicide when Ross was 6 years old. At age 12, Ross molested two girls. In response to his sexual behavior and curiosity, his father beat him as punishment. His mother would determine when Ross was punished, and his father would enforce the actual punishment.

Ross was highly intelligent and performed well in school. He graduated from Killingly High School in Killingly, Connecticut, in 1977, and graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he studied economics, in May 1981. He became an insurance salesman and also exhibited increasingly antisocial behavior. Ross began stalking women in his sophomore year of college, and, in his senior year, he committed his first rape followed by his first murder soon after.

Criminal history

Between 1981 and 1984, Ross murdered eight girls and women aged between 14 and 25 in Connecticut and New York. He was sentenced to death on July 6, 1987, in Connecticut by judge G. Sarsfield Ford. In 2001, while on death row, Ross pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter for killing Paula Perrera in New York in 1982, and was sentenced to 8 and 1/3 to 25 years in prison. He spent almost 18 years on death row before his execution in May 2005.

Ross confessed to all eight murders and was convicted for the last four. He raped seven of his murder victims and was also alleged to have raped, but not killed, a 21-year-old woman named Vivian Dobson in 1983. Plainfield police rejected the possibility that Ross had been Dobson's rapist; they did not press charges and Ross made no confession. Ross was also a suspect in several rapes and murders in Indiana; one possible victim included Candace Farris, who was vacationing in Indiana when she was taken by gunpoint and raped. She managed to escape and was later found by her friends in a nearby cornfield, distraught and without clothing. She had been seen driving off with a man that fit Ross' physical description.

  1. Tammy Williams (17) Abducted from Brooklyn, Connecticut on January 5, 1982, while she was walking home from her boyfriend's house. She was later found raped and strangled.

Execution

Although he opposed the death penalty, Ross strongly supported his own death sentence in the last year of his life, saying that he wanted to spare his victims' families any more pain. According to Kathy Yeager, a lay minister who visited Ross in prison for prayer, Ross believed that he had been "forgiven by God" and that he would be going to "a better place" once he was executed. She said: "He's not being punished. He's moving on to life eternal. That's what is ironic about the death penalty. He's looking forward to the peace." Ross did not request a special last meal before facing his execution, thereby dining on the regular prison meal of the day: turkey à la king with rice, mixed vegetables, white bread, fruit, and a beverage. When asked if he would like to make a last statement, he said, without opening his eyes, "No, thank you." Ross was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. His remains were buried at the Benedictine Grange Cemetery in Redding, Connecticut.

After execution

After the execution, Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who had argued that Ross was not competent to waive appeal, received a letter from Ross dated May 10, 2005, which read "Check, and mate. You never had a chance!" Ross's execution was the first in Connecticut and in all of New England since that of serial killer Joseph Taborsky in 1960. It was also the first and only execution in Connecticut administered by lethal injection. , Ross is the last inmate executed in Connecticut. The death penalty was abolished in Connecticut on April 25, 2012, and although the state initially maintained the ability to execute inmates sentenced to death before abolition, all eventually had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment without parole in 2015. Vivian Dobson, whom Ross was alleged to have raped, became a vocal opponent of the death penalty in an effort to save Ross's life.

In 2015, The Man in the Monster: An Intimate Portrait of a Serial Killer, a detailed account of Ross's killing spree, capture, trial, time in prison and execution, was published by Penguin Press. Written by former Columbia School of Journalism professor Martha Elliott, the book documents the ten-year telephone and prison visit relationship that developed between the author and her subject. Generally well received, the book garnered positive reviews by Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, The Boston Globe, Booklist and The National Book Review. Elliott's experience with Ross was featured on Criminal, a Radiotopia podcast on crime, in Episode 34: Willing To Accept.

See also

  • List of most recent executions by jurisdiction
  • List of people executed in Connecticut
  • List of people executed in the United States in 2005
  • List of serial killers in the United States
  • Volunteer (capital punishment)

References

  • 8-2-Lethal-injection-table.jpg Photograph of Connecticut Lethal Injection Table
  • It's Time for Me to Die By Michael B. Ross , in Whole Earth Review, Fall 1999

! colspan="3" | Executions carried out in Connecticut

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! colspan="3" | Executions carried out in the United States