A Canaan man who was convicted in the 2006 death of his girlfriend died Thursday at a state prison in Penobscot County, state corrections officials said.
Shannon Atwood, 53, died at the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, where he was serving a murder sentence in the death of Cheryl Murdoch.
Corrections officials in a statement gave no cause of death, only saying Atwood’s death was “attended by medical personnel.”
He was sentenced in Murdoch’s death in 2009 in a Skowhegan courtroom, and his earliest release date was to be in 2054.
Atwood and Murdoch lived together in Canaan, and Murdoch was the mother of a 14-year-old girl. Her bludgeoned body was found in the woods, about 5 miles from the house they shared.
Atwood had a lengthy criminal record that included two assault convictions.
He began dating Murdoch shortly after his wife, Shirley Moon-Atwood, disappeared. He was charged in Moon-Atwood’s death, but it was later dropped.
Moon-Atwood was last seen in April 2006. Her body has not been found.
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