A Santa Rosa resident convicted of removing a dead man’s skull is acting as his own lawyer in an unrelated attempted murder case. Twenty-seven-year-old Robert Melvin Ross III is accused of stabbing a 66-year-old man in the throat at an apartment complex for low-income seniors in December of 2022. The trial started Wednesday in Sonoma County Superior Court, where he is representing himself. Two years ago, Ross was sentenced for removing the skull of a man who had died at a home where he had been squatting.