[suspenseful music playing]
[Jeri] I was scared to death.
I was totally alone
and I just didn't know what else to do.
I could just imagine Dana coming after me.
So I got my husband Russell's gun...
[gun cocking]
[Jeri] ...and waited.
I kept an eye on the two doors
that you could enter from the street.
If she came through one door,
I was gonna run out the other.
And if I couldn't get out,
last choice would've been a gun.
[theme music playing]
Welcome to Very Scary People.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
In 1994,
a vicious killer targets vulnerable women
in a gated California community.
But unlike most serial killer cases,
these gruesome crimes are committed by a woman,
not a man.
A woman driven by hate, greed,
and a thirst for blood.
This is the Angel of Death.
[suspenseful music playing]
I was, uh, at the Perris Police Department
working in the detective bureau
when my sergeant came in,
told me that there was a dead body
up in the Canyon Lake area.
Canyon Lake is a gated community,
it's an affluent area, million-dollar homes,
and it's a good drive.
It's about a 15, 20-minute drive.
Once I got to the scene, when I first saw the victim,
it was shocking.
I wondered who would do something like this
to an 87-year-old woman.
Norma Davis was seated
in a golden recliner
and she had a knife coming out of her chest,
and one out of the right side of her neck.
So when they rolled the head back,
the head almost came off.
We checked the knives
and determined that they had come
from the butcher block down in the kitchen.
[Elissa Mayo] And we noticed that there was a telephone cord
under the body,
so we could see that
somehow that that might be involved as well.
[Greco] It definitely looked rageful to me.
Then you start processing in your mind,
how was the killer doing this?
And what they teach you in profiling
is the more injuries that are violent
and closer to the face,
it's more of a passion thing,
so the closer the relationship to the victim.
You can't really make any assumptions at that point,
but you start thinking, "Okay. Is...
It could be family-related."
[Donnie] As police process the crime scene,
Norma's former daughter-in-law,
Jeri Armbrust
arrives with her husband, Russell.
When I was told that Nana had died, it was...
It was not believable.
It was just something that happened to other people.
I couldn't really comprehend that she was gone.
I called her Mom,
everyone else called her Nana,
but to me, she was Mom.
The police asked lots of questions about Nana.
And I had really no answers.
I couldn't imagine how this would've happened.
I noticed that Jeri was wearing these Nike shoes.
We were able to pick up a dust Nike shoe print
from the house.
The shoe print was a size 6.
Jeri was a caretaker.
She was the last person to see the victim alive.
That definitely stood out.
I thought maybe she was the one that killed her.
[Jeri] I noticed them looking at me sort of strangely,
but I didn't think anything of it.
[Donnie] Detective Greco believes Norma
knew her killer.
He wants to know more about
Jeri's relationship with Norma
to see if she or someone in her family
could've killed her.
Russell, my husband, and I were separated
and each of us interrogated separately.
They went over to my daughter,
my son in Hollywood,
my son in Huntington Beach.
My family at that point
included my husband, Russell's daughter, Dana,
who was a nurse.
Detective Greco immediately discounted that
because he had a sister who was a nurse
and he knew that nurses could not possibly be involved
in something as horrendous as this.
[dramatic music playing]
[Donnie] But Detective Greco has no idea how wrong he is.
Because 37 years earlier,
a killer was born into Jeri's extended family.
Russell met Dana's mother, who was a beauty queen,
and she must have been a beautiful person
on the outside,
but she had really big problems on the inside.
But he did marry her anyway.
He was delighted when they had their little child,
little Dana.
He doted on her from the time she was born.
[Dr. Leslie Dobson] Dana Sue Gray who was raised with money.
She was raised in a culture and an... A community
where it was expected that you had money.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jeri] Russell was running several beauty shops.
He would have to hide the money in the beauty shops
because Beverly would come in
and take it out of the cash drawer.
She spent money on clothes and beauty products,
and health products, and just loved to spend.
Didn't seem to matter what she spent the money on.
She was active in Scientology,
she used a lot of her money on the courses,
and that drained a lot of her personal funds.
When Dana was around two or three years old,
her parents divorced.
[Jeri] Russell told me that the reason
that he and Beverly divorced was adultery.
He would get calls from the neighbors
telling him that there was another car there that day.
And her father did stay in her life supporting her.
She had him wrapped around her little finger.
He believed anything she told him.
And he would've done anything for her.
In the Dana Sue Gray case,
I was requested to conduct an evaluation
by the district attorney.
Dana grew up largely
in her mother's home.
Mother was very fickle.
It was all about herself.
And so she did not have an easy life.
Growing up around so much money
is going to start building a person who is very entitled.
And with a narcissistic mother,
we know that that usually is genetic.
So we're starting to build this entitlement of life.
She's always gotten what she's wanted.
[Jeri] Dana's relationship with her mom
was contentious, to say the least.
She often told us that her mom had said to her,
"Well, I do love you, but I don't like you."
That was a point of resentment on Dana's part,
why her mother is not giving her attention.
At one point, there had been a conflict
with the mother
in which Dana went and took scissors
and cut holes in her mother's favorite dress.
We see that kind of behavior often in people
who are sadistic.
If you haven't hurt the person,
you damage something that's important to them.
[Donnie] When Dana is a teenager,
her mother develops breast cancer.
Despite the doctors and nurses
doing everything they can,
her mother dies in 1975.
When her mother passed away and gave all of the money
to Scientology and not to Dana,
I can imagine there was a growing desire
to retaliate and harm those who then had money.
That was a really bad time in her life.
She came to live with Russell and his then wife.
Dana starts to distract her emotions
with risk-taking, dangerous things.
[Tim] She was living a fast life.
Skydiving, wave surfing,
swimming, appealing to a lot of men.
She had a devil-may-care attitude that they liked.
I remember one time, they had a picture
that showed her skydiving at the Grand Canyon in a...
in a circle holding hands with the other skydivers,
which was completely illegal to do at the time,
but that's Dana.
[Rogers] But she apparently was very bright.
She graduated from high school
and completed a nursing degree.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jeri] I married Russell when I was, I think, 48,
which seems very young now.
Dana and her father got along quite well.
So I had a picture of her as a person
who loved her dad a great deal.
The first time I met Dana,
she was really upbeat,
jivey kind of a gal.
She just exuded energy.
[Donnie] Dana works for a few years as a nurse.
And then in 1987,
she gets married.
Dana married William Gray.
William was in a band
and Dana sang in it sometimes.
And they did wedding related photography
and other services.
Dana and her husband seemed happy.
At the very outset, Russell said to Bill,
he said, "You are going to have to sit on my daughter.
She'll run right over you if you don't."
[Donnie] Dana and William honeymoon in Hawaii.
It's there, in that sunny place,
that William sees his wife's dark side for the first time.
She was on shore
and he was in a very dangerous situation.
She sees that he is drowning, he's calling out for help.
He can't tread water, he can't take control.
Instead, she swims out to him
and she takes the board and brings it back to shore.
And she sits there and watches him.
She could let him die
or she could let him live.
And I think Dana started to realize that this is fun.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Donnie] As he struggles to save himself from drowning,
William Gray realizes that his new wife, Dana,
seems to have no interest in rescuing him.
If Dana is psychopathic, I think in that moment,
that was a very curious, exciting time for her
because she had all of the power and control.
[Tim] He had to make his way to a buoy
and then pull himself in on the rope.
[Jeri] And he said, "Why didn't you help me?
I needed help."
She said, "Well, I knew you could do it."
[Donnie] Dana and William's honeymoon period
fizzles out fast,
and not just because of the near drowning incident.
[dramatic music playing]
[Tim] In the early 1990s, the economy crashed
and their finances fell badly.
[Rogers] They had bought a house.
They ended up taking a second and a third mortgage out.
[Tim] They were underwater on their mortgage.
They had maxed out their credit cards.
Bill had very little to say in their marriage.
Dana made the decisions and she acted them out.
[Rogers] She always liked to have the best things.
[Dobson] What Dana did model was
a mother who was a shopping addict,
a mother who was in love with herself.
I think the core of it
was that she wanted to impress people
and be similar to those amongst her,
like her mother had.
So, it didn't matter if she didn't have the money.
It was more important that she had the image.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jeri] So, they had to rely on Dana's salary.
And so Dana worked two shifts day after day, after day,
to the point that Russell was worried about her health.
It made their life very difficult,
very stressful.
[Rogers] There's a lot of fighting.
And she did have two miscarriages with him,
and that was a big disappointment.
[Donnie] Their relationship is strained.
Their marriage is already on thin ice,
and Dana's eyes start to wander.
[Jeri] Bill always had a band.
And in that band, there was a particular man
that Dana seemed to be interested in.
She gravitated towards this other man
who had a child.
Bill became jealous.
Bill finally put his foot down,
and somehow it resulted in Dana leaving
and going to live with the other man.
[dramatic music playing]
Dana moved in with the man
that she was having the affair with
and his young son in a mobile home
south of Lake Elsinore.
[dramatic music playing]
[Tim] Beginning in 1994,
Dana's life was very much different.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Rogers] She got into opioids
and she had stolen meds from patients
and deprived them of their meds
when they were in a lot of pain.
So ultimately, she lost her job.
And so she didn't have that income
coming in anymore.
[Tim] She had moved from a nice home
in Canyon Lake
to a mobile home
in a deteriorating part of Wildomar.
And she was living with a young child
and she was financially dependent.
[Jeri] She was making curtains
for this dilapidated mobile home
that he lived in.
It was sad,
not what she was used to.
Dana was used to having only the finest.
[dramatic music playing]
[Tim] Dana was drowning her sorrows in alcohol.
[Donnie] Dana is spiraling and needs help.
But she knows that if it's money she wants,
she might have better luck asking Jeri than her father.
[Jeri] I was Dana's stepmother, legally.
Dana and her dad, Russell, were very, very close,
and he would do anything he could for her.
But he had told me, "Don't ever loan Dana money."
She was totally out of money,
totally broke all the time.
I said, "It sounds to me as if there's drugs involved."
But Russell didn't believe it.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Jeri] Dana was talking about
how she wanted a better living situation.
So I said, "Maybe we could work something out
with the condo."
[Donnie] Jeri had recently bought
her former mother-in-law,
Norma, a new condo.
[Jeri] I said, "Well, if Mom doesn't mind,
you and your friend and his son
could possibly live there."
At the time, I had thought it might be beneficial
because Mom's health was not great
and a nurse living with her might be a good idea.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Donnie] But moving in with Norma
is the last thing Dana wants to do.
[Rogers] She grew up
as a very entitled kind of person
who generally in whatever situation
she was in thought of herself first.
She was enraged at Norma and Jeri
because she thinks Jeri should give me my own place
and how dare she support this woman.
[upbeat music playing]
[Dobson] I'm struggling.
You are doing this on purpose.
You are a horrible person.
Now, I'm going to hurt you
in one of the worst ways I can imagine.
I think that it was building in her.
We have early signs
of narcissistic personality disorder
and we've got these erratic emotions.
All of this is paired with this growing injustice.
And it was a matter of time
before Dana lost control
of all of these elements
and needed to siphon them
into one attack that would give her the feelings
that would calm all the pain that she had.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Donnie] Dana crosses the line
from an entitled, but nonviolent person
to someone completely unrecognizable.
Dana finds her way to Norma's house.
[suspenseful music playing]
She's enraged with Jeri,
but it's a displacement from Jeri to Norma.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dobson] And then Dana repeatedly stabs her.
[suspenseful music playing]
She killed her and then kept killing her.
She kept raging on her
and really, really enjoying it,
with every knife and every stab wound
and the near decapitation of Norma.
That has to do with fulfilling Dana's needs
of empowering herself.
[suspenseful music playing]
[door creaking]
[Greco] We found Norma on February 16th, 1994.
The coroner established that the victim
had been dead a couple of days.
Norma Davis was stabbed ten times
and then nearly decapitated.
We feel that it's a personal killing,
but we still have no suspects.
The shoeprint in the doorway
doesn't really give us anything
because if it matched Jeri,
she had access to the house.
She was taking care of Norma.
However, that shoeprint didn't match Jeri.
The shoeprint was submitted to the laboratory.
Analysis was performed,
but none of those analyses
led to any perpetrator.
