WINNIPEG — A notorious sexual deviant who raped and murdered a two-year-old girl 33 years ago was killed in his cell in a Manitoba prison on the weekend.

Stony Mountain Institution staffers were unable to resuscitate Duane Edward Taylor, 53.

Mounties are investigating after they were called to the prison at 10:51 p.m. Saturday.

The exact cause of death was not released.

Taylor had been serving an indeterminate sentence since Sept. 8, 1982, for the first-degree murder of two-year-old April Marie Morrison in Kingston, Ont.

Taylor — who had been previously convicted of trying to rape a four-year-old girl and had admitted to molesting several children at playgrounds — had only been out of jail for 11 days before he murdered Morrison, who lived three houses down from the rooming house where Taylor was placed.

“I asked her if she would like to go for a walk. She said yes, so I took her to my house. I took her upstairs to my bed,” Taylor said, before going into graphic detail of the Aug. 21, 1981, attack.

“I tried to kill her by punching her in the throat,” he told the detective. “I was sitting on top of her, face down on the chair. After that I got off and she stayed there. She woke up after about 10 minutes and started crying. I sat back down on her head. I stayed on her for about 20 minutes, when I got up she was dead. That’s it.”

Taylor was denied parole in 2010 after April Morrison's family appealed to the National Parole Board.

At the time, John Morrison, April's older brother, was troubled to learn that Taylor had left prison on escorted temporary absences.

"That's kind of scary. Any time he gets out, everybody around should be aware of who he is or where he's going," he said in an interview at the time. "I don't think he should ever get out. I think he should be locked up forever."

He was also denied parole after a subsequent hearing in 2012.

In parole documents acquired by QMI Agency, Taylor was also disciplined a number of times for institutional violence, one time for getting involved in a fight with another inmate and kicking him in the groin.

No arrests have been made in Taylor’s death.

Guy Langlois, assistant warden at the Stony Mountain Institution, said officers finished investigating the crime scene on Monday.

- with files from Ian MacAlpine