Where Is Dana Sue Gray Now After Killing Elderly Women for Their Money?

The Independent called it “dark irony.” Dana Sue Gray, serving a life sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility for murdering two women and attempting to murder another, was advocating for female prisoners. 

“Most women are taught to just sit down, shut up, do what you’re told—that’s why we don’t fight back,” Gray told the news outlet in July 2024.  

Now 67, Gray has spent nearly 30 years incarcerated after taking a plea deal in which she admitted to a spree of violent attacks and going on shopping sprees with her victims’ money. But as part of that 1998 plea deal, Gray did not confess to what police believe to be the first crime in her spree. 

On February 16, 1994, Detective Joseph Greco of the Perris Police Department and his team were called to a horrific murder scene in Canyon Lake, Calif. The victim was 86-year-old Norma Davis. She had been stabbed 11 times and strangled with a telephone cord.  

“It was overkill,” Greco tells A&E Crime + Investigation. The crime felt personal to him.  

In the kitchen, investigators discovered a sneaker print, one they eventually did not match to Davis or one of her caregivers, per Greco. “It was a small shoe—that’s when I first thought, ‘This killer could be a woman,'” he says.  

Greco was initially suspicious of Davis’s former daughter-in-law, Jeri Armbrust, who took care of the senior. Armbrust’s family included her second husband, Russell Armbrust, and his 36-year-old daughter, Dana Sue Gray. But Gray was not a suspect yet. 

Just 12 days after Davis’s murder, on February 28, Greco was called back to the same gated community. June Roberts, 66, had been bludgeoned to death with a wine decanter and, like Davis, strangled with a telephone cord.  

As with the Davis case, valuable items had been left behind, but credit cards were taken. “The scene was so violent—the robbery felt secondary,” Greco says. Investigators believed that the two crimes were related, Greco says, although they had not yet connected them to Gray.  

When tracking down where Roberts’s credit cards had been used, which included a hair salon, Greco learned that the suspect was a formerly blond woman who got her hair dyed red at the salon. The young blond boy she was with had described Gray to the stylist as his “other mommy.” 

The next crime took place at an antiques store on March 10, 1994, in the nearby town of Lake Elsinore, Calif. After strangling store worker Dorinda Hawkins, 57, Gray stole money from her purse and took $25 from the shop’s cash register, according to criminal profiler Katherine Ramsland. 

Hawkins survived. Chillingly, Hawkins told investigators that when she offered Gray anything she wanted, Gray responded that this wasn’t about money. 

Greco and his team considered that this attack could be related to their murder investigations.  

Meanwhile, Greco maintained consistent contact with Jeri Armbrust. He described his new suspect to her as a redheaded, formerly blond woman, possibly the stepmother of a young blond boy, and asked if Jeri knew anyone matching that description. She didn’t. 

Days later, Gray came over to visit her stepmother—to show off her new red hair and brag about her relationship with her boyfriend’s 5-year-old, who she said called her “Mom.” 

After a sleepless night, Jeri called Greco, saying that she believed she knew the murderer.  

On March 16, 1994, police filed for a search warrant for Gray’s home. But hours before police executed the warrant, Gray followed 87-year-old Dora Beebe to Beebe’s home in Sun City, Calif. Gray then killed Beebe by strangling her with a telephone cord and beating her with a clothes iron. She also took Beebe’s bank book and withdrew nearly $2,000 from her account. 

When police searched Gray’s home, they found the cash, as well as shopping bags and tagged clothing from stores where Roberts’s credit cards were used. Per Greco, they also found sneakers that matched the print left at Davis’s murder and the keys to the cash register from the Hawkins crime scene. Hawkins identified Gray as her attacker in a photo, Greco says. 

Gray initially denied all the attacks, saying she’d simply found the credit cards and bank book. “I got desperate to buy things,” she told detectives. “Shopping puts me at rest.” 

When the prosecution sought the death penalty, Gray decided to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. But after she detailed her attacks on the other women to a psychologist, Gray was found competent.  

A week before her trial was set to begin in September 1998, Gray made a plea bargain. In it, she pled guilty to the Roberts and Beebe murders and the Hawkins attack with the stipulation that the prosecution would not charge her with killing Davis.  

“She wouldn’t confess to killing Norma because it was too close,” Greco suggests. 

Though Gray, who worked as a nurse before losing her job, was in debt at the time of the crimes, Greco maintains that robbery was never the primary goal. “You don’t just nearly cut somebody’s head off,” he says. “That’s rage. That is uncontrolled.” 

Greco thinks that, now that Gray’s father has died, she might confess to killing his wife’s former mother-in-law or perhaps Gray even told her dad she did it before his death. 

Still, Greco applauds Gray’s advocacy work with her fellow prisoners. “I think it's great,” he says. “I think she should do things like that.” After a pause, he adds, “I don’t know how sincere she is. I don't know how sincere anybody can be when they do that to people.”