[Greco] Based on the shoeprint,
we knew that the person had to be
a smaller male or a woman.
[Jeri] I believe that the police
finally eliminated me as a suspect
when they checked the shoe size.
The shoe size was different from mine.
But I pointed out to them,
I loved her, number one.
Number two...
I just couldn't have done such a thing.
Number three, I had no motive.
[Greco] When you see an elderly person
that's murdered that way,
it evokes almost a sick feeling in your...
In the pit of your stomach,
because if that person were to do that
to an 87-year-old,
there's no stopping what that person would do.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Elissa] I don't think any of us were thinking
serial crime at that moment.
We were thinking a singular crime,
which would make more sense.
A random act of violence in a quiet community.
[Greco] And then, two weeks later,
while doing my investigation into the Norma case,
I got another call of another homicide
up in the Canyon Lake area...
-[dispatcher speaking indistinctly] -[siren blares]
[Greco] ...of another elderly female.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dobson] Dana liked killing Norma
and she wanted to do it again.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Donnie] Dana is babysitting
her boyfriend's five-year-old son
when she puts him in the car and drives to the home
of 66-year-old June Roberts.
June was a part of Jeri,
her stepmother's life,
and also knew Norma.
June Roberts was a very outgoing person.
She liked to golf.
She was very interested in herbs,
so she handled a lot of people's ailments
with her advice.
Dana knew June very well
and she went to see her often,
consulting her about various herbal remedies.
[Donnie] Dana tells the boy to wait in the car.
She puts on gloves
and knocks on June's front door.
She allegedly told June
that she had a drinking problem
and that she needed to get some vitamins
and to get herself clean.
And she claims that
June was putting her down
for her drinking
and that this was what triggered her.
[Dobson] Dana asked to borrow a book.
June offered to go get a book
and bring it back to Dana.
And she pushed herself into the home saying,
"I'll find the book on my own."
As they were looking for the books,
she then began to murder June.
June was killed with a telephone cord.
[Dobson] Dana had to use a chair
to have enough strength to kill June.
She tied the phone cord to the chair,
put the chair over June, and then further,
used a wine decanter to bash in June's head.
[producer speaking]
A lot of murderers I've worked with
have described a feeling of boringness in their lives
that is so strong they don't wanna live.
And when they engage in the act of murder,
they feel like themselves.
They feel whole.
So I can imagine that when Dana was staring
into June's eyes,
she felt like herself.
And then she started to build up that stimulation
where that murder became more and more grotesque,
bashing her skull in.
[Rogers] She stole from June.
She rifled through her purse
and took major credit cards.
[Donnie] Dana calmly returns to the boy in her car,
still buckled into his seat.
[Jeri] I still can't believe that
she could have left that little boy in the car
and gone in and murdered someone.
Everything Dana did was just unbelievable.
[Dobson] But she was now able
to give this son the perfect day,
the perfect mother-son day,
and thoroughly enjoys it.
They have lunch. He gets a haircut.
They go shopping.
Dana went on a spending spree
with June Roberts' credit cards.
[Dobson] It's not uncommon for killers
to have special people in their life.
She wanted a child that she could care for,
so she overly attached
to this young five-year-old boy.
When she had miscarriages,
she likely had a lot of hope
and then her hope fell,
and I can imagine it was gutting for her.
And I think it became very important to her
to have her own child.
So now that she has access to June's money,
she can provide the life
she wanted to give this boy.
She doesn't have to ask her boyfriend
for money anymore
and she can be the mother that she wanted to be.
She can be the mother that she wanted to have.
[Donnie] While Dana blows through her victim's money,
June's friends make a horrible discovery.
[Greco] When they went inside the house,
they found her murdered inside of her house.
When you first walked into the scene,
what you saw was a woman
laying on her right side,
had slid up against a desk,
and you could see the blood smear
as it was coming down the desk.
A telephone cord had been wrapped
around her neck tightly
and then tied to the arm of the chair.
There was glass fragments everywhere
because she had been hit in the head
with a heavy wine decanter bottle.
And it appeared that the suspect
had gone through the wallet
and some of her credit cards were missing.
One glaring similarity between the two scenes
was the use of the phone cord for strangulation
and there were all items of value
that were left behind.
In the June Roberts' case,
her ring was still left behind.
There was a check that was still left behind
at the Norma Davis case.
Also, one of the areas that we looked at,
June had an open Bible.
As I recall, looking into the open Bible,
she had a prayer list
and was stunned when we saw Norma Davis' name
on her prayer list.
And so there was a connection between these two victims.
We didn't know what it was at the time,
but certainly seeing a close-knit community
who was really grieving the loss of the first victim
that she placed this recent crime victim
on her prayer list.
Now, we wanna know
was there any kind of connection
to Norma Davis' murder?
[Jeri] I was close to June.
I can't really describe how I felt then.
I was... I was in shock.
June used to play golf with Jeri.
So there is a relationship and a continuation
of Dana's retaliation against Jeri.
I knew there was a predator on the loose,
somebody that was killing older people,
elderly people in that area.
I thought it had to be a serial killer.
Somebody who killed Norma
had killed the second victim.
[Jeri] I couldn't believe June had been killed.
She lived not very far away from us.
Probably four houses away.
And we all had been together many times
and now she's gone too.
[line ringing]
[Jeri] I called my children and said,
"Somebody is targeting our community."
[grunting]
"Please be careful.
Watch out for everybody.
Don't get close to anyone."
But I had no information
that I could give to the police
that would help them.
When June Roberts was murdered,
that threw out my whole idea
that it was a random thing with my grandmother, my nana.
Very few people would have traveled in the same circles
that my nana and June Roberts did.
Now, I was really worried about my mom...
'cause, obviously, she could be next.
Dana Sue Gray hardly matched
the profile of a serial killer,
yet she's already claimed two victims
and there are more to come.
She seems to have an appetite for murder.
And while Gray is on the street,
no one is safe from her wrath.
[ominous music playing]
[Elissa] My first thought was that
these two cases might be connected.
You don't wanna read into everything
and make an assumption
that the two crimes are related.
You have to take a step back and say objectively,
"What evidence might we be looking for
at both of these scenes to connect them?
What did the victims have in common?
And what does that information mean
in the context of the serial crime?"
