ROCHESTER - Arthur J. Shawcross, a serial killer of prostitutes who was serving life in prison for strangling 11 women between 1988 and 1990, has died at age 63.

Shawcross was taken from Sullivan Correctional Facility in the Hudson Valley to an Albany hospital after complaining of pain in his right leg Monday afternoon. He went into cardiac arrest in the hospital's emergency room and died late Monday, Corrections Department spokesman Erik Kriss said Tuesday. The cause of death is under investigation.

The victims, most of them prostitutes in the Rochester area, were killed between March 1988 and January 1990. At the time, Shawcross was on parole after serving 15 years in prison for killing two children in northern New York's Watertown in 1972.

Shawcross was arrested in January 1990, a day after state police spotted him near the frozen body of one of his victims. His 13-week trial for 10 killings included graphic testimony about mutilation and cannibalism, and the jury deliberated only 6 1/2 hours before convicting him in December 1990.

Three months later, Shawcross pleaded guilty to strangling Elizabeth Gibson, 29, whose body was found Nov. 27, 1989, in woods in neighboring Wayne County.

Shawcross preyed mostly on prostitutes and street people. Jurors rejected defense arguments that he was legally insane at the time of the killings because of brain damage, abuse during childhood and his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam.