A peculiar item recently came up for sale on a website that caters to people who collect things created, owned, or even just touched by murderers.
Serial killer Dana Sue Gray in a Riverside courtroom. She avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to two murders.
A peculiar item recently came up for sale on a website that caters to people who collect things created, owned, or even just touched by murderers. It was a pair of plain white panties, with the name Dana Sue Gray and a number, W76776, scrawled at the crotch. The asking price was $250.
Twenty years earlier, Gray, now 56, had a different way of making money. She murdered old ladies and stole their credit cards.
“I got desperate to buy things,” she told detectives. “Shopping puts me at rest.”
Three women died so she could go buy things. A fourth miraculously survived and helped put an end to Gray’s slay-and-spend spree.
Gray’s first victim was Norma Davis, 86, who lived in a gated community of Canyon Lake, Calif., about an hour and 15 minutes south of Los Angeles.
On Valentine’s Day 1994, a worried friend checked in on the widow. She found a bloody corpse. Davis had been strangled and then stabbed 11 times. Two knives were left in the body and the neck wounds were so deep they nearly took her head off. Police found a footprint from a small-sized running shoe at the scene, but little else.
A couple weeks later, there was another killing in Canyon Lake. June Roberts turned 66 on February 28, but friends could not get through to her to wish her a happy birthday. She had been strangled and bludgeoned with a decanter.
Police composite sketch bore a strong resemblance to Dana Sue Gray.
In both cases, little seemed to have been taken from the victims’ homes; even diamond rings, cash and checkbooks were left behind. Then, Roberts’ daughter told police that her mother’s bank called to report a flurry of activity on her credit card the day she died.
Among the purchases were swimsuits, cowboy boots, a ski mask, vodka, and a massage at a ritzy spa. Opium perfume, fancy shoes and sneakers — in both men’s and women’s sizes — were also on the list. Clerks, hairdressers, and waiters described the woman who used the cards as a petite, well-dressed blonde who drove a brown Cadillac and was accompanied by either a small boy or a tall, dark-haired man.
Cops were closing in on Gray, but they were not quick enough to prevent the next attack.
On March 10, Dorinda Hawkins, 58, was alone, minding an antiques shop in Lake Elsinore when a young woman with bleached blond hair stepped in. After some small talk, the woman asked Hawkins to show her a couple of paintings propped against the wall. The shopkeeper bent down to get them. At that moment, she felt a rope around her neck. She put up a fierce struggle but could not get away. The last thing Hawkins remembered hearing before she blacked out was her assailant saying, “Relax. Just relax.”
Hawkins told police that the would-be killer spoke those words in a quiet, soothing voice, the kind a doctor or nurse might use.
She had no idea that her observation was a bullseye. Until just recently, her attacker had worked as a nurse. It had been Dana Sue Gray’s ambition since she was a teenager and watched her mother die of cancer. This early trauma inspired her to learn the healing arts, wrote Kathy Braidhill in her book on the case, “To Die For.”