It raised a lot of questions for me
because I had never worked a serial crime before.
[Greco] I was overwhelmed.
I was thinking that I was one detective
who just had a homicide
and now I've got a second homicide
and, potentially, it could have been a serial killer.
We had nothing.
We had no description.
We had no profile.
We had no idea what to look for.
I mean, now, you're like,
"Hey, we need to be more cognizant of areas
where there's elderly women."
I have to go home at night
and not be in that community,
but other people, that's where they live,
staying by themselves.
If I was elderly, I would be feeling very vulnerable.
People were freaked out.
We had single, elderly women huddling together
and sleeping in each other's homes
because they didn't know if they were going to be murdered.
We felt like we were the prisoners, locked in.
[man] Scary.
Where are your daughters?
[sinister music playing]
[Donnie] While the rest of her community is on edge,
Dana is riding high,
especially now that she's feeding her desire to kill.
I would break down the motive in this case
in three ways.
One, she wanted to get her rocks off
and that was a way to do it.
Two, these little old ladies were like her mother.
Great way to get rid of that pain
that was just seething inside of her.
And, three, she could grab a little bit of cash.
And there's an element of the narcissism
and the entitlement
that no one would be able to catch her
because she so meticulously committed the crimes.
She didn't leave fingerprints.
She was too good to be caught.
Dana got into a conversation with her manicurist
about the crimes that were scaring
everybody in the local area,
in the retirement community.
Dana says to her,
"I hear they think it might be a serial killer
from San Diego."
So Dana is trying to inject
an alternative hypothesis
about who the killer might be.
[Donnie] Dana has already murdered two women,
but she can't get enough,
so now she's on the hunt for a third.
This time, she decides to switch things up,
targeting a complete stranger in the next town over.
Dana saw a very quiet antique store.
An antique store is a good, easy target.
[Rogers] She carries a cord,
a yellow plastic woven cord that
she must have had it in her purse.
She brought a weapon with her that she wanted to use
and that she knew how to use.
[Donnie] Dana approaches the store clerk,
57-year-old Dorinda Hawkins.
[Dobson] They're looking for a killer of elderly women.
So this would throw the police off the trace,
but also give Dana the capacity to still kill
and get the stimulation
she is now falling in love with.
[Rogers] She is purporting to buy frames
for her mother's photos.
[Dobson] I think it's an easy story to tell.
My beauty queen mother.
Everybody wants to frame a picture of their mother,
especially of their dead mother.
It's going to draw emotions from Dorinda.
She's not gonna question her.
She won't be on guard.
And she can easily then move into the next stage
of killing her.
But she didn't like everything that Dorinda showed her.
She said that Dorinda
seemed to be thinking of herself
as somehow better than Dana.
Dorinda upset her.
That becomes her excuse
that whatever happens
can be used to say
it happened because of this.
And at a point, Dorinda is bent down,
trying to retrieve an object...
that she feels the cord around her neck.
[tense music playing]
[dramatic music playing]
The third victim is the one that really shows you
the mind of Dana Gray.
[Rogers] What led me to believe that
she knew what she was doing,
she came in saying to Dorinda,
"You're here alone again."
She may have surveyed that store before.
She knew Dorinda was alone
and she had the weapon in her purse,
and so this is premeditation.
I think it was just easy for her.
It was easy to kill.
And now you've got Norma Davis
who was killed with an object
that was from within the house.
Then June Roberts was killed with an object from the house.
Then the killer switches up.
She switches up and she brings her own cord.
[Rogers] Unlike the other victims,
Dorinda was only 57 years old.
The others were much older
and could put up less of a fight,
but Dorinda fought for her life.
She ended up grabbing hold
of a table leg on the floor
when she was down
trying to separate herself from Dana.
[Greco] During the strangling,
Dorinda Hawkins is begging for her life.
She's saying, "Just let me live.
I have eight kids. Just let me live.
Take anything.
You can have whatever you want in the store.
Just take it."
And Dana tells her,
"I'm not doing this for the money."
[Rogers] Here, she's trying to differentiate
this killing from the others
where she took credit cards.
So she is thinking about
how this crime needs to look different.
I believe that's what triggered this crime,
that she needed to create a pattern
that would throw the police off.
[Greco] I think that the reason why she switched up with Dorinda
was because she was reading
what was being put in the paper
and maybe a little too much information
was being put out there.
[Donnie] Dorinda fights back as Dana tries to soothe her.
While Dana is strangling this woman,
she says, "Relax, just relax."
Dana worked as a surgical nurse,
so it is very likely that she was desensitized
to people screaming in pain
because she would say to them,
"Relax, just relax."
So now she's in the face of Dorinda.
Dorinda is flailing and screaming.
And Dana is likely so desensitized,
she says the same words,
"Relax, just relax,"
while brutally attempting to murder her.
And it amazes me that in the face of this torment,
this torture,
Dana is calm and asking someone
about to be dead to stay calm too.
After Dorinda passes out,
Dana then takes $5 out of Dorinda's purse
and $25 out of the register.
But I think there's a deeper why to that.
And it's that she was retaliating in some way.
So this is a woman who was raised
in an extremely wealthy area
with a very narcissistic mother.
She was at a point in her life,
before these murders,
where she had lost all of her money.
I think that when she took those small bits of money,
it was an extra "[bleep] you" to the victims.
It was an extra "[bleep] you" to her mother.
[Donnie] Dana takes one last look
at Dorinda's lifeless body on the floor,
then hurries out of the antique shop.
And I think she left sooner than she might have
for fear that somebody would come in.
And Dorinda Hawkins comes to two hours later.
For the first time during her terrifying murder spree,
Gray has left behind a witness.
But despite the fact that there's finally someone
who could identify her,
she continues to seek out
and murder victims in cold blood.
The urge to kill has stimulated her with excitement
and she won't rest until she satisfies it again.
[dramatic music playing]
[tense music playing]
[squashing]
[Donnie] Following the gruesome murders
of Norma Davis and June Roberts,
the gated community of Canyon Lake is on edge.
But police haven't yet connected these two murders
to the attack on Dorinda Hawkins
in the neighboring town.
Canyon Lake was...
It was like the Night Stalker out here.
I remember what it was like
when we had the Night Stalker here.
