Martez Seay, who admitted to killing five people in the Birmingham area in 2008 and 2009, has died in prison.

The 39-year-old Seay avoided the death penalty more than a decade ago when he pleaded guilty to capital murder in the seven-month crime spree.

He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in the 2008 shooting of his girlfriend, Kandi Hawkins, who was left paralyzed.

Seay, the leader of a violent gang and described in The First 48 as a “cold-blooded” killer, died Monday at Limestone Correctional Facility where he was serving life without parole.

Alabama Department of Corrections officials said Seay was found unresponsive Monday in his cell. He was taken to the prison’s health care unit where he was pronounced dead by the attending physician.

The ADOC Law Enforcement Services Division is investigating Seay’s death. Cause of death is pending an autopsy and the conclusion of the investigation.

Seay was the oldest of the siblings in the notorious Seay family. His two other brothers are also serving time for murder, and their mother, Yolanda Seay, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the shooting of Hawkins.

Seay was featured in a 2012 episode of The First 48 during which his defense lawyer acknowledged on video that his client made chilling comments in private that raised the hairs on the back of the lawyer’s neck.

Martez Seay in his 2011 plea, he admitted to the following:

• The November 2008 shooting death of Christian Callins, 24, during a robbery attempt, and the subsequent shooting death of an accomplice in Callins’ murder, Gregory Shelton Jr., 27.
• The December 2008 shooting deaths of Osmond Williams, 20, and Darrelle Sampson, 17. Police say that case was a murder-for-hire by a drug dealer who claimed Williams stole drugs from him. Sampson was an innocent victim who happened to be with Williams when the shooting happened.
• The May 2009 shooting death of Lonnie Vaughn, 44, while robbing him of cash and a sports utility vehicle. The body of Vaughn, of Vestavia Hills, was found in northeast Jefferson County by a man walking his dog. Vaughn was nude and had been shot multiple times, including once between the eyes.
• Hawkins, 25, also was charged with capital murder in that case but that charge was dismissed.
• The June 2009 conspiracy to kill Hawkins to keep her from testifying against him in the Vaughn case.

Seay set up the attempted murder of Hawkins from a jailhouse telephone.

Hawkins, a security guard with plans to become a nurse, was found shot in a secluded north Birmingham area. She had been shot multiple times.

On the night she was shot, Hawkins thought she was catching a ride to a safe house but unknowingly was being taken somewhere to be killed.

Michael Mays and Demarious Seay, she told police, drove her to a house on 40th Avenue North.

She got out of the car, followed by Mays and Demarious Seay. Then gunfire rang out. She fell to the ground, and Mays shot her again.

When police found her, she named Mays as the shooter.

Unable to talk in the days after the shooting, Hawkins identified both Mays and Demarious Seay as detectives pointed to letters and numbers on a chart and she nodded her answers.

Mays pleaded guilty to Hawkins’ shooting and two other murders.

Investigators said Seay was the triggerman in at least four of the six shootings and a main player in all six. The group targeted robbery victims they knew would not report the crimes to police.

“It was an enterprise,” former Birmingham homicide Sgt. Sam Noblitt previously said. “That’s how they made their money — robbing people, and killing them when things didn’t go their way.”

“The common link in all of them,” Noblitt said in 2009, “is Martez Seay.”

.Cortez Seay, the middle Seay brother who is now 36, was 19 in 2005 when he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Joe Mack Carpenter Sr., 50.

Cortez Seay was also sentenced to 25 years each for the attempted murders of two other people, all of which took place Dec. 14, 2004, in a drug house in a dispute over money.

He is serving his sentence at St. Clair County Correctional Facility.

The youngest brother, Demarius Seay, is now 32.

He pleaded guilty in 2009 to attempted murder in the shooting of Hawkins, and felony murder in the 2008 killing of 17-year-old A.H. Parker High School student Brandon Ashley Donkor during a robbery.

He avoided a capital murder trial in Donkor’s death by pleading guilty.

He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole and is currently housed at Bibb County Correctional Facility.

Yolanda Seay, now 56, pleaded guilty in 2010 to conspiracy to commit murder and hindering a prosecution in relation to the attempted hit on Kandi Hawkins.

She received a 10-year sentence with 18 months to serve.

In an interview with The Birmingham News before she was charged, Yolanda Seay said she ached for the families that have been hurt and said she was heartbroken over Hawkins’ injuries.

She said she did everything she could to protect her boys from the streets.

Of their arrests, she said, “This is what I didn’t want, not in my life and not in my family. I just want to know what part I missed. I want to know what did it. I don’t know what else I could have done.”