BOULDER, Colo. – A former gay porn actor and real estate agent suspected in seven rapes in Colorado and Texas died Wednesday after hanging himself in his jail cell.

Bradford Wagner, 37, of Glenwood Springs was found unconscious, hanging by his neck from a sheet in his cell, Boulder County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Phil West said in a press release. He was pronounced dead at Boulder Community Hospital and coroner Thomas Faure ruled Wagner’s death a suicide.

Wagner, who had been held in the jail since his arrest in June 2004, had not been considered a suicide risk, West said. A message left after hours for Wagner’s lawyer, Wilbur Smith, was not immediately returned.

The real estate agent was arrested after police said they linked him to four rapes at a Boulder apartment complex during the 1990s by surreptitiously collecting DNA samples from him. An undercover officer posing as a homebuyer collected DNA samples from Wagner, his car, his home and his bicycle.

Wagner had been charged in a 1994 rape in Lakewood and police also said genetic evidence connected him to an unsolved sexual assault in Lakewood and a 1995 assault in Austin, Texas.

Smith criticized the police department’s handling of the DNA evidence in the case. Former officer Michelle Direzza testified that the rape kit containing semen samples from the September 1993 attacker wasn’t refrigerated because there was no room in the evidence refrigerator.

Wagner appeared as Tim Barnett in more than 20 films produced in the early 1990s including An Officer And His Gentlemen. A West Hollywood, Calif., adult film producer confirmed Wagner’s participation.