Associated Press Nikolay Soltys is shown in this August 2001 police booking photo. Soltys, the Ukrainian accused of killing six members of his family with a knife last year in a bloody rampage, hanged himself in the Sacramento County Jail early yesterday.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A Ukrainian immigrant accused in the bloody slayings of six family members was found hanged in his jail cell early today, the sheriff's department said. His attorney called the death suspicious, and officials said they were investigating.

Nikolay Soltys had been undergoing mental evaluations after allegedly using a knife to kill his pregnant wife, 3-year-old son and four other relatives in August.

"I'm baffled how this could have happened, given that he was in isolation" with surveillance cameras trained on his cell, said Soltys' attorney, Tommy Clinkenbeard.

The cameras didn't record, Clinkenbeard said, so someone would have to have been watching the monitor to see his death. He said Soltys used a rope made of cloth, possibly from his bed sheet or part of the cast he was wearing, and a plastic bag.

"It's very suspicious," Clinkenbeard said. "There's something wrong here."

Following a 20-minute meeting with Sacramento County Sheriff Lou Blanas and jail officials, Clinkenbeard said that Soltys' body would be taken to a neighboring county for an autopsy and the cell was being treated as a crime scene. Blanas' department runs the jail.

Blanas said the area of the cell where the rope was tied was out of view of the camera. Jail staff had last checked on Soltys an hour before he was discovered, he said. The case is being investigated as an "unattended death."

Soltys had appeared in court Monday in a wheelchair, the result of jumping off a jail balcony in December. Jail officials said he had inexplicably jumped from the second floor after he was ordered back to his cell.

He was placed under a medical watch in October after he punctured his chest several times with a pencil. Clinkenbeard said he was merely imitating other detainees by giving himself a jailhouse tattoo, and he was returned to his cell after officials decided he was not suicidal.

"It's too early to have comment," said Robin Shakely, a spokeswoman for Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully. "It's not like we've had that many suicides of high-profile cases."

Soltys, 28, was arrested in August after allegedly slashing the throat of his wife, Lyubov, 23, then driving to the home of his aunt and uncle, Petr Kukharskiy, 75, and Galina Kukharskaya, 74, and fatally stabbing them and two 9-year-old cousins, Dimitriy Kukharskiy and Tatyana Kukharskaya.

His 3-year-old son, Sergei, was found dead, his throat slit, one day later in a cardboard box on a trash heap about 20 miles away.

Soltys eluded police for 10 days before he was captured after showing up in the backyard of his mother's home, which was under surveillance. Family members, afraid of what he might do, fled, and Soltys was captured minutes later, hiding under a table.

Soltys had left a note in his abandoned vehicle saying he killed his relatives because they were "poisoning" his reputation. He later told investigators his wife had been disrespectful.

Clinkenbeard said he and Soltys had been expecting to hear soon whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty, but both had been proceeding under the assumption they would. Soltys had been scheduled for a preliminary hearing March 19.

Clinkenbeard previously said he was considering an insanity plea for his client, but declined to disclose his strategy after Monday's hearing. He said he had just learned that a Sacramento County social services agency he declined to name had been tracking Soltys and his family, recognizing they were having difficulty before the shootings.