CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 1995, 12 P.M.

“Do you know why I’m here?” the psychiatrist asked.

Dr. Martha Rogers wanted to put her subject at ease. Dana, sitting across the table from the short, stocky psychiatrist, seemed anxious. They sat in an interview room at the jail, separated by a desk. When the psychiatrist arrived, the guard had insisted that a deputy be posted nearby because, the deputy warned, Dana had a history of assaulting staff members, but Dr. Rogers thought the presence of a deputy would inhibit Dana during their session. The deputy finally agreed to a compromise—that a guard could watch them from just outside the interview room through the glass-paneled door.

“To test me to see if I am really crazy, I guess. Nobody has sat down and said, ‘This is what we are looking for,’” Dana said, breaking into tears. “It was so hard for me to change my plea. It took me almost a year to decide to change my plea because it took me that long to come to grips to understand a lot of what happened.”

On March 10, 1995, Dana went to court, withdrew her “not guilty” plea and pleaded “not guilty by reason of insanity,” which means that, under California law, a defendant was “incapable of understanding the nature and quality of their acts” and could not distinguish right from wrong when the crime was committed. The psychiatrist was well aware that the insanity plea was not the sole source of Dana’s distress. Most of Dana’s anxiety came from the legal notice, filed by prosecutor Rich Bentley several months before, informing the defense that he intended to seek the death penalty. Anything she said to Dr. Rogers would be used in court before jurors who would decide whether she was guilty, whether she was insane and whether she deserved to die.

An insanity plea would add another layer to a criminal trial. The first part of her trial would be staged like any other trial where evidence about the crimes would be presented to a jury, which would render a verdict of guilty or not guilty. If she were to be found guilty, the defense would carry the burden of proving that Dana was insane during the commission of the crimes. The same jury would deliberate a second time to reach a verdict regarding her sanity. If the jury were to find that she was insane, Dana would be sent to a state mental hospital, which would have the authority to release an inmate back into society once they found that the inmate’s sanity had been restored.

But if the jury were to find that she was sane, the trial would enter the third phase, where the prosecution would try to convince jurors to recommend the death penalty, and the defense would present more evidence in the hope that jurors would recommend a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. In this phase, the prosecution would highlight the egregiousness of her acts, bring relatives of the victims, and introduce her record of misbehavior in jail, illustrating that her violent tendencies continued after her garrest. The defense would undoubtedly describe her productive life helping people as a nurse, and Dana’s family and friends could testify in an effort to convince jurors to spare her life.

Dana’s lawyer first suggested an insanity defense shortly after her arrest, but Dana resisted. As the months wore on and she reflected on being emotionally whipsawed by an unhappy marriage, alcoholism and drug abuse, multiple miscarriages, bankruptcy and joblessness, an insanity defense made sense to her. Who wouldn’t be pushed against the wall by these psychological landmines? In preparation for a possible insanity defense, Stuart Sachs had hired a psychiatrist a few weeks after Dana’s arrest to conduct a full psychological examination.

Bentley had been waiting for an insanity defense. He had tried to get a psychiatrist to interview Dana the night she was arrested, but once she invoked, he was legally prevented from having an expert examine her. He knew that Sachs had very little to work with in mounting a defense. Dana was using the victims’ credit cards and checks within minutes of the murders, clerks and cashiers identified her and were backed up by handwriting comparison, and all the merchandise from the stores was found at Dana’s house. Dorinda also identified Dana, and her eyewitness testimony was backed up by the fact that the antique-store keys were hanging on a hook on Dana’s entertainment center. Bentley had wanted to file charges against Dana for the Norma Davis murder, but if he had, it would have slowed the entire case, since she would have had to be separately arraigned on that sole charge, and she would be entitled to a preliminary hearing before it could be consolidated with the other charges. But he was planning to present evidence of Norma’s murder under a section of the penal code allowing the introduction of evidence of similar crimes—type of victim, time of day the murders occurred, relationship of the victim to the accused, choice of weapon, etc.—to show continuity in the violent conduct of a defendant. He also intended to use the Davis murder in the penalty phase of the trial.

Insanity cases could be a nightmare for the prosecution, depending on the willingness of a jury to believe the experts. If Dana were to be found insane, she could go to a mental hospital and be released in a matter of months if one of the hospital psychiatrists found her to be sane. Then she would be released back into the community. In the two insanity cases he’d tried, Bentley was prevented by law from warning jurors in his closing argument that if they found a defendant insane, they could look for that person haunting their neighborhoods in a few years. Bentley also knew that Riverside County jurors didn’t like the insanity defense—it was very tough to get an insanity verdict—and he figured Sachs knew that as well.

When Dana changed her plea, Bentley hired Dr. Rogers on behalf of the prosecution and Sachs hired another expert, Dr. Lorna Forbes, for the defense, even though Dr. Michael Kania was about to wrap up his report. By the time Dr. Rogers sat down with Dana in April, Dana had already undergone twenty-five separate sessions over nine months with both Kania and Forbes. Even so, Dr. Rogers did her best to soothe Dana’s fears about the exam and answer her questions, explaining that she had been hired by both the defense and the prosecution in the past to examine defendants in various criminal cases and had, in several cases, found inmates to be insane. Dr. Rogers’ charge was to perform a thorough psychological examination of Dana and submit a report to the judge containing her opinion on whether Dana could distinguish right from wrong at the time she killed or assaulted her victims.

Each of the three experts obtained a full written history from Dana about her childhood, her parents, her brothers, and major incidents in her upbringing, her marriage, her education and her career. Each of the experts interviewed family members, friends and former co-workers. Each expert administered a full complement of psychological tests, including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the Rorschach inkblot test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Personality Assessment Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, and the Thematic Apperception Test, in which the subject looks at black-and-white drawings and suggests scenarios they might depict. The written tests, like the Millon Clinical Multi-Axial Inventory III, includes a series of true or false questions asking the subject to describe themselves, such as, “I know I’m a superior person, so I don’t care what people think.” “People have never given me enough recognition for the things I’ve done.” “If my family puts pressure on me, I’m likely to feel angry and resist doing what they want.” “I often criticize people strongly if they annoy me.” “I’ve had sad thoughts much of my life since I was a child.” “I am often cross and grouchy.” Dana seemed to be in an upbeat or perhaps sarcastic mood when she filled out one of the forms, listing her occupation as “jailbird.” Some of the questions are patently bizarre, like those in the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms, designed to root out disorders like paranoia, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive behavior, multiple personalities and schizophrenia. The questions must be read by the examiner and start off with a cluster of inquiries bearing the same prefix: “Do you have any major problems with … people reading your mind?… noticing very strange smells?… fighting evil forces?” “When outside, do you become afraid of things like grass or flowers?” “Do you often have upsetting sexual thoughts which bother you only on elevators?” “Is the government trying to keep track of your actions? Are they using military aircraft to do this?” “Can common insects be used for electronic surveillance?” “Do you believe that trees have supernatural powers?” “Do you have any unusual beliefs about automobiles? Do you believe they have their own religion?”

Dana answered “no” for most of these odd questions, but did agree that she sometimes felt as if she were “physically outside of” her body.

“During the crimes, it was like I was watching myself doing the crime, but it wasn’t me, it was like watching a movie with the sound off. There was only a little sound in two of them,” Dana said. “If that is out of your body, it’s the closest I can describe it.”

As part of the evaluation, each of the experts interviewed Dana about the murders and the assault on Dorinda. She was not questioned about killing Norma, since Bentley had not filed that charge against her. In each case, Dana said that the victims provoked her by making comments that made her feel ridiculed and rejected, and when they turned their backs on her, Dana slid a rope around their necks.

*   *   *

“Who was number one?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“June Roberts,” Dana said.

“Tell me about that morning.”

Dana said that June had been raking when she drove up with Jason in the car, and that June had “started right in with my marriage and divorce,” which angered her. She characterized the religious, health-conscious widow as being intensely critical of Dana and her marriage. When they went inside for the vitamin book, Dana claimed that June continued to berate her about her marriage.

“She kept on and on and on about Tom, how I did not do enough, and I lost it. She pushed that final button,” Dana said.

“Where were you when that happened?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“Right behind her. I choked her with the phone cord.”

“Do you remember wrapping it around anything other than her neck?”

“Oh yeah, that chair. I remember a chair but I don’t know where it came from … It just all happened at the same time really fast to me.

“It was like I just … I don’t know how to describe it any other way than I lost it. I was just so consumed, utterly pushed off the edge … it must have been quick. As I walked out, she had a little wallet thing. I grabbed it and left. Then I drove us home.”

Dana told the psychiatrist that it wasn’t planned and that she was so stunned afterward that she took Jason home, despite receipts showing that she was using June’s credit cards within the hour. Dana admitted to the psychiatrist that she’d used June’s credit cards, but claimed she was shopping primarily for Jason.

“We went out and proceeded to shop up a storm,” Dana said. “I felt a need to get a bunch of stuff for Jason. I spent a lot on him.”

Dr. Rogers wanted to zero in on the moment when Dana “lost it.”

“She was talking to me face-to-face,” Dana said, “then she turned her back on me and just kept getting at me … without letting me get a word in edgewise. It was just her non-patience, her demeanor that it was my fault, her judgmentalness, that look on her face. As she turned around, she had a look of … big disappointment, disgust,” which Dana said triggered thoughts of unworthiness and rejection. “I was real fragile.”

In a subsequent interview, Dr. Rogers again asked Dana what she was thinking when she lost control.

“That I was making my mother shut up,” she said. “It just built up—the continuing condescending attitude. ‘You are worthless. You failed. I told you so,’” Dana said.

“Did you think she was your mother?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“I was so out of it, so consumed, so enraged, I cannot answer that question right.”

“What did you see and hear from the past?”

“Her carping at me. I just wanted to shut her up, that is all. That simple—just shut her up.”

Dr. Rogers was the third psychiatrist to interview Dana. The first one, Dr. Michael Kania, reported that Dana at first claimed to have found the credit cards in the trash, then said she couldn’t recall assaulting June Roberts. Dana finally admitted killing June, focusing on her anger that June had fetched the wrong vitamin book.

To the second psychiatrist, Dr. Lorna Forbes, Dana said that she became incensed after June lectured Dana while she and Jason sat in the Cadillac. “June said that I didn’t work hard enough. My responsibility was to make the marriage work. I was really angry. I should have just left. She wouldn’t stop berating me. It was all I could do to control my anger.” When June brought out the wrong vitamin book, she said she became explosively angry as she followed June into the house. She told this psychologist that June became “a creepy female image” that reminded Dana of her cancer-stricken mother, making her so nauseated, she wanted to vomit. That’s when she reached for the phone cord.

To Dr. Rogers, Dana never mentioned the “creepy female image,” downplayed the vitamin book and claimed that June had tapped into her poor self-esteem by taunting her about her marriage. She told each psychiatrist that she went home “stunned,” and went shopping after sitting at home for several hours, instead of going out shopping immediately, as the restaurant and store receipts indicated.

Dr. Rogers asked her about the sequence of events and Dana candidly described the sequence of the attack.

