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Philip Markoff, the alleged 'Craigslist Killer,' was found dead in an apparent suicide in his jail cell, authorities say
The Boston medical student who preyed on Craigslist escorts and murdered a Manhattan model who fought him killed himself in prison Sunday.
Philip Markoff, 24, was found dead in his Nashua Street Jail cell in Boston, according to the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office.
His trial was to have begun in March.
Markoff had been on a brief suicide watch last spring when he reportedly tried to hang himself with his shoe laces and slice his wrists with a sharpened spoon.
Markoff was arrested in April 2009 for the murder of Julissa Brisman, 26, a model and aspiring acterss from the Upper West Side.
Brisman, who moonlighted as an erotic masseuse, was shot at the plush Marriott Copley Place hotel in downtown Boston.
Police said Markoff had answered her ad on Craiglist.
The former Boston University medical student robbed escorts on the theory that they would not call the cops. Brisman fought back, so he killed her, cops said.
Markoff was also charged with the armed robbery of another escort in another fancy Boston hotel and was suspected in a third assault at a Rhode Island motel.
Police said he might have had other victims who were too afraid to come forward.
Police nabbed Markoff after trailing him through cyberspace: tracking his emails, pinpointing the location of his phone calls and watching security camera footage.
When Markoff, a native of upstate New York, was arrested, he was about to marry fiancee Megan McAllister and start medical school.
His handgun was found hidden under his bed in a hollowed-out copy of the classic medical textbook "Gray's Anatomy."
Sadly, Markoff appears to have spawned some copycats.
A Massachusetts man was arrested just last week for arranging to meet an escort through Craigslist and robbing her.
Source: AP