text: A former Marine who was awaiting trial in the deaths of six people, including four homeless men, died after ingesting Ajax in his jail cell, his lawyer said Friday. 
   
   FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Anaheim Police Department shows Itzcoatl Ocampo. Ocampo a former Marine accused of murder in the deaths of four homeless men, a woman and her son has died... (Associated Press) 
   
   Itzcoatl (ihts-KWAH'-tehl) Ocampo, 25, apparently accumulated the cleaning product over time while in custody, said his attorney, Michael Molfetta, who was briefed on the death. The incident raises serious questions about how well Orange County jail deputies were supervising Ocampo, who had mental health issues, Molfetta said. 
   
   Ocampo was found shaking and vomiting in his single-man cell Wednesday and taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead Thursday afternoon, said Orange County sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock. 
   
   No cause of death was immediately given, and officials said an autopsy will be performed in the coming days. The Orange County district attorney's office will investigate the death and autopsy results by an independent pathologist are expected by the middle of next week, Hallock said. 
   
   "If you spend three minutes with Ocampo, you are acutely aware of the fact that he has some mental issues. They were severe and they were obvious and they definitely were not contrived," Molfetta said. "With that being said, this was a guy who should have garnered the highest level of scrutiny ... and it wasn't done." 
   
   Hallock declined to comment on inmate supervision or the attorney's account except to say jail deputies are required, in general, to walk by each inmate's cell a minimum of once an hour. 
   
   "We always want to prove the case in court and have justice for the victims' families," said Susan Kang Schroeder, the district attorney's chief of staff. 
   
   Marie Middaugh, mother of victim Lloyd "Jimmy" Middaugh, said in a phone interview Friday that she was relieved to hear the news of Ocampo's death. 
   
   "A trial wouldn't have brought our loved ones back," she said. "I'm sorry things happened the way it did for his family because I know they're grieving, too, but I'm just glad that really it's all over." 
   
   Someone at a number listed for Ocampo's father hung up repeatedly when a reporter called Friday. 
   
   Prosecutors alleged that Ocampo, a native of Mexico, stabbed four homeless men in what they called a serial thrill-kill rampage in late 2011 and early 2012. Ocampo targeted his homeless victims because they were vulnerable and because he felt they were a blight on the community, authorities said. 
   
   He was charged in January 2012 with four counts of murder, with special allegations of multiple murders, lying in wait and use of a deadly weapon. Three victims were stabbed more than 40 times each with a single-edged blade at least 7 inches long. In one instance, prosecutors, said, Ocampo selected as his next victim a homeless man who was featured in a Los Angeles Times story about the killings. 
   
   Ocampo, who was discharged from the Marines in 2010, also was facing murder charges in the deaths of a school friend's mother and brother in October 2011. 
   
   At the time, his family said Ocampo was a troubled man after he returned from Iraq in 2008 and he went to visit the grave of a friend who died in combat in Afghanistan twice a week. He also began drinking heavily and he suffered from headaches and hand tremors, they said. 
   
   His parents separated in 2010 and his father became homeless after losing his job. During the killing rampage, Ocampo visited his father on the streets and warned him about the dangers of being homeless, even showing him a picture of one of the dead men. 
   
   In March 2012, Ocampo temporarily was placed on suicide watch after he began banging his head on a metal toilet in the jail. He told his attorney he was trying to stop voices as well as headaches and twitches that were bothering him, according to The Orange County Register. ||||| A man charged last year in a "serial thrill-kill" rampage in Orange County that left six people dead, including four homeless men and a woman and her son, died Thursday after being found sick in his jail cell, a sheriff's spokesman said. 
   
   Deputies found Itzcoatl "Izzy" Ocampo, 25, ill in his single-man cell about 6:35 p.m. Wednesday at Central Jail in Santa Ana, said Lt. Jeff Hallock. Medical staff at the jail attended to him, and paramedics transported him to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, Hallock said. 
   