Nobody wanted to leave their windows open
'cause that's how the guy was getting in
and killing people.
And it was the same way for this.
No idea who it was and who was gonna be next
and why they were being killed.
After the second homicide,
I remember going to a call,
I knock on the door and nothing happens,
I knock on the door and nothing happens.
Go up one more time
and if someone is standing there
with a gun pointed at me,
you know, you're gonna get in a shootout
with just some person who's really nervous
because people are being found dead in their community.
[Greco] Everybody's worried.
The press is blowing up the phones,
people are calling in and...
Any suspicious activity, any suspicious person
is being called into the... To the station.
We had to assign a community service officer
because it was just overwhelming.
He was writing down names of people calling in tips
and then we would have to go back
and kind of follow up on those tips later.
[Tim] This is a belt of communities from Sun City
to Canyon Lake to Lake Elsinore,
and there's a lot of older people,
older populations in all three communities,
and they felt very vulnerable.
They banded together and...
There were all kinds of rumors going around.
There was rumors it was a serial killer,
there was rumors that it was a man,
and there was rumors that
it was somebody that knew all these people.
It was on everybody's lips.
You couldn't go anywhere without people talking about it.
I just think that people were scared.
They were afraid.
[Donnie] And they were right to be afraid.
Detective Greco knows if he doesn't act fast,
another unsuspecting member of this tight-knit community
is going to die.
I didn't wanna let anybody down, really.
It was... It was heavy.
It was a heavy weight.
Yeah.
I was so immersed
in trying to find out who the suspect was.
I was constantly thinking about who did this,
and where they live.
It had to be somebody from the community.
[Bob] When you think about the way that the police work,
pretty much everyone is a suspect
until they've proved that they're not.
Especially when they think that somebody
that the person actually knew,
they're gonna have to look at all the immediate family,
look at all of her close friends and whatnot,
and rule every one of them out one at a time.
[Greco] This was a gated community.
Security was protecting the gates in and out,
but it didn't mean you couldn't...
You couldn't climb the fence
or go through, you know, the drainage
to get into the community.
But we did consider somebody
who may have lived in that area,
knew the area.
But we also looked at maintenance workers.
I think there was a gardener that had seen a woman that...
Shortly within that time period of Norma Davis' murder
just walking around with a...
Like a blank stare on her face.
He wasn't really able to give a good description though,
of this person.
[Donnie] As police in Lake Elsinore
wait for Dorinda Hawkins to recover enough
to give a clear statement,
Detective Greco chases down leads
in the Canyon Lake murders,
not realizing they're looking for the same killer.
At the search of June Roberts' house,
one of the items that was missing
was a checkbook and credit cards.
[Greco] So there were three of us
who are kind of working our way
through this investigation on the credit card usage.
And we started seeing that the credit cards
were being used in various locations.
The date the credit cards were used
was on February 28th, 1994, right after June was killed.
The credit cards were used at a bistro,
at a jewelry store,
and a hair salon.
As we were going to different locations,
we kept getting information that it was a female
around 5'6" with blonde hair
and she had a little boy with her about age five
and he had blond hair as well.
Then the hair salon, she went in there
and I believe she wanted to get her hair dyed red.
And then a boy had his hair cut as well.
The stylist remembered a conversation
that she had with the boy.
And the boy said, "That's my other mommy."
So I knew I was looking
at a potential step-mom situation in that case.
So I asked the stylist, I said,
"Did you happen to get the boy's name?"
And she goes, "Yeah, I wrote it down in my appointment book."
[tense music playing]
[Greco] And I took that as evidence.
[dramatic music playing]
I got a phone call one day from Joe Greco.
[telephone rings]
[Jeri] And he said, "Jeri, I want to inform you,
since you've asked me,
we don't have any other information about Norma.
But we do have some things about...
June Roberts.
We know that the person who killed her
took her credit cards
and went to shop at several different places.
And one of the places she went to was a beauty shop
where she had her hair styled."
So it was a woman.
That was a shock.
We still felt that there was some connections
to our community.
We drove around Canyon Lake
to see if we could find any random women driving.
Russell kept his loaded gun by his bed.
[Bob] My mom told me that it was a woman,
and I thought, wow.
I always figured it was a man doing this
just because it was so violent.
[squashing]
[tense music playing]
[woman grunting]
[tense music playing]
[Bob] The second I heard it was a woman,
it's like someone basically was talking in my head
and they said, "It's Dana."
A light went off.
Dana makes the most sense of all.
She knew my nana, and she definitely knew June,
but I can't come out and say, "Mom, I think it's Dana,"
because I didn't have any more proof at that point.
It's Russell's daughter.
I mean...
how can I accuse Russell's daughter of something?
[Donnie] A picture of the suspect
comes into focus for Detective Greco
as Lake Elsinore Police and the media
question Dorinda Hawkins about her attack.
[Dorinda] I looked directly in her eyes,
there was no emotion,
no anger, no being mad. Nothing.
It was just a dead, cold stare.
[Tim] Dorinda Hawkins
described the woman as heavy-set,
blonde-ish hair.
[woman grunting]
[Tim] What stood out the most from my interview with...
Dorinda was she was told just to relax.
Because it's what a caregiver would say
to calm somebody who is...
stressed out over a frightful situation.
[woman grunting]
[dramatic music playing]
The police did a composite sketch
based on the description
that Dorinda Hawkins gave to them.
[Greco] We did see the newspaper article
and the sketch of the suspect in that case
and somebody brought it to my attention.
I considered the fact
that because of these two homicides
and the short period of time
within the attack on Dorinda Hawkins
that they could be connected.
[Donnie] Two murders and one attack
all in under a month.
But Dana Sue Gray has no idea
that police could soon be closing in on her.
[Dobson] Her boyfriend at the time begins to question
where she's getting money to buy all these goods
and she says that a family member
had sent her the money.
She also reassured him saying,
"Don't worry, more money will come."
What that tells me was
that she was onto something.
And she was enjoying the killing.
This was just the beginning for Dana Sue Gray.
[tense music playing]
[Greco] After finding out who the suspect
could possibly be,
the first thing I did was I started to look
at the... At the name of the boy
and I started looking at all the different public schools
to see if I could find a name that matched.
And I did. I found one name that matched.
