Addicted to Luxury: The Pampered Killer

Right away, Gray volunteered the information that she was depressed and had suffered many setbacks in life.  She was cautioned about her rights, but she continued without an attorney.  To be safe, the detectives videotaped the entire conversation.  Gray cried a lot and admitted that she knew June Roberts well. The questioning was initially awkward, as recorded by Braidhill, but apparently the pressure was sufficient to keep Gray talking. After several hours of interrogation, she implicated herself in the Feb 28 murder of June Roberts, but only vaguely, by admitting to the use of her credit cards.  (It turned out that Roberts had often prayed for Gray, feeling sorry for her situation.)  Then Gray said she'd found a bank book belonging to someone named Dora Beebe (giving several different stories for this discovery).  The detectives were aware that Beebe was a third murder victim, killed just hours earlier.  While Gray was not admitting to anything, she was raising the subject of Beebe herself.  That was significant.  It was clearly on her mind.  After more questioning, she said, "I got desperate to buy things.  Shopping puts me at rest.  I'm lost without it."  But while she admitted being in Beebe's house and even to seeing her dead, she did not confess her part.

Gray was booked and detained without bail in the Riverside County Jail and the police held a press conference to announce her arrest and her alleged involvement in three of the incidents. Around 150 people attended.  Detectives showed Gray's photo to Dorinda Hawkins, and she identified Gray as her attacker.  "When I saw her photo," she said later, "I had cold chills run down my back.  I knew it was her.  I'm positive that they got her, thank God."

It turned out that Norma Davis was related by marriage to Gray's mother, who was Davis' daughter-in-law, but Gray had been born after her mother was widowed and remarried to another man.  Yet Gray was not yet charged in the woman's death, as there was no definitive evidence linking her to it.

With all of this information and the special circumstances (murder during a robbery and double murder), reporters speculated over whether the DA's office, with the team of Richard Bentley and Michelle Levine assigned, would go for the death penalty.  There was little doubt that Gray had killed with planning and malice.  Had she not been caught, it's likely she would have continued to kill and cash in.