   Ocampo died at the hospital about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Hallock said. The Orange County district attorney's office is investigating, as is routine with in-custody deaths, he said. The probe will probably take several weeks. 
   
   Orange County prosecutors were seeking the death penalty against Ocampo, who was scheduled to appear in court for a pre-trial hearing in January. His death means that the relatives of those killed will not have the chance to see him held accountable, said district attorney's spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder. 
   
   "It really deprives the victims and the people of California of the ability to put Mr. Ocampo to death on our terms and get justice for the victims of these crimes," she said. 
   
   His defense attorney, Randall Longwith, said in an email that he would have no comment "until we learn all the facts." 
   
   Last year, Longwith told The Times that his client had been behaving erratically and complained that he heard voices. He said Ocampo suffered from tics and headaches. 
   
   For months Ocampo went undetected, authorities said, as a string of killings occurred in North Orange County, starting with the stabbing death of his childhood friend and the friend's mother on Oct. 25, 2011. Raquel Estrada, 53, and Juan Herrera, 34, were stabbed and left to die on the floor of their Yorba Linda home, prosecutors alleged. 
   
   The killings continued on the streets with the slayings of homeless men. 
   
   James Patrick McGillivray, 53, was killed near a shopping center in Placentia on Dec. 20, 2011. Several days later, Lloyd Middaugh, 42, was found dead near a riverbed in Anaheim. Paulus "Dutch" Smit, 57, was slain outside the Yorba Linda library on Dec. 30, 2011. 
   
   Police said Ocampo stalked a fourth homeless man, John Berry, 64, for several days after seeing his photograph in the Los Angeles Times. On Jan. 13, 2012, Ocampo ambushed Berry in a parking lot and stabbed him to death, authorities said. Police said a witness chased Ocampo into a mobile home park, where he was captured. 
   
   Investigators said he used the same Ka-bar Bull Dozier knife in the killings of all four homeless men. 
   
   Members of Ocampo's family said after his arrest that they could not believe he could be the killer who had struck such fear into the homeless population. They said the former Marine from Yorba Linda was generous to the homeless and frequently gave food and money to panhandlers. 
   
   But prosecutors said Ocampo selected homeless men and stalked them. He set a personal goal of 16 slayings, authorities said. 
   
   Ocampo told police after his arrest that he targeted the homeless because they were "available and vulnerable" and that he believed he was performing a public service because their presence was a "blight" on the community. 
   
   An Anaheim detective told grand jurors that Ocampo's "demeanor would change, and he seemed to get excited" as he described the attacks to police. Ocampo told detectives he joined the Marine Corps in 2006 with the hope of learning to kill, but he was disappointed that during a six-month tour in Iraq he drove a water truck and never saw combat, according to the transcript of the grand jury hearing. 
   
   When Ocampo was asked what sort of consequences he deserved, the detective told grand jurors, Ocampo answered without hesitation: the death penalty — lethal injection — or "whatever is quickest." 
   
   hailey.branson@latimes.com 
   
   Times Staff Writers Nicole Santa Cruz and Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.
target: – A California man believed to have been the serial killer who stalked homeless people in Orange County last year died yesterday after being found vomiting in his prison cell. Itzcoatl Ocampo, a 25-year-old Iraq veteran, had yet to stand trial for the stabbing murders of four homeless men he apparently picked at random and a mother and son he was acquainted with. He was due for a pre-trial hearing in January and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, reports the Los Angeles Times. His attorney tells the AP Ocampo ingested Ajax; he had apparently been accumulating the cleaning product over time. The death "really deprives the victims and the people of California of the ability to put Mr. Ocampo to death on our terms and get justice for the victims of these crimes," says a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. After the former Marine's arrest, family members said he had been kind and generous to the homeless but prosecutors painted a different picture, saying Ocampo saw the homeless as a blight on society and had set a target of 16 murders. His death raises questions about how well deputies were supervising him, his lawyer says; Ocampo had mental health issues and had been on suicide watch temporarily last year.