"He not only bragged about his crimes, he found them funny and even laughed at his victims," said Louis Bouthillier, the crown prosecutor who was supposed to put the 41-year-old cellphone salesman on trial this week for the savage slayings of three young women.

Instead, Colalillo was discovered unconscious in his cell at Riviere des Prairies prison Saturday and died at 6:30 a.m. yesterday in Santa Cabrini Hospital after spending the weekend in intensive care.

With his death, the book has been closed on the high-profile triple murder case, an attempted murder in Ste. Therese and a sexual assault - all perpetrated against women age 12 to 20.

The victims include:

Jessica Grimard. The 14-year-old's violated body was discovered by her father on May 7, 2002, in a wooded area within view of her Riviere des Prairies home. She'd been repeatedly stabbed.

Christine Speich. The 12-year-old was initially believed to have died in a house fire caused by faulty wiring in February 1993.

She had stayed home from school to sleep in after working late the previous night on a class project. It took police nine years to realize she had been murdered and sexually assaulted.

Anna-Lisa Cefali. The 20-year-old also died in a house fire, only two months after Speich. Investigators said the fire was deliberately set and ruled her death a suicide, even though she had known Colalillo and was supposed to have met him that morning to discuss becoming his secretary.

A 20-year-old Ste. Therese woman. In September 2002, a man talked his way into her apartment, raped her, then dragged her barely conscious body into her bedroom and set it on fire. She was saved when the smoke detector woke her up and she escaped her burning bedroom.

Another young woman lured into Colalillo's car, who managed to escape while being sexually assaulted in July 2002.

Colalillo was also the mystery man mentioned at the 2003 trial of former probation officer Marlene Chalfoun, who was charged - but later acquitted - of conspiring in a series of letters to have her relatives raped and killed.

"He committed gruesome crimes," Bouthillier remarked yesterday. "He's obviously someone who had a serious problem, an overwhelming sex drive he could not control."

Colalillo might never have been suspected of any murders, Bouthillier said, except that he bragged about his exploits in the correspondence he exchanged with Chalfoun and an imprisoned dangerous offender, Nick Paccione.

The graphic missives - which came to light when the warden at Port Cartier prison intercepted Paccione's mail - contained details about how Grimard was savagely assaulted and stabbed that only her killer could have known.

Other letters describing how to hide evidence of rape and murder by setting the crime scene on fire led police to realize almost a decade after the fact that Speich and Cefali had actually been victims of a predator.

The nature of Colalillo's death remains a mystery, and an autopsy is to be performed by the Quebec coroner's office.

But it is not believed that Colalillo was the victim of prison justice, because his body bore no signs of violence.

It was widely speculated yesterday that Colalillo committed suicide on the eve of his trial, with police suggesting - and even a detainee at Riviere des Prairies prison calling The Gazette to report - he had swallowed a large dose of pills collected from the prison infirmary.

But Colalillo's defence lawyer said yesterday he wasn't jumping to any conclusions.

"We have contradictory versions," Marc Labelle said. "From authorities, we're hearing it was a possible suicide with an overdose of medication. But at the hospital, his family was told by the doctors treating him that he showed no signs of intoxication."

Labelle hypothesized that if Colalillo took his own life, it was because he wanted to spare his family the shame of what was about to come out at trial.

"Whenever I talked to him, he was very, very concerned for his family," Labelle said. "If it was a suicide, it was for his family."

Bouthillier suggested Colalillo might have been intimidated by the overwhelming evidence amassed against him.

It would have included wiretaps of cell block conversations, a jailhouse informant prepared to testify Colalillo confided details of his crimes, and the 30 letters in which the accused glorified his own atrocities.

"We had solid evidence that would have been difficult to surmount," Bouthillier said.

The contents of the letters set to be entered into evidence were so disturbing, the Crown had been arguing that they not be read in open court or reproduced in the media.

The presiding judge, Quebec Superior Court Justice Carol Cohen, was also mulling offering psychological counselling to the jury.

Yesterday, Cohen sealed the bulk of the correspondence in the court file so that it can never be divulged publicly, calling

it "incendiary," "obscene," "pornographic," likely to "corrupt public morals" - and potentially inspirational to copycat offenders.

"Among other things, they describe multiple incidents of rape, sexual assault, torture and murder of girls and young women," Cohen said. "Precise details are given, including methods used to pick these girls up or gain access to their homes and methods used to leave no traces of criminal activity behind."

A few excerpts were, however, released into the public domain during the Chalfoun trial, including the letter that convinced police Colalillo was responsible for Grimard's death.

Passages cited in one of her pre-trial decisions, Cohen said, are also fair game.

In the correspondence dated May 17 - 11 days after Grimard's murder - Colalillo wrote to Paccione, describing the crime in the third person, referring to himself as "Bob."

"He left a victim, a body, something he wasn't used to doing. Not in this sense, anyways. This was a pure crime scene. The others he wouldn't leave behind. He made them look like accidents, so there was never a criminal investigation involved. But this one would be different. There would definitely be a criminal investigation."

Colalillo also professed his love of such TV crime series as CSI because he would pick up tips about investigative techniques and apply his knowledge to camouflaging crime scenes.

Accused Quebec serial killer dies in hospital