“I think I hit her after I used the phone cord. I pulled her down so she was on her back and hit her with the wine bottle …

“I really don’t have any explanation for my actions, I really don’t, but I wish I did.”

Dana continued her attack on June verbally, twisting the perspective to make herself the victim.

“I was shocked that June came on to me about Tom and I.” June was “snippy … She was really weird after Duane died. She turned into a different person.” Dana said that when she and her parents had run into June at the clubhouse a few weeks before the murder, she’d “snubbed us off.” When Dr. Rogers talked to Russ and Jeri later, both of them said that they could not recall June ever being cool to them, although June naturally was somewhat withdrawn as she mourned the death of her husband.

When asked about Dorinda, even Dana seemed pressed to come up with why she had attacked the antique store clerk. She told Dr. Rogers she wasn’t sure what it was about Dorinda, “but she really, really got me. She really bothered me. She reminded me of my mother in her alcoholic stages.

“I don’t know if she said anything to provoke me or what, I really don’t know. But I ended up choking her with yellow propylene rope.”

Dana said that they fought, and recalled Dorinda trying to poke her with a broom, but once Dorinda told her about having eight children, she says she let go. She recalls telling Dorinda to “relax” in the same manner she’d told her mother to “let go” the night she died. Dana said she walked out of the antique store feeling nauseous and thinking, “What the hell have I done?” In all of the interviews with all of the psychiatrists, this is the closest Dana ever came to expressing remorse. Dana said she quickly overcame that feeling and visited a beauty salon and a grocery store that afternoon.

Dana minimized her conduct during June’s murder with the first psychiatrist, Dr. Kania. But she told him that she “woke up” during a scuffle with Dorinda, something she didn’t repeat to the other two psychiatrists. She told Dr. Kania that Dorinda looked like her mother, “like a fat barfly … She had a fat barfly look, a pathetic barfly trying to look happy … acting like she was real important.” Dana said Dorinda “put her down” and made her feel insignificant. Afterward, she said she tried not to think about the attack, but felt depressed and “lashed out in anger” at anything that got in her way.

When she was interviewed by Dr. Forbes, Dana said Dorinda “struck a pose. She gave me a look saying, ‘Can I help you?’ She comes up and crosses her arms in a condescending manner. I felt sick in my stomach. I wanted to vomit. I wanted her to die.” Dana told Dr. Forbes that she saw the “creepy feminine image” in Dorinda’s face and after she showed Dana some frames that Dana didn’t like, she slipped the rope around Dorinda’s neck when her back was turned.

When Dr. Rogers interviewed Dana, she no longer tried to reason that Dorinda’s appearance as a “fat barfly” had motivated her to kill.

In answer to specific questions from Dr. Rogers, Dana claimed Dorinda handed her the key to the cash register that was on the plastic coiled ring and that she took nothing else, in conflict with Dorinda’s account that Dana had taken the key ring off her wrist and fled with $20 from Dorinda’s purse and $25 from the cash register. While discussing this incident, Dana told Dr. Rogers that she put the key ring in her purse, in contrast to reports from officers searching Dana’s house, who said the key ring was hanging from a hook on the entertainment center. “They lied about that key being on the side of my entertainment center when it was right there in my purse. There’s no reason to lie about a stupid thing like that.” She also claimed she had close to $2,700 in her purse. When Julie Bennett went through Dana’s purse, she found $1,900 still in the wrapping from Dora’s bank and $170 in Dana’s wallet.

“They stole cash out of my purse and underreported what they said they found,” Dana said. Dana told Dr. Rogers that she got $50 in cash over the total of her purchase every time she used one of Dora’s checks, collecting a total of $600 to $700. If that were true, Dana would have had to have visited up to 14 different stores between the time she killed Dora and the time she was arrested, which conflicts with the task force’s account of her activities after the murder, the store receipts indicating the additional cash received at the time of purchase, and each of Dora’s numbered checks that were recovered, showing the cash received over the amount of purchase at each store. The location of the cash register key ring was noted and photographed when the house was searched. The desire for Dana to sling mud at the police might be explained by Dana’s history of striking out at those who hurt her.

Dana told Dr. Rogers that she had been despondent the day Dora was killed and had gone to see her father. When she found he wasn’t home, she drove toward Sun City and claims she “blanked out” while driving.

“I turned down a street I never turned down before and got lost,” Dana said. “All the houses look the same, they all have gravel in front. I saw one house with the garage door open so I stopped there.”

Dana said Dora invited her in when she told her that she was lost. Dana claimed that the church-going widow sighed and said, “I don’t have time for this,” but walked to the back of the house to fetch a Thomas Guide map book.

“So, she turned her back on me, continuing to bitch [while we were] somewhere in the back of the house. I choked her with the phone cord,” Dana said, adding that Dora made her feel the same way her mother did when she was yelling at her.

“I had that overwhelming, like, detached feeling,” she said. “Stupid as it sounds, I felt hurt and rejected. Actually, all of them were kind of like that, but when I look at them, that is so stupid, but that is how I felt.”

“Then what?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“I hit her in the head with an iron.”

“And then?”

“That was it. Her purse was on the right next to where we were. I took her wallet, the checkbook and passbook in it and I left.”

“Then what happened?”

“I had this overwhelming need to shop. I went to every grocery store in town, filled up my whole car with stuff, stuff I didn’t even need, cake decorations, Baxter’s soup.”

“What was going on when you used the iron?”

“I don’t know,” Dana said. “Why did I grab the wine bottle? The same thing, I don’t know why.”

“Was she facing you when you used the iron?”

“She was already down on the ground.”

