The Sailor
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Behind every homicide case is a process, an investigation, and people seeking answers. And it takes more than reading the headlines to get to the true heart of these stories. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, a former New York City homicide prosecutor. And I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. Each week on our podcast, Anatomy of Murder, we dissect real homicide cases from the perspective of those who have lived them—investigators, prosecutors, and the people impacted most.

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to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Hi, Park Enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today came from a listener submission, which then led me to an interview with an integral witness who played a small but important role in finding justice for the victim in this story.

This is what I really appreciate about so many of you who tune in every week. You're actively engaged and want to help. I'm so thankful for that. Keep the suggestions coming. DM the Park Predators Instagram or submit a case through the website, especially if you're someone who's related to a victim or was involved in one of these investigations.

The story I'm going to get into in this episode takes place in Yosemite National Park in California, which is an iconic, popular national park in the U.S., known for its stunning views, scenic overlooks, waterfalls, rock climbing, and so much more. One of my favorite viewpoints is Tunnel View, which has a parking lot just outside of a tunnel that allows you to see the famous Half Dome Mountain, Bridal Veil Fall, and El Capitan Cliff, all simultaneously.

My husband and I spent some time at this spot when we visited the park a few years ago on our honeymoon, and I've been longing for the day that we go back. Little did I know, though, before researching this story, that this location, such a beautiful scenic view I've been yearning to spend more time at, was once a terrible crime scene. A crime scene that was almost overlooked, if not for the right people coming forward to raise all the red flags. This is Park Predators. ♪

On the evening of Saturday, December 5th, 1987, a man who I'll call Don was hiking up the Pahono Trail in Yosemite National Park when he heard what sounded like a man and a woman arguing.

Because Don had previously worked for Yosemite Search and Rescue, he was familiar with the area and knew that the voices were further away from him, like back down towards where he got on the trailhead. But it was dark, so he wasn't able to see exactly who the two people were. Where he was hiking was on one side of a two-lane road known as Highway 41, and he was up some switchbacks. So below him and across the roadway was the parking lot for Tunnel View's Scenic Overlook.

And it was that parking area where he believed the voices were coming from, because he could still see a few cars parked there. Now, the reason I'm referring to Don as Don and not his real name is because he asked me not to use his real identity in this episode. I'll get more into why later, but for now, just go with it. Don wasn't alone on his evening hike, by the way. He had a friend with him who he described as physically handicapped.

So I imagine they weren't going at a very fast pace, just sort of slowly making their way up the trail. And this friend heard the same thing that Don did. A man and a woman getting into it at the Tunnel View parking lot, and their discussion just kept escalating. The longer the yelling went on, the more intense the couple's arguing got until finally, a car door slammed, followed by the distinct sound of a glass bottle, maybe a wine bottle, hitting the pavement but not shattering.

Don told me in his interview that the bottle sound indicated to him that the couple who was arguing might have been drinking. He didn't know that for sure, but it was an assumption he made at the time. During his time working in the park, he'd heard and seen all kinds of things, including domestic altercations at popular attractions, like Tunnel View. Anyway, right after hearing the bottle hit the ground, he heard another sound that was a bit more concerning: a woman's scream. And then, silence.

He described the sound as a woman screaming bloody murder, so a very desperate sounding scream. The immediate silence that followed got Don's hackles up, but he told me that he had zero interest in going down to the parking lot to check things out and get involved. He had a gut feeling that something wasn't right, but at the same time, he went into self-preservation mode and figured if a crime had been committed, he didn't want to put himself or his friend in danger. So he did nothing.

Not long after this scream, he overheard what sounded like someone getting into a vehicle and driving away. A few days later, though, while hanging out at a deli in Yosemite with a bunch of climbers and other rescue squad personnel, Don overheard these folks discussing a recent body recovery that had happened in the park.

Now, he hadn't heard anything about such an incident, so he asked the people in the deli for more details and learned that the National Park Service was investigating the death of a woman who'd seemingly fallen off a cliff directly next to Tunnel View parking lot. Don put two and two together and realized he might have some important information to share with the NPS.

So he went to a nearby District Ranger station and told staff there his story of having heard a woman scream a few nights earlier on Saturday, December 5th. The next day, personnel from the U.S. Attorney's Office and FBI agents asked Don to meet up with them at Tunnel View. He agreed to the request and the day after that ended up touring officials through his movements on the night he heard the woman scream. But that was only part of the full picture.

What Don didn't know was that authorities had been dealing with a missing persons case that had turned into a death investigation, and things were still very active and fluid. According to news coverage at the time, on the evening of Saturday, December 5th, so the same time Don had been hiking with his friend on the Pahono Trail, a man named Stevie Allen Gray had reported his 24-year-old wife, Dolores Gray, missing to park rangers.

Stevie claimed that they'd visited Tunnel View together on their way to Badger Pass and Glacier Point. But around 4:30 p.m., Dolores had mentioned she wanted to go for a walk by herself. So Stevie stayed behind in their car. He waited for her to return, but she never did. So by 6:00 p.m., he'd gotten worried and contacted authorities to report her missing. That night, investigators launched a search for Dolores, which included the use of two dog teams, nearly 20 people, and a helicopter.

But after hours of searching, no sign of her turned up. Efforts were called off around midnight, but picked back up again the following morning, Sunday, December 6th. Around 1 p.m. that afternoon, everything halted, though, when authorities discovered Dolores dead at the base of a cliff next to the scenic overlook. She was some 350 feet down an embankment, and it was clear she'd sustained catastrophic injuries. She was clothed with her shirt hiked up, her pants pulled down, and her jacket off.

Her body was removed and transported to the local county coroner's office for an autopsy. The results of that examination were that she died as a result of a fall. The National Park Service was the lead agency over the case, and a spokeswoman told the press that as far as everyone could tell, Dolores' death appeared to be an accident and foul play was not suspected.

And honestly, this conclusion made sense at the time because there is a spot in the far corner of Tunnel View's parking lot where a couple of boulders create a barrier to keep people from going off into the landscape. But if you go around or over those boulders, you'll end up in a small clearing with some shrubs that essentially lead you right up to a cliff. Don told me that this particular spot is one of those deceiving areas of Yosemite where if you didn't know a canyon was there, you could easily fall right over the edge.

And this