Convicted killer Alexander Williams dies in jail; suicide suspected

AUGUSTA - A convicted murderer who avoided the death penalty has killed himself at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville in southeast Georgia. <br> <br> 34-year-old Alexander Williams hanged himself with the shirt from his prison-issued uniform Monday night. <br> <br> Williams had successfully gotten his death sentence reduced to life in prison in February. <br> <br> He was 17 in 1986 when he raped and murdered 16-year-old Aleta Bunch. <br> <br> She was kidnapped from an Augusta mall where she had gone to buy her mother a birthday gift. <br> <br> Williams sentence was reduced when death penalty opponents criticized the state killing a man who was a diagnosed schizophrenic. <br> <br> He would have been the first person in the United States to be forcibly medicated to make him sane enough to be executed. <br> <br> The Georgia Bureau of Investigation will send agents to the prison to confirm Williams&#39; death was a suicide.

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