DRAPER — Utah State Prison officials said convicted killer and death row inmate Floyd Maestas died of unspecified natural causes on Sunday.
Maestas, 62, was sentenced to die for the brutal 2004 killing of 72-year-old Donna Lou Bott and has been incarcerated at the Utah State Prison facility since shortly after his conviction in 2008.
Maestas was convicted of killing Bott on Sept. 28, 2004, after he broke into her Glendale home, beat her, strangled her, stabbed her and stomped on her, rupturing her aorta. During his trial for capital murder, prosecutors said Maestes' criminal history had spanned three decades and included several attacks that targeted elderly women.
Maestas lost an appeal of his conviction to the Utah Supreme Court in 2012.
While the death penalty remains on Utah law books, the state has not carried out an execution since 2010, when convicted murder Ronnie Lee Gardener was executed by a firing squad.