From Bill Lindelof:
Joseph Timothy Musselwhite, who was on San Quentin's death row for his 1990 convictions of murder and attempted murder in Sacramento County, has died.
Musselwhite, 47, was unresponsive when found in his San Quentin cell, which occupied alone, at 7:21 p.m. Tuesday. He was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.
The cause of his death has not been determined.
He was sent to death row on Oct. 10, 1990, for the Dec. 7, 1987, murder of apartment complex manager Norma Iris Painter and the Nov. 30, 1987, attempted murder of video store clerk Shawn May.
When he was sentenced, he boosted California's death row population to 290, Bee archives show. Today, 698 inmates are on the state's death row.
Painter was slain in a Madison Avenue model apartment she showed to prospective renters. She had been beaten, strangled and viciously slashed with a knife, the Sacramento Superior Court judge said at sentencing.
For the attack on Painter, Musselwhite was convicted of first-degree murder under two different special circumstances, as well as two counts of burglary and one count of robbery.
He also was found guilty of attempted murder, burglary and robbery for an attack one week earlier on May, an 18-year-old clerk at a Manzanita Avenue video store. In that crime, Musselwhite hit May in the head with a hammer, causing great bodily injury, after she had been bound to a chair in the store's back room.
Two earlier video store robberies were attributed to Musselwhite by the jury considering his penalty. He was not not charged in Sacramento with those offenses because they occurred outside the jurisdiction of local authorities.
One happened Nov. 24, 1987, in Fairfield and included the rape of the 21-year-old victim. Another was committed on Nov. 27, 1987, in Stockton and involved a 22-year-old clerk. She was robbed and bound, with paper towels stuffed in her mouth.
In a statement to probation investigators, Musselwhite said the events of 1987 were hazy in his memory because he was smoking rock cocaine daily for several months. He remembered some details of the events that led up to the homicide but insisted he did not know he had killed Painter.
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