Brandon Wilson, a convicted murderer who stabbed Matthew Cecchi, a 9-year-old boy, in a public restroom in Oceanside, California, in 1998, has killed himself in his death row cell.
Brandon Wilson, a 33-year-old drifter from Wisconsin, Ohio, was found hanging inside in his cell in San Quentin State Prison, California on Thursday.
The killer death is 13 years to the week that he attacked Matthew Cecchi in a restroom in Oceanside, California while the boy’s aunt waited outside.
Brandon Wilson had been camping when he felt “the time had come to kill a person”, according to a confession statement read in court.
The murderer followed the boy, who was on a family reunion, to the bathroom after watching him in a nearby playground.
Brandon Wilson slit Matthew Cecchi’s throat with a hunting knife and stabbed him five times in the back as the little boy stood at a urinal.
When Matthew Cecchi’s aunt grew concerned that the boy had not come out, she went inside and found him bleeding to death on the bathroom floor.
At his arraignment, Brandon Wilson,then-20-year-old, said: “I’m guilty, I did it. I did it. I killed him. I killed the little boy.”
But he showed no remorse and said he would “do it again in a second if I had the chance”.
During his trial in San Diego, Brandon Wilson asked the jury to “execute me”.
Brandon Wilson pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and claimed God had ordered him to kill Matthew Cecchi.
Brandon Wilson was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999.
He was also serving a sentence of life in prison for the attempted murder of a woman he had stabbed in Los Angeles two days after killing Matthew Cecchi.
Police arrested Brandon Wilson after he stabbed the woman on her way to work in Hollywood.
Brandon Wilson had let her run away, before chasing her and stabbing her several more times until her co-workers pulled him off.
A prison spokeswoman said Brandon Wilson was found hanging inside his cell and pronounced dead at 6:47 a.m. He was alone in his single-person cell, she added.
Brandon Wilson is the 19th death row inmate to commit suicide since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978, according to the Department of Corrections.
That means more condemned inmates have died of suicide than the 13 prisoners who have been executed in the state since 1978. There are currently 719 inmates on death row in California.
Following the murder of Matthew Cecchi, campaigners demanded more protection for children in public places.
The appeal led to the creation of the Matthew Cecchi Public Safety Act.
The ruling allowed for unisex family restrooms in public parks and campgrounds in San Diego, California to be built to ensure the safety of children.
All renovated or newly constructed parks in the county now include these restrooms in their plans.
