Convicted Child Killer Found Dead In Jail

SALEM, Ore. - A Portland man who avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to strangling two boys was found dead in his locked prison cell yesterday, authorities said.

Lawrence L. Stacey was found dead in his Oregon State Penitentiary cell, said Robey Eldridge, state corrections spokesman.

State police Investigators found a string around Stacey's neck that was attached to a heavy bolt-like fixture in the cell, but the cause of death was not immediately known. An autopsy was pending, Eldridge said.

Stacey, 33, pleaded guilty Oct. 11 to aggravated murder in the June 4 deaths of Frank Brown, 7, and Floyd Brown, 5.

Stacey also pleaded guilty to sodomizing one of the boys and to raping, sodomizing and trying to kill the boys' mother at the apartment he shared with them.

He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole the day he entered his guilty pleas.

His lawyer, Robert Wasson, said at the sentencing that Stacey had a history of alcohol abuse and had a blood-alcohol level 3 1/2 times the legal limit for driving the night of the homicides.

In addition, Wasson said Stacey lost a portion of his brain in a 1981 suicide attempt when he put a gun under his chin and fired a shot after police cornered him during a robbery.

Stacey served terms in federal and state prisons from 1979 to 1988 on robbery and attempted murder convictions.