A man who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since 2004 after a jury convicted him of the murders of two South Bay boys has died due to complications related to COVID-19, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Friday.
Scott Thomas Erskine, 57, was sentenced to death in San Diego County on Sept. 1, 2004, for the first-degree murders of Charlie Keever, 13, and Jonathan Sellers, 9, and was admitted onto death row on Dec. 27, 2004.
Erskine was already serving a decades-long prison sentence for rape at the time.
Keever and Sellers disappeared while on a bike ride along the Otay River in 1993. Their bodies were found two days later in a riverbed in the South Bay neighborhood of Palm City. Investigators said they had been beaten, raped, and murdered.
CDCR said Erskine died on July 3 at an outside hospital from what appears to be complications related to COVID-19.
In 2019, the California Supreme Court decided to uphold the death penalty conviction for Erskine after it rejected all arguments made by Erskine’s appellate attorney, Kimberly Grove.
