SOMERS, Conn., May 12 - Demonstrators Thursday protested Connecticut's plans to execute a convicted serial killer early Friday morning, after two decades of legal efforts to prevent his death appeared to have failed and he declared his desire to die.

Death penalty opponents held vigil outside the rural complex of state prisons where the killer, Michael Bruce Ross, was waiting for a warden to lead him to the execution chamber and an unidentified executioner was to administer a lethal injection into his arm at 2:01 a.m..

Mr. Ross, 45, had sought that fatal moment for nearly a year.

In defiance of public defenders and others who wanted to save him, he chose to forgo further appeals of his death sentence last year. He said he wanted to ease the pain of the families of the eight teenage girls and young women he strangled in the early 1980's. He raped most of his victims.

A graduate of Cornell University and a former life insurance salesman, Mr. Ross convinced judges he was competent, smirked at psychiatrists who said he was suicidal and often seemed exasperated by his inability to reshape his image.