Tennessee death row inmate dies in Nashville hospital

Prison tile
Prison tile

NASHVILLE - Tennessee death row inmate Gary Cone has died at a Nashville hospital of natural causes. He was 67.

The state Department of Correction said Cone died at 9:38 a.m. Tuesday.

The Commercial Appeal reported Cone was arrested in 1980 after a robbery and shootout with police in Florida on the same day police in Memphis found the bodies of a 93-year-old man and his 79-year-old wife, who had been beaten to death.

He was sentenced to death in Shelby County in 1982 after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, assault with intent to murder and armed robbery.

TDOC spokeswoman Alison Randgaard told the newspaper that Cone had been on death row at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution near Nashville but was moved to the Lois DeBerry prison hospital in Nashville last May.

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