“I would have to assume they were giving you a little fight,” said Dr. Rogers, who knew from examining the police reports and crime-scene photos that her victims desperately fought for their lives.

“No,” Dana said. “As I remember, it was not much of a fight.”

Dana told the psychiatrist that she put the iron in the sink and rinsed off her hands with a towel and water. By the time Dr. Rogers asked her about where she’d shopped that afternoon, Dana had forgotten her accusation the police about taking $600 to $700 in cash from her purse. Dana recounted her visits to the bank, grocery stores, the stationery store and the health food store, which accurately accounted for the cash found in Dana’s purse and corresponded with the receipts and the the checks belonging to Dora that Dana used.

With Dr. Kania, Dana’s story of killing Dora had huge gaps. She said she was “in a haze” after leaving her father’s house, got lost and felt “pulled to” Dora’s house. She told him that she didn’t recall exactly what happened, except that she stopped to ask for directions. When Dora told her that she was “in a hurry” and “didn’t have time for this,” Dana told her that she recalls seeing the back of the victim’s head as they walked down the hallway and next recalls seeing Dora on the ground and seeing an iron on an open shelf in the hallway. She told Dr. Kania that she recalled picking up the iron, but didn’t remember hitting Dora with it, saying she “woke up” after the murder. Her next memory was seeing the bloody iron in the sink, but she didn’t look at Dora’s lifeless body on the floor. At the time, Dana said, she’d thought, “There is nothing you can do with this person … she’s beyond help.”

Despite being “spaced out, like it was surrealistic,” and feeling grief and tremendous sickness, Dana managed to find Dora’s bankbook, checkbook, and other credit cards, which Dana said were conveniently sticking out of Dora’s purse, got back into her car, and somehow found her way to the local shopping center. Within minutes of killing Dora, Dana’s alleged confusion didn’t prevent her from finding Dora’s bank and signing Dora’s name to her checks. She told Dr. Kania that she’d had an overwhelming need to “stock up” because she sensed doom.

In her interview with Dr. Forbes, Dana said the “creepy female image” was superimposed on Dora’s face after Dora allegedly said that she “didn’t have time” to help her. When Dora turned her back, Dana said she became enraged and used the phone cord and threw Dora to the floor. In this version, Dana remembered reaching for the iron and bludgeoning Dora with it. She told Dr. Forbes that she bought a briefcase because she recalled that her mother wore a uniform and carried a briefcase to a Scientology meeting, something she didn’t tell the other psychiatrists.

Dana told Dr. Rogers that after the attack on Dora, she realized she had a “major problem” and wanted to get some counseling.

“I needed help, but no one was willing to listen to me.”

When Dr. Rogers asked Dana whether she’d considered confiding in Jim or her parents, Dana reversed herself and said she was “petrified” about talking to anyone and said that she didn’t trust Jim. “I didn’t want to talk to him. I was very evasive.” She said she couldn’t unload “something like this” on her parents.

“You realized there was a problem?” Dr. Rogers asked.

“Yeah, all of it was a big cry for help in a sick way,” Dana said. “Yeah, I have this problem; I don’t know exactly what it is. I sure would like to fix it; I would like to feel it is fixable.

“I’m not quite sure what it will take, but I really want to get through this. It’s killing me.”

DECEMBER 29, 1996

Your Honor,

My mother, Dora Beebe, was killed March 16, 1994. The after-effects of that death have plagued our family, wreaking hardship, illnesses, sleeplessness and horror-haunted mental images of how she must have suffered. We all, after nearly three years of living with an unfinished tragedy, need closure. We need to put it behind us.

The trial of Dana Gray, accused of my mother’s murder, has been postponed again and again. The defense has obtained many continuances, and we feel that the time has come to put an end to them.

Please do what you can to see that further continuances are minimized and give the survivors (who are also victims) a chance to resume our lives.

Sincerely yours,

Julia Whitcombe

It’s hard to explain years of delay to witnesses and relatives of victims as the judicial system lumbers along at a glacial cadence. As the years passed, Rich Bentley periodically received calls from relatives of the victims asking when the trial would start. Trial dates were set and continued at the request of defense, and to the dismay of the victims’ relatives who found the process never-ending, emotionally exhausting, and nightmarish. Judges, defense lawyers and prosecutors understand why this is so. It’s the nature of the defense, in most cases and particularly in death penalty cases, to delay as long as you can in hope that the passage of time will dull the memory of witnesses and increase the chances that evidence will be misplaced or lost. A defense attorney would rather not risk having jurors see a tearful, frightened Dorinda Hawkins pointing a trembling finger at her attacker just a few months after she was left for dead at the back of an antique store. Why not let time heal the victim’s psyche, so when Dorinda finally faces her assailant years later, she is composed, unafraid, and perhaps unable to remember each detail of the attack? Trying a heinous, sensational case shortly after a highly publicized crime spree—particularly when fear of the killings is still fresh in the minds of potential jurors—fairly guarantees a conviction and the harshest possible sentence. In Dana’s case, each new murder and attack was well publicized, and with the publicity came a steady increase in public fear and pressure on authorities and law enforcement to catch the killer. It was the same group of individuals from whom jurors would be selected to sit in judgment of Dana. It is to the defense’s benefit to allow a generous cushion of time to soften the public’s memory and to blunt the emotional impact should they be called as jurors.

