Infamous murderer dies serving sentence

One of southeast Iowa's most notorious murderers died of natural causes while in state custody, Monday.

      Gayno Gilbert Smith murdered five family members in southern Keokuk County in May 1962 and eluded a posse for two days. He died of complications resulting from a spontaneous tear in blood vessels connected to his heart while at University Hospitals in Iowa City, the Iowa Department of Corrections said.

      Smith, 67, was serving five consecutive life sentences for first-degree murder and a 50-year sentence for second-degree murder at the Ft. Madison Penitentiary.

      The reportedly quiet, methodical farmhand, expert deer hunter and ex-Marine was 24 years old when he shot and killed his uncle, Andrew McBeth, age unknown; his aunt, Dora Mae McBeth, 42; and their children, Amos and Anna, 19-year-old twins, and Donna Jean McBeth Kellog, 17. A fourth child, Patsy McBeth, 15, was wounded in the shoulder during the late-night killing spree, but escaped to a neighbor's home. A heavily armed posse ringed a five-square-mile area near Unionville the day after the killings, and dragged Smith out of a hayloft near Lake Wapello State Park, northeast of Bloomfield in rural Davis County, two days later.