We did a stakeout on the house.
The lady came home.
[tense music playing]
[Greco] We realized she did not fit
the description of the suspect
so we felt that we're going in the wrong direction
with that name.
[Donnie] What Greco thought could be the key
to solving the case
turns out to be a dead end.
And without any new leads...
he takes a fresh look at old ones.
[Greco] I was continuously going back to Jeri's house
to get more information
just to see if there was something that I missed,
something that I could have figured out.
And she was just so helpful.
Every time I asked her for something,
she gave it to me.
[Jeri] I felt very fortunate that Joe had decided
I was no longer a suspect,
but that I could be an ally.
So I started to feel more comfortable
with giving her more and more information.
So I started sharing what I knew
about the suspect I was looking for.
I gave her the description of white female, in her 30s,
blonde hair, recently cut, possibly dyed red.
And she has a five-year-old boy with her
that also has a recent haircut blond hair.
And I asked her if that matched, you know,
the description of somebody that she knew.
She didn't come right out and say, you know,
"No, absolutely not."
She just kind of just hesitated and said no.
We didn't have any indication
that it could be anyone we knew.
I don't think Jeri made the connection
because it was too obscene.
The crimes were so horrific
that anyone would struggle
to think it was somebody in their life
or that they had been around.
[ominous music playing]
Dana came to see us
and she was very happy.
She said, "Oh, Jeri, look,
look at my new red hair.
Ta-da."
That sort of took me aback.
I didn't know really what to say.
So I said, "Okay. It looks great. Come on in."
And she came in into the den
and we just sat there talking.
And during the conversation, she said, "By the way,
I now get to have a boy call me mom.
Isn't that great?"
I said, "He's calling you mom?"
I knew she wanted to be a mom,
so it didn't surprise me,
but red hair and a son?
It was in my mind and I couldn't believe it.
[Bob] My mom, at that point, looked at her
and I don't know how
she didn't just freak out right then and there,
but somehow she kept it together enough.
[Jeri] I could hardly wait for her to leave.
I went across the street to my friend
and asked her for a copy of the newspaper
because there was supposed to be a sketch
in that newspaper of the person doing the murders.
I looked at the picture again and again.
I could finally see a tiny resemblance
that could be Dana,
but I still couldn't quite believe it.
I didn't sleep all night.
All I can think of was...
these things go together like a puzzle.
[ominous music playing]
[Jeri] So the next day, I went to work.
A few minutes later, Bob arrived.
[Bob] Well, she came in and asked me
some questions about Dana.
Before I even answered, I said, "It's Dana, isn't it?
It's Dana."
[Jeri] He looked at me and he said,
"She did it, didn't she? It's her.
I knew it.
I should have told you."
And I said, "Okay. I have just one thing to do."
[suspenseful music playing]
I get a phone call and it's Jeri on the phone.
[Jeri] And I said, "Joe...
I believe I know who the murderer is."
[ominous music playing]
As shocking as it is to imagine,
Jeri is convinced her stepdaughter Dana
fits the description of the killer.
Even so,
Detective Greco is a long way
from being able to make an arrest
until he can put a stop to Dana's havoc,
no one is safe.
[tense music playing]
[telephone ringing]
Jeri said, "I thought about what you said last night.
It sounds a lot like my stepdaughter."
And I proceeded to tell him about the red hair...
the blond boy.
The red hair alone didn't bother me.
It was when she said that the little boy
could call her mom,
that the red hair and the boy clicked together.
I said, "It all fits."
He said, "Well, there's one thing missing.
What's the little boy's name?"
I needed to know the name
to be able to match it up
with the name in the appointment book
from the salon.
[Jeri] When I repeated the name to Joe...
he said, "It's a lock."
Those three words stick with me until this day.
I was hoping I was wrong.
You'd never believe something like that
could happen in your family,
but it's frightening how she could attack these women.
Joe told me that he'd let me know
as soon as they had Dana in custody.
And so I went home.
[Donnie] However, Jeri's son, Bob,
is terrified for her.
You have no idea how much I did not her...
Want her going home.
I told her, "No, you need to stay.
I'm gonna go home with you."
And she says, "No, you're not.
I have to go home and tell Russell."
Even though I told my son Bob that I was fine
and I didn't want him to come home with me,
I could just imagine Dana coming after me.
I was scared to death.
At this point, Dana was...
quickly becoming comfortable with killing.
The retaliation didn't necessarily need
to fall on strangers.
It may have become more focused on people
she directly felt hatred towards, which was Jeri.
So I went home, I got Russell's gun,
put my dog on a leash, and waited.
I kept an eye on the two doors
that you could enter from the street.
They were both locked, but she had a key.
So if she came through one door,
I was gonna run out the other.
And if I couldn't get out,
last choice would have been the gun.
Luckily for me, she didn't come,
and Russell did.
And then I had the biggest job of all,
I had to tell Russ.
[Bob] I can't imagine how that conversation went.
To think that you're gonna tell your husband
that his daughter is the serial killer
that's killing not only random people,
killing two people they knew, brutally.
I don't know how she did it.
[Jeri] I said, "Russ, I discovered who the murderer is."
And he said, "Who is it?"
And I said, "It was Dana."
He just looked at me. He didn't believe me.
It was totally, uh, something he could not comprehend.
And I said, "They are trying to find Dana now.
They're trying to pick her up."
[suspenseful music playing]
[Donnie] Back at police headquarters,
Detective Greco knows it's only a matter of time
before Dana will need to feel the thrill
of killing again.
He rushes out to get a warrant
to search her house.
[Greco] I immediately called Rich Bentley,
the DA in this case,
and I said, "I think I know who the suspect is."
I gave Rich all the information that I had,
and Rich goes, "I don't think we have enough."
And I said, "Well, I'm gonna write a search warrant on her house,
and I'm gonna see if I can get a search warrant signed by a judge."
I write the search warrant.
I take it to a judge,
and the judge looks at my search warrant
and signs off on it.
And I think he said something like, happy hunting.
So I was excited. I was excited.
And in the meantime,
we set up a task force
to see if we could find Dana.
Uh, unfortunately, it was... It was a little too late.
[dramatic music playing]
[Donnie] As police search for Dana Sue Gray,
she's out hunting for her next victim.
