Michael Bruce Ross (July 26, 1959 – May 13, 2005) was an American serial killer who was executed by the state of Connecticut in 2005.

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional in 2015, converting the sentences of the state's remaining death row inmates to life in prison without parole.

Ross's home life was extremely dysfunctional; his mother, who abandoned the family at least once, had been institutionalized, and beat all four of her children.

In 2001, while on death row, Ross pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter for killing Paula Perrera in New York in 1982, and was sentenced to 8 and 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

During his time in prison, Ross translated documents into Braille, acted as a mentor to other inmates, and financially sponsored a child from the Dominican Republic.

However, earlier in the day, the execution was again postponed because of doubts that Ross was mentally competent; having fought against his death sentence for 17 years, he suddenly waived his right to appeal.

His attorney claimed that Ross was incompetent to waive appeals, as he was suffering from death row syndrome.

In his final days, Ross became an oblate, or associate, of the Benedictine Grange, a Roman Catholic monastic community in West Redding, Connecticut.

Ross was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m. His remains were buried at the Benedictine Grange Cemetery in Redding, Connecticut.

Ross was not called "The Roadside Strangler" by the Connecticut media or by local law enforcement while he was alive.

[13] In 2015, The Man in the Monster: An Intimate Portrait of a Serial Killer, a detailed account of Ross's killing spree, capture, trial, time in prison and execution, was published by Penguin Press.

[14] Written by former Columbia School of Journalism professor Martha Elliott, the book documents the ten-year telephone and prison visit relationship that developed between the author and her subject.