Michael Bruce Ross (July 26, 1959 – May 13, 2005) was an American serial killer. In 2005, he was executed by the state of Connecticut. Connecticut ended capital punishment in 2012, and the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional in 2015, converting the sentences of the state's remaining death row inmates to life in prison without parole. 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, saving the worst treatment for him. Some family and friends have suggested that he was also molested by his teenaged uncle, who committed suicide when Ross was six. He was a bright boy who 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. He exhibited antisocial behavior from a young age. 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. Crime spree Between 1981 and 1984, Ross murdered eight girls and women aged between 14 and 25 in Connecticut and New York. He raped seven out of his eight murder victims. He also was alleged to have raped, but not killed, a 21-year-old woman named Vivian Dobson in 1983 and a woman named Candace Farris in Indiana. Plainfield police rejected the possibility that Ross had been Vivian Dobson's rapist. They did not press charges and Ross made no confession. Ross confessed to the eight murders and was convicted for the last four of them. 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. Victims Dzung Ngoc Tu (age 25) May 12, 1981.