Once Bentley indicated that he would seek to send Dana to Death Row, he knew the case would automatically slow to a crawl. A defendant facing capital punishment is automatically allowed to have two defense attorneys—at taxpayer expense—to share the increase in work inherent in death cases. Another reason for delays was a series of requests for discovery, i.e., that the prosecution turn over to the defense all of the police and lab reports, evidence logs and every piece of evidence and paperwork the prosecution intends to use against a defendant. Stu Sachs often sought delays in order to obtain and review the materials turned over by the prosecution. After Dana’s insanity plea there was another delay as each side appointed experts to examine Dana and render their opinions. As more time went by, the second defense attorney left the practice of law to became a court commissioner, a position similar to a judge. Another attorney had to be appointed to assist Stu and needed months to become familiar with the case. There were more delays when the defense attorneys had to try other cases, including another death penalty case that had been scheduled before Dana’s trial. Then the defense filed motions to cease the photocopying of Dana’s mail and the taping of her visits. Dana’s case was then assigned to a different judge in another courtroom.

Bentley was ready to try the case and was prepared to deal with an insanity defense. It had been no surprise that Dr. Forbes and Dr. Kania had found that Dana was legally insane at the time of her actions. In his 23-page report, Dr. Kania concluded that Dana was suffering from severe, psychotic depression tinged with alcoholism, though he hedged his opinion as to whether she was aware of her criminal acts. “There is indication that at times she was aware of what she had done, but at other times she experienced a sense of unreality and estrangement from her actions … She took the wallets of two of these women in an action reminiscent of her actions as a child when she took money from her own mother’s wallet when she had been mistreated by her mother.” Dr. Forbes wrote a 29-page report finding that Dana had an “unspecified disassociative disorder” coupled by depression and alcoholism and a series of “severe losses.” “She had absolutely no awareness of the enormity of her offense as she acted on bizarre distortions of the identity of older women, all the result of earlier maternal abuse.”

Bentley had tried two insanity cases to completion, and in both cases, the defense attorneys had hired Dr. Kania, who concluded that the defendants were insane. Bentley cross-examined Dr. Kania both times and found that he wasn’t even using the latest forensic definition of legal insanity, but was quoting outdated case law. He was aware that Dr. Kania was often the expert of choice among defense attorneys and that he usually found that defendants were insane. Bentley was not familiar with Dr. Forbes, but he disputed both experts’ opinions. If Dana had no awareness that her actions were wrong, why would she wash off the blood after the killings? If she didn’t know what she was doing, how did she find banks, stores and restaurants so quickly after the killings? How did she know that she needed to sign the victims’ names on the receipts? If Dana had no awareness of her actions, why did she cease her attack on Dorinda after Dorinda’s pleas to spare her life because she had eight children?

Bentley found more satisfying answers in Dr. Rogers’ hefty and comprehensive report. At 163 pages, it not only offered a thorough examination of Dana’s mental state, but discussed and dissected the other experts’ diagnoses and compared the consistency of Dana’s answers to their questions and psychological tests with answers Dana gave to her, as well as follow-up questions to Dana and a comparison of Dana’s behavior with what others observed during her childhood, at work, and at home. Dr. Rogers found that while Dana was most certainly a disturbed individual who suffered from depression and abused alcohol, she was sane.

One of the biggest hurdles in reaching a diagnosis was evaluating the veracity of a defendant who clearly had a stake in the findings and who had been first evaluated by “friendly” defense experts before an expert examined her at the behest of the prosecution. Dr. Rogers said she sympathized with Dana’s dilemma.

“I think this lady has really struggled with how much to be honest because obviously her life is on the line,” Dr. Rogers wrote. “Overall, I think she has done about as well or better than many individuals facing the death penalty—a lot more open than many, since some defendants, of course, never even acknowledge their crimes. But she was a lot more unreliable, distorting or selective in her reporting than I have seen in cases which were ultimately adjudicated as insanity.”

She noted that Dana’s alleged loss of memory of the murders when discussing them with Dr. Kania seemed to have disappeared by the time Dr. Rogers interviewed her. “This most likely reflected some kind of systematic and self-serving withholding of information rather than actual loss of and return of memory … I think she started out feigning some memory lapses which, to her credit, she later thought better of doing and gave up.”

Dr. Rogers was also suspect of Dana’s statements that she’d felt hurt, insulted and rejected by the victims just prior to the attacks. They conflicted with Dana’s own answers on tests and interviews with people familiar with Dana’s inclination to strike back with “castrating zingers,” to never let people take advantage of her and to project blame when in conflict with others. The psychiatrist questioned Dana’s reliability regarding the severity of the abuse she’d suffered from her mother, reports of suicide and suicidal thoughts, the history of her symptoms and her mental state. “The noted fluctuations [about her history of symptoms and mental state] appeared to be situational and/or a result of attempting to deny or exaggerate to herself and others about the severity of her disturbance at various times, perhaps in part to make herself feel better, or to obtain empathy from others, or to find an explanation that would make it easier to live with what has happened, or to build a rationalization for her offenses.”

She noted that Dr. Kania’s diagnosis treated seriously Dana’s claim that she was suffering from hallucinations, particularly hearing voices. Dr. Rogers found that this was not noted by either of the two psychiatrists who saw Dana prior to the offenses in 1993 and early 1994, was not noted or mentioned by Dana during her multiple mental health screenings after her incarceration, and was not even noted by Dr. Kania until after he had been seeing Dana for five months. After Dana complained of hallucinations and delusions in October 1995, she was examined by a jail psychiatrist with negative results. She also denied having auditory hallucinations to Dr. Rogers, who said Dana’s answers on exhaustive psychological testing were not consistent with hallucinations or delusional thinking. The “voices” Dana reported hearing, Dr. Rogers said, “were a product of her own mind and were internal conversations and did not reflect a major loss of reality.”

