O.C. 'Serial Killer' Dies After Falling Ill

By City News Service

An Orange County jail inmate, who was awaiting trial in connection with six deaths, died 18 hours after he was discovered ailing in his single-man cell, a sheriff's spokesman said.

"We discovered him at about 6:35 p.m. Wednesday," said sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock.

The inmate, identified as Itzcoatl Ocampo, 25, was transported to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana where he was pronounced dead at 1:30 p.m., Hallock said.

"The investigation is ongoing," he said. An autopsy was expected to be performed early next week.

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Prison guards found Ocampo sick in his Orange County Jail cell and called paramedics, Hallock said.

The cause of the death was not immediately available.

Ocampo had been suspected of killing four homeless men in Orange County in December 2011 as well as a mother and son in October of that year.

He was arrested on Jan. 13, 2012 shortly after the death of John Berry, who was allegedly killed in an attack about a quarter mile behind a Carl's Jr. at 3110 East La Palma Avenue in Anaheim.

The first of the four men Ocampo is suspected of killing was 53-year-old James McGillivray, attacked as he slept outside a Placentia shopping center. Eight days later, the body of Lloyd Middaugh, 42, turned up on Anaheim's Santa Ana River Trail. On Dec. 30, 57-year-old Paulus Cornelius Smit was found dead behind the Yorba Linda library.

Ocampo was also charged in the deaths of Raquel Estrada, 53, and her 34- year-old son, Juan Herrera.  The Iraq war veteran was to stand trial in May 2014.

Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty, according to ABC7.