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Two sex offenders slain; suspect kills self

Stephen Marshall in an undated family photo released by the Maine Department of Public Safety.

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AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) -- Two registered sex offenders were gunned down in their central Maine homes early Sunday, and a Canadian man sought in connection with the slayings fatally shot himself after Boston police cornered him on a bus, officials said.

Stephen A. Marshall, 20, shot himself in the head with a .45-caliber handgun when officers stopped the bus he was on and climbed aboard, said David Procopio, spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney.

Officers heard a gunshot and found Marshall with a massive head wound in a window seat 13 rows behind the driver, Procopio said.

He was rushed to Boston Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 11:24 p.m., a hospital spokeswoman said.

No one else on the bus was injured, Procopio said, but five passengers who were splattered with blood were taken to area hospitals to be examined.

Maine State Police alerted Boston authorities that Marshall could be heading to the city, about 250 miles south, after Marshall's pickup truck was found abandoned. Police discovered bullets linked to him in the bathroom at a bus station in Bangor, Maine.

The shootings of Joseph L. Gray, 57, of Milo, and William Elliott, 24, of Corinth, led state police to take down the Maine Sex Offender Registry Web site as a precaution, state Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said. The site lists the photos, names and addresses of more than 2,200 sex offenders.

The pickup truck Marshall was driving was spotted leaving one of the victims' homes after the shooting, Maine police said.

It was not immediately clear if or how Marshall knew either Gray or Elliott, or whether the three men had any connection, McCausland said.

Marshall, who lived in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, had come to Houlton, Maine, for the first time to meet his father, McCausland said. He added that Marshall was driving his father's pickup.