The most curious aspect of Dana’s crimes—her choice of elderly women as victims—was explored by Dr. Rogers. Dana admitted that she’d never linked her crimes with any maternal issues until after Dr. Kania “really, really dug” and encouraged her to consider that possibility.

“While she saw the victims as similar to her mother in various ways, and they ‘reminded’ her of her mother, she didn’t believe they were her mother. There was not the precipitous loss of reality testing of a delusional person. Most crimes perpetrated as a product of hallucinations are in reaction to fear of being harmed … which was not the case in these crimes, nor had she suffered any ‘command hallucinations’ telling her to perform the crimes.”

The maternal trigger seemed suspect to Dr. Rogers after looking at how Dana first chose victims with clear family ties. When Dana thought that might focus attention on her, Dr. Rogers suggested, she switched to strangers.

Dana had told each of the examiners about voices telling her to stock up, in reference to what she claimed were food shortages as a child, but neither her brothers nor the boarder Michael Carpenter recalled a lack of food. Dr. Rogers said Dana later admitted that they were not actually voices, but an “inner need.” She added that luxury items like fancy foods, clothing, perfume and toys “hardly constitute things one would be stocking up for the holocaust. Rather, the procured items were consistent with her past reported shopping patterns … She made hair appointments, went to restaurants, and had a massage. The alleged nihilistic delusions about needing to shop because of some feelings that the end was near or the holocaust was coming and she needed to prepare for it simply have little credence…” In interviews, her family and friends reported her preoccupation with money, her propensity to buy what she wanted when she wanted it and her persistent and manipulative pursuit of a great aunt to change her will. Court records indicated that she’d been having financial problems since 1988, which points to Dana’s focus “on her own wants and lack of concern about the needs and feelings of others to the point of ruthlessness,” Dr. Rogers wrote.

The question of whether Dana knew what she was doing at the time of the murders was answered by Dr. Rogers’ examination of the crimes. The use of multiple means to kill a person, she wrote, “is more indicative of a greater degree of sustained intentionality, deliberation and malice in killing than crimes where one method only was used. The repeated efforts to choke Hawkins, where she reported that she nearly passed out or did pass out several times is also indicative of a sustained intention to deliberately kill.” Dana said she had at one point calmed down from an earlier insult before entering June’s house, but got angry again, which Dr. Rogers said suggested deliberation rather than a build-up of anger and loss of control. When she took June’s credit cards, she selected those within a close geographic radius and left behind those from JCPenney and the Broadway department stores, showing that she consciously sorted through the cards rather than just grabbing them, as she claimed.

In the attack on Dorinda, the limited conversation between her and Dana was enough to suggest that Dana never lost awareness of what was going on during the attack. Even when she entered the store, Dana asked if Dorinda was “alone again,” which suggests premeditation and an awareness of what she was about to do. Dana’s awareness of her crimes was also apparent in the fact that she left no fingerprints, cleaned blood from herself, threw away June’s credit card when she was done with it, hid credit cards of Dora Beebe’s in a drawer at home and knew that she had to sign the victims’ names on the credit card receipts and checks. Dana had expressed to the psychiatrist her surprise at the time that the bank teller didn’t ask for ID when she withdrew $2,000 from Dora’s account, a clear acknowledgment of wrong-doing. Shortly after the murders, Dana had the presence of mind to lie to a cashier who recognized the name and asked if Dora was all right. Dana had replied that Dora wasn’t feeling well.

Dr. Rogers had trouble determining the degree to which Dana’s drinking affected her when the offenses were committed because Dana gave contradictory accounts, sometimes grossly exaggerating and sometimes minimizing her alcohol intake. Dr. Rogers suggested that Dana could have consumed alcohol when the offenses were committed, which would have heightened her impulsiveness, irritability and inclination to project blame. Dr. Rogers also had difficulty sorting out the conflicting and contradictory information Dana gave about her suicidal thoughts in her personal history to her and the other psychiatrists, and also to jail psychologists. None of Dana’s friends—including her best friend—and no family members recalled any suicide attempts or threats.

Dr. Rogers concluded by saying that her pattern of crimes was consistent with a serial killer, albeit a very unusual one with three clear psychological triggers: a desire for money, a desire for power and domination, and displaced family anger.

Simple maternal hatred didn’t fully explain Dana’s homicidal rage. She suggested taking a longer look at Dana’s childhood pattern of hurting people when she felt humiliated or didn’t get the attention she felt she deserved. Cutting holes in her mother’s dress, wetting her half-brother’s bed and trashing her teacher’s classroom involved “violence” toward inanimate objects, and reflected choices she made as a child.

“These childhood ‘crimes’ parallel her adult crimes to a greater degree than the thefts [of money] from her mother … These incidents of acting out include similar psychological elements as these crimes, of feeling put down and enraged over loss of face, of feeling humiliated…” Dr. Rogers noted that individuals who face far more severe childhood deprivations and abuse also become enraged, but do not kill people. In addition, the vast majority of truly mentally ill people do not kill.

Rather than looking at problems with her mother, Dr. Rogers suggests looking at Dana’s bank balance at the times of the murders. “Spending money was one of the ways Dana Gray habitually dealt with the void of her unmet emotional deficits and narcissistic need to fulfill herself through possessions. She reported a childhood of both being spoiled and also financial deprivation. As an adult, she had become used to buying what she wanted.” Even after she became unemployed, she purchased golf lessons, bought a $1,000 mountain bike, redecorated her home, placed Jason in a private preschool and continued with her hair and manicuring appointments.