This time, without bringing along
her boyfriend's five-year-old son,
she singles out 87-year-old Dora Beebe.
[Martha] Dana was in a shopping center,
saw Dora go into a bank,
and she saw her leave the bank
and go home,
and she followed her to her home.
Dana goes from extended family
to a close family associate,
to someone she had cased out
but did not personally know,
to a total stranger.
[suspenseful music playing]
[doorbell rings]
[Martha] She goes up to Dora's door
and pretends that she's lost.
This seems to have been...
the ruse she used to get in the door.
[tense music playing]
She brings no weapon into Dora's house.
She makes use of the telephone cord again.
[woman screams]
And this time,
she makes use of an iron.
There are different patterns that killers will use.
When you start using household objects,
in general,
that's somebody who is inventing it
on the fly to some degree.
[Greco] Dora Beebe was beaten
with a clothes iron, and she was hit so hard
with the clothes iron
that it dented the clothes iron.
And Dora Beebe was on the ground
almost in a defensive posture,
as if she was trying to block her face from getting hit.
[tense music playing]
There was blood spatter
that surrounded her on the walls,
and there was a bloodied soap next to the sink,
which made me think Dana
may have started to clean up the scene.
[Dobson] The murder of Dora Beebe
shows me that Dana was getting more into this.
We have an escalation of the crime
from picking the victim
to the violence and force that was used.
[Martha] With the evolution
of the four incidents,
violence becomes easier.
She's kind of desensitized herself to it.
[Donnie] Once Dana is sure that Dora is dead,
she takes her trophy.
She took Dora's bank book
and went to the bank
and obtained $2,000.
So again, she is...
finding trophies.
She is rewarding herself for what she has done.
She is happy
after she had taken the life of another elderly woman.
[Martha] She is taking care of her own
narcissistic needs.
"I need to go get money out of her bank account
so I can get what I want and what I need."
Ultimately, Dana felt the world
had deprived her of these things,
so she was going to take them.
[tense music playing]
[Donnie] But police don't know
about the murder of Dora Beebe
when they finally catch up with Dana Sue Gray.
[Greco] We hit her boyfriend's house
in Lake Elsinore.
I'm in the lead. I've got all these guys
with me with guns.
Dana goes, "What's this about?"
And I go, "I think you know what this is about."
And I handcuff her.
I go, "You're under arrest."
Once I took her into custody,
we did the follow-up investigation
with Dorinda Hawkins and she picked her out
of a photo line so she's...
No problem.
She picked her right out.
She said the hair is different, but that's her.
It all just kinda fell into place.
Once Dana was in custody,
there was a house of cards.
It fell in.
[ominous music playing]
[tense music playing]
[Greco] So we get Dana into the station,
put her in the interview room.
And as I'm walking through the station,
I saw two detectives
from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department
using our report writing room.
And I go, "What are you guys doing here?"
And they go, "We had a murder tonight in Sun City."
The person that found Dora Beebe
was a long-term boyfriend
who had observed the body in the house
and called to report her as being murdered.
I know I should have thought,
"Wait a minute, there's a connection?"
It didn't... It didn't hit me at that point.
And I was just too focused on interviewing Dana.
So we get Dana in the interview room,
do the Miranda rights,
she waives her rights,
agrees to speak.
She starts making mentions
of finding this purse
and using the card.
And I'm confused. I'm like, "What are we talking about?
What was the name on the card, right?"
And she brings up the victim's name.
She goes, "Dora Beebe."
And it hits me.
So I get up in the middle of the interview
and I walk to the Riverside detectives
and I go, "What's the name of your victim?"
He goes, "Dora Beebe."
I go, "Don't go anywhere. I got your suspect."
[Donnie] With Dana now in custody,
police execute the search of her home.
In Dana Sue Gray's home,
there were lots of shopping bags
filled with miscellaneous items
that had been recently purchased.
And that's what we compared to the receipts that we had.
We looked to see if there was a hairbrush
containing blonde hair and possibly red hair,
showing the progression of dyeing her hair.
In one of her vehicles, the Cadillac,
we found the box of surgical gloves.
And so this could be the vehicle
that was going between locations
when she was committing the murders.
[Greco] We had a lot of evidence
that tied her to all of the victims.
I remember having to go through every shoe
to see if we could find a match
for the Norma Davis scene.
And we found a shoe
that matched the exact pattern,
the exact size.
She had clothes still
with tags on them
where she went on a shopping spree
with June Roberts' credit card.
We found the key
to the cash register in her house
that went back to Dorinda Hawkins' case.
And $2,000 that was taken
from Dora Beebe's bank account in Sun City,
we found that money in her stockroom.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Elissa] And there were threads
that ran through each of those cases
that tied them all together,
Dana Sue Gray being the hub where the evidence
that we obtained from her home
tied her to the other scenes.
The victimology and all of the different scenes,
similar type of victim,
female victims, elderly, some vulnerable,
all of those made me believe
that we had in fact the right individual.
[tense music playing]
[Tim] News leaked that they had made
the arrests.
It's totally shocking to me.
I mean, I just found out just now
that this is the person.
It's such a relief. I can't believe it.
[Tim] When the news came out,
they had a big press conference.
And they were talking to the rarity
of a female serial killer,
the rarity of a woman
using violence
as opposed to more of a quiet means,
which most female serial killers
are associated with.
There are not a lot of female serial killers,
and Dana Sue Gray appears to be
one of the most lethal and cunning.
You can see in her pattern
that it would have only continued
to become more vicious and led to more victims.
I think she's a thrill killer
and a retribution killer.
Retribution was very large
in her mind, I believe,
"Because the whole world refused to give me
what I wanted,
beginning with my mother,
who would not give me what I wanted."
[Donnie] Back at the station,
Detective Greco questions Dana Sue Gray.
I think she knew that it was over.
I think she knew it was up.
We have finally caught her.
She was crying the whole time.
[Dobson] It was very strategic crying.
She was not genuinely remorseful.
She was pissed off that she had been caught,
and her mind was busy trying to figure out
how the hell to get away with this.
[ominous music playing]
[Jeri] Around midnight, a phone call came through.
It was Joe.
And he said, "Jeri, she won't admit a thing.
