Death row inmate kills self

A death-row inmate who killed four people execution-style in 13 days hanged himself Tuesday in his Graterford cell.

Jose Pagan, 42, was given two death sentences in 1992 for the contract slayings of Pablo Padilla Sr., 59, and his son, Pablo Jr., 31 in their Feltonville home.

Pagan had also been convicted of two counts of second-degree murder in the Dec. 1990 shooting deaths of Louis Bermudez, 20, and Ivelisse Gonzales, 21, inside Bermudez's Kensington apartment.

Pagan had been jailed at Graterford since July 2005, said Jennifer Daneker, spokeswoman for the State Correctional Institution at Graterford.

On Tuesday, a corrections officer making morning security rounds found Pagan unresponsive in his cell about 8 a.m. Other officers attempted to revive him until medical personnel arrived. Pagan was pronounced dead at the prison's dispensary about 8:20 a.m., Daneker said.

Pagan was a mechanic when he was arrested April 1991 at his job in a North Philadelphia garage. Detectives at the time said drug dealing and greed fueled the killing spree.

Pablo Padilla Sr. was found Jan. 11, 1991 in his home on the 4700 block of North Third Street by his daughter with duct tape over his mouth and eyes and a bullet wound to the head. Police found the son gagged, blindfolded and strangled in the basement with a butcher knife stuck in his neck, and an ice pick driven into his left temple.

Gonzalez and Bermudez were found Dec. 30 1990 in Bermudez's home on the 400 block of West Dauphin Street. They had been tied up and shot to death on a bare mattress on a bedroom floor.