Ultimately, it wasn’t money or unresolved maternal issues that motivated Dana to kill. Although Dana hit the stores within minutes of her crimes, shopping wasn’t the sole or even the primary goal in each crime. Dana’s satisfaction, Dr. Rogers found, came from domination, power, and control over her victims.

*   *   *

It makes sense, Rich Bentley thought after reading Dr. Rogers’ report.

Given the multiple modes of death and the prolonged struggles with the victims, Dana was a classic power killer who enjoyed watching her victims suffer as she extinguished them, like a child making a bug squirm under a magnifying glass. After years as a nurse, Dana had become desensitized to the sight of blood and had no doubt seen patients die. What Bentley couldn’t fathom was how she left these very bloody, very messy crime scenes and went shopping for hours without so much as a speck of blood on her, or at least none that people noticed.

As the months rolled by, he had watched the pile of letters to and from Dana pile up in his office. He had read through a few of them and had discerned a few that might be useful in showing that Dana was not insane. Now he was accumulating letters from the victims’ families. They wanted Dana brought to justice. Bentley sympathized with them. He hoped that the fusillade of letters to the judge would do some good. When he had gotten another call from the Beebe family weeks before, they’d suggested writing a letter and he agreed, thinking it could help move things along if the judge knew that they, too, were waiting for their day in court.

Bentley picked up the bundle of letters from the Beebes, thinking it was tragic that Dana was so wrapped up in herself that she chose to hurt truly innocent victims that were so cherished by their families.

“I was always glad to bring my friends home, when I was a child, because I was so proud of my mother,” wrote Julia Whitcombe:

She was pretty and funny and warm, and a better cook than anyone else’s mother. One of my friends recently told me how my mother was the only person who made her feel pretty as a child. She made our clothes, and sometimes fashioned the patterns as well.

Her family was my mother’s principal preoccupation … but she had other interests. She could make anything grow in her garden, she knew who’d won the latest golf tournament, the football, baseball or basketball game. She was up to date on the news and informed about local and national concerns. Nobody made a better pie. Her quilts were lovely. Music and friendship with Lou Dormand filled much of her life in recent times, as did caring for the most pampered cat this side of the Mississippi.

Our entertainment consisted almost entirely of family visits to all the sisters and grandmothers on both sides of the family. In the American Legion Hall and the Church, we had pot luck dinners, went to the dances and sang, sang, sang. Mother’s voice, a sweet soprano, sings on in my memory. She always sang to us—silly songs, old songs. I sing them now to my grandchildren.

As my sister and I went through the house after Mother was killed, we encountered little pieces of paper, in her handwriting, of quotes or maxims that had been meaningful to her. I liked this one, “They say ‘don’t look back when you get old’ but I spend a lot of time doing it anyway. Maybe if I’d known that when I was young, I’d done a lot of exciting things so I’d have better old lady dreams.”

I wish her old lady dreams had not ended in a nightmare.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1998 10:30 A.M.

“Miss Gray, I’m going go over the charges. If you have any questions, please ask.”

Judge Dennis Myers looked down from the bench at the accused killer in the blue jumpsuit, huddled with her lawyer. During her stay in jail, Dana’s weight had ballooned upwards of fifty pounds. Her brown hair was now completely gray, the curls just brushing her shoulders. The gallery was half-filled with weeping family members holding hands in the front row. Behind them were an assortment of reporters and photographers.

“Your attorney has indicated that you wish to withdraw your plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and enter a plea of guilty to each of the charges in accordance with a plea agreement. In exchange for your plea of guilty, the district attorney will recommend a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. Is that your understanding?”

Dana nodded her head and said, “Yes.” It was barely audible.

“In count one, you are charged with Penal Code Section 187, the willful, deliberate and premeditated murder of a human being, to wit, June Roberts. To count one, how do you plead?”

The courtroom was pin-drop silent.

“Guilty.”

The relatives of June Roberts let out a sigh. Their hands were now clasped in a human chain across the front row, their heads bowed. Van Owen, his knuckles white from grasping his wife’s hand, lifted his tear-stained face heavenward. As the judge carefully read each count, the victims sobbed silently, releasing emotions they had been holding back for years.

Dana’s trial had been scheduled to begin September 8. But one week before, Stuart Sachs had called Rich Bentley and told him that Dana wanted to plead guilty to everything in exchange for life in prison without parole. The prosecution would be spared the expense and the victims the emotional trauma of a trial. Dana would avoid rolling the dice before a jury, which could send her to Death Row. Each side threw in a sweetener. Bentley agreed that he would not file the Norma Davis homicide against Dana. Sachs agreed that Dana would waive her appellate rights, meaning that she would forfeit her right to appeal any aspect of the case. That meant the case would be over for good. Bentley suspected the defense might have been motivated to take a plea by the Dora Buenrostro trial. That August, Riverside County jurors convicted the 39-year-old woman of killing her own children, rejected an insanity defense and sent her to Death Row. She was the first woman sentenced to die from Riverside County. Bentley didn’t know how much of an effect it had on a decision to offer a plea agreement, but he was looking at ending the case on the eve of trial.

Bentley had called the relatives and told them about the offer in order to get some feedback, and found them grateful that Dana would finally admit her crimes. For them, it would be a relief to end the case. In a meeting with District Attorney Grover Trask, Bentley and Sachs, they weighed the support from the relatives’ families with the question of whether Riverside County jurors would recommend a death verdict for Dana, who had lived a crime-free life until the murders. Trask had agreed to accept Sachs’ plea bargain.

Just a few feet away, Dana sat at the counsel table with her back to the grieving relatives, the hard, metal chain wrapped around her hips and binding her ankles as three deputies stood watch. As the victims’ families silently sobbed, Dana used her little girl voice, saying the same word over and over again:

“Guilty.”