I think we need Russell down here.
Maybe she'll admit it to her dad."
[Greco] She keeps talking about wanting
to see her father.
So we brought him in there.
And she was just...
She was just distraught, crying.
Made her feel better and he was giving her a hug.
I'm sure he was completely confused
by what the heck was going on.
He didn't know what we had
or what the evidence was.
[Jeri] Russell was in there quite some time.
He came out, he had tears in his eyes.
He said, "Jeri, she said she didn't do it."
She said, "Daddy, I didn't hurt anyone."
[tense music playing]
Dana never admitted to anything,
you know, in that room.
[Dobson] I think the person
in the interrogation was a new Dana.
We've got this forceful lioness of a woman
who just got cornered.
He was going to work very hard
to lie, fabricate her story,
and manipulate
all the individuals around her.
[Jeri] That night after the interview
with Dana,
Russell and I talked
and he accepted that it must be true
but he couldn't believe it.
He wasn't angry with me for turning her in.
He said that he probably thought
I had saved lives.
That day Russell changed.
He became very withdrawn.
He only had a few close friends,
but the rest of the world, he just kind of shut out.
I don't know if Russell slept that night.
I did, finally.
Dana was in custody
and she couldn't hurt anybody else.
[Donnie] Dana sits in jail waiting for her trial
and clinging to her claim of innocence.
[Tim] Several days after she was arrested
and in custody,
I went to the jail
in hopes of getting an interview with her.
I got in the jail
and went up to the women's floor
and she saw me there.
I identified myself
and told her I had reported about it.
And I said, "This is your opportunity
to set the records straight."
Dana was scowling
like a angry demeanor.
She just said no and walked away.
[Donnie] Dana refuses to admit any involvement
in the gruesome deaths of Norma Davis,
June Roberts, and Dora Beebe,
or the assault and robbery of Dorinda Hawkins.
But with the staggering amount
of evidence against her,
the prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
Dana pleads not guilty,
but there's a catch.
She pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
At which point,
I was requested to conduct an evaluation
by Rich Bentley, the District Attorney.
Over my professional life,
I've evaluated many serial killers.
But this is the only female serial killer
that I ever saw.
They are very rare.
Dana understood what her job was.
To convince me
that at the time
she did not know what she was doing.
She cried a number of times,
but I noted that sometimes she appeared to cry
but there were no tears.
Sometimes, people try to feign sadness
when there isn't any.
I never really saw any outright anger.
She could admit that there was anger
that had triggered her,
but I didn't see it.
I did see a lot of resentment.
And, "Why me?"
And, "Look how they done me wrong?"
She claims that she was
looking in herself outside herself,
kind of detached,
and that she did not remember
significant portions of what happened,
but most of the time with serial killer,
that's not going to fly.
With the four murders,
you have to find yourself in four different places
at four different times.
And that you were dissociating
and you don't quite remember
doesn't quite cut it.
The pattern for Dana
is that there are elements of premeditation
in all of the killings.
So I concluded that she did know
that what she was doing
was wrong and illegal.
She did not meet the standard for insanity
at the time of any of the crimes.
[Donnie] After years of delays,
Dana's trial is set to begin on September 8th, 1998.
But with just a week to go before opening arguments,
Dana throws everyone a curve ball.
She pleads guilty to avoid the death penalty.
[Greco] I think the reason why she took the deal
was because the psychological evaluations on her
came back confident
and then she would've had to gone through a trial.
And there was just overwhelming evidence
that would've convicted her.
Part of the plea bargain agreement was,
"I'll plead out to these three.
That would be June Roberts,
Dorinda Hawkins, and Dora Beebe.
But you can't come after me for Norma."
[Bob] I think Dana
didn't want to admit to anyone
that she killed my nana, ever, including her dad.
She can't face anybody
if she says she killed my nana.
[Martha] She wanted to have a relationship
with her father,
but she would have lost that relationship
had she admitted to killing Norma.
[Dobson] And she doesn't want
to lose the support
of her father's money
and putting money on the books for her canteen.
She is the perfect pairing
of that entitlement and narcissism
and that antisocial behavioral harm to others.
Lack of remorse, does not give a [bleep].
But Norma had to be off the table
for her to be willing to confess
to the other incidents.
The victims' families were all consulted
as to whether they approved of this
but not my family.
They were not contacted in any way,
and they deeply resented it.
They really thought they should've had a voice
in what happened to her.
[Donnie] In exchange for her guilty plea,
Dana is sentenced to life in prison
without parole.
I don't have a problem with her
getting life without parole.
I do have a problem with her not being charged
of my nana's murder.
[Jeri] Dana has never said to me
or to anyone else that I know of
that she feels anything
for these people that she killed.
The closest she ever came to it
was in a letter to me
in which she said, "Yes, there is remorse."
To me, that's not an apology.
It's not an explanation.
It left me with just as many doubts
as I've had before.
I did visit Dana when she was in the facility.
I took Russ there on a weekly basis.
The first time it was fine.
The next time we went to see Dana,
I suddenly got ill.
I felt like I was in the presence of evil,
just plain evil.
I was sick to my stomach.
I left the room immediately and went downstairs to wait.
I don't know why I got sick
but I couldn't stand to see Dana.
And I never went back.
[tense music playing]
[Bob] My only closure is that every day she lives,
it's probably not a good day for her.
She's got a tough time and she's had to think about
all the horrible, horrible things
that she's done.
Had she had a chance to hone her crime,
and not have been caught,
I think she would've been one of the most notorious killers
of our time.
It made me realize that killers walk among us.
And you don't even know it.
They can be your cousin,
your grandchild,
your neighbor,
your friend,
your stepdaughter,
somebody you've skydived with.
[Jeri] I don't know why Dana did this.
She wanted what she didn't have.
She thought I had more money than I did
so she wanted that.
She wanted the condo.
She wanted a better car.
She just plain wanted.
[ominous music playing]
Dana Sue Gray's month-long murder spree
terrorized the people in her community and beyond.
She chose elderly victims
who couldn't fight back,
easy targets for this twisted psychopath
who seemed to crave the thrill of killing.
To this day, the families of her victims
remain haunted by the nurse who became one
of America's most notorious female serial killers.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg,
thanks for watching.
Good night.