 A serial killer and former Camp Pendleton Marine convicted of slaying eight women in two states in the 1980s and ‘90s, including a San Diego woman in 1988, was found dead over the weekend in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison in a suspected suicide, officials said Monday. Andrew Urdiales, 54, was found unresponsive during a security check of his cell late Friday night, according to staff members. Correctional officers unsuccessfully performed CPR on Urdiales, who was alone in his cell in the prison’s Adjustment Center, a housing unit for problem prisoners. “His cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy; however, his death is being investigated as a suicide,” Lt. Samuel Robinson with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement. RELATED: Serial killer convicted of Southern California murders 
 
 An Orange County jury sentenced Urdiales to death one month ago for the murders of five women in San Diego, Mission Viejo, Palm Springs, and Cathedral City in the 1980s and 90s. Among his victims was 31-year-old San Diego resident Maryann Wells, who was killed with a gunshot to the head and dumped in a downtown San Diego alley on Sept. 25, 1988. Urdiales was convicted of murdering five women in Southern California and three in Illinois. The suspected suicides of Govin and Urdiales were not believed to be related, according to prison officials. 5:10 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the suicide of death row inmate Virendra Govin.
– Death was apparently preferable to life on California's Death Row for serial killer Andrew Urdiales. The 54-year-old inmate was found dead in his cell at San Quentin State Prison on Friday night and authorities believe he killed himself, News 10 reports. Urdiales was sentenced to death by an Orange County judge Oct. 5 for killing five women in California between 1986 and 1995, four of them while he was stationed at Marine Corps Base Pendleton, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. It was the third time he had been sentenced to death: He was sentenced to die in 2002 for two murders in Illinois, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, along with all other death sentences in the state, by Gov. George Ryan in 2003. Urdiales was then tried for a third Illinois murder and sentenced to death again in 2004. After Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty in Illinois in 2011, Urdiales was extradited to California. Urdiales "remained a callous coward until the end as he robbed the victims' families of the right to be present when the state put him to death," Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas said in a statement. Less than 24 hours after the death of Urdiales, a different Death Row prisoner was found dead of an apparent suicide in a different area of San Quentin. Authorities do not believe the death of 51-year-old Virendra Govin, who was sentenced to die in 2005 for killing a business rival, her two children, and her mother-in-law, is related to that of Urdiales. (California hasn't executed anybody since 2006, and San Quentin is running out of space.)