*   *   *

“Hey, Joe, we had your girl in here today,” the bailiff squawked over the police radio.

“What’re you talking about?” said Greco, cruising in his patrol car.

“Didn’t you handle the Dana Gray case?”

“Yeah, that was my case.”

“She pleaded guilty this morning. Good job.”

Greco was silent for a moment. Now working for the Riverside Sheriff’s Department, he was on routine patrol in Moreno Valley, a suburb of Riverside County. Greco used to work patrol with Dave Kirkendall until he was transferred and became a bailiff in Judge Myers’ courtroom. When Kirkendall saw Dana pleading guilty, he had the dispatcher patch him through to Greco in his patrol car. Greco couldn’t believe that no one had told him that Dana was going to take a plea. He would have wanted to be there.

“OK,” Greco said. “Thanks.”

It was over. No fanfare, no trial, no testimony, no tense moments waiting for the jury’s verdict. On one hand, it was anti-climactic, but on the other, it felt satisfying that the case was over. Greco slid the radio mic into its slot and drove to the nearest satellite police station, where he used a land line to call Bentley, who filled him in on the plea. Bentley told him about Sachs’ offer to plead to everything in exchange for LWOP. The DA’s office gave up charges for Norma’s murder and the defense gave up the right to appeal. Bentley said it all happened pretty quick. Greco was so excited, he had to go tell someone. He felt like celebrating. He drove back to his station and told his sergeant and they talked about the case and some of the difficulties he had had with the investigation. Greco left after a few minutes to go back to work. While he felt happy and satisfied, a part of him felt hollow.

Greco got back into his patrol car to think. Over the years, bits and pieces of the case had always been in the back of his mind. What nagged him the most was Dora’s death. Could he have arrested Dana any sooner? If they had arrested Dana sooner, would Dora still be alive? Could he have moved any faster? He had been haunted by Dora’s murder and felt partially responsible for her death, replaying the events of that day over and over again in his mind, starting with Jeri’s phone call and ending with Dana’s arrest, trying to see if he could have done anything differently. But after looking at the timelines, he realized that by the time he got off the phone with Jeri, Dana was gone. Even if he had left his office at the Perris station and driven straight to Dana’s house, she would not have been there anyway. He knew it was no comfort to Dora’s relatives, but at least Dana did not kill anyone else and would never have the opportunity to hurt anyone again.

Then there was Norma’s murder. Greco never understood why Bentley didn’t file murder charges against Dana. There was never any question about who killed Norma. It wasn’t a whodunit. But since the case was never filed, Dana was never formally held to answer for that charge, leaving Norma’s death in a void. Greco considered Dana’s acceptance of the plea agreement a tacit acceptance of the killing. Besides, if Dana wasn’t responsible for Norma’s murder, why was it made a condition of the plea bargain? Agreeing not to file charges for Norma’s murder was the prosecution’s only concession in the plea bargain, and by Greco’s reasoning, Dana had admitted it.

Greco’s thoughts wound toward the victims and the domino effect the case had had on everyone associated with it. When Norma died, it sent Jeri’s daughter, Susie, over the edge. Dana could never legally be held responsible for Susie’s death, but even Jeri thought that the person who killed Norma also killed Susie. He heard that Alice Williams, Norma’s friend, had passed away several months after Norma’s death. Greco knew that she had been terribly shaken by Norma’s death. It didn’t seem fair that any of the victims, from Norma to Dora to Alice to Susie, had to die like that. Greco wondered about Dora’s beau, Louis Dormand. How many others were there? Was Dorinda ever able to put this behind her? What about the grief-stricken, sleepless nights that relatives and friends of the victims had to endure for the rest of their lives? Dana’s plea was one small comfort, but it could never replace what she took from them forever. Profound, prolonged suffering doesn’t grab headlines like a quick murder.

Now it was over. Dana was not going to walk away from this and she would never get out to hurt anyone else. Greco felt satisfied that he was able to be part of it, but he knew he would never stop wondering if he could have done more or solved the case sooner.

*   *   *

A few months later, Greco paid a visit to Russell and Jeri to see how they were doing. Russell looked much better. The last time Greco had seen him, he was tense, tired and weak. Now he was cordial and calm and seemed optimistic, and offered Greco a drink. Dana’s plea was well behind them and she was already in prison serving her life sentence. Even though Russell still cursed Bentley, he seemed happy about the plea bargain and understood that Dana would be behind bars forever.

“Her life’s all screwed up anyway,” Russell told Greco, sitting on the same couch he had when he used to visit Jeri during the investigation. “She threw her life away. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know where I went wrong and how she got so—bad.

“I wish there was something I could have done to help her.”

Greco didn’t know what to say, so he just let Russell talk.

“I’m not angry with you,” Russell said. “You were just doing your job.

“I know she’s not innocent. I just don’t want her to die.”

Hate the sin, love the sinner. Greco knew that Russ loved his daughter unconditionally no matter what she’d done. Greco personally thought Dana deserved the death penalty. But he knew that if Dana had been sentenced to die, it would have killed Russell. Russell was happy because he could still see her and talk to her on the phone and tell her that he loved her, a gift Dana had stripped from the victims’ relatives.

As he was getting ready to leave, Greco glanced up and saw the same clown drawing he’d seen hanging for years in their living room. It was a dark drawing and the clown seemed oddly ominous. Greco had heard that Dana was pretty good at drawing clowns while she was in jail and wondered if it was one that Dana had drawn or had given to them. Greco said his good-byes to Russ and Jeri as he headed out the door.

He knew there was a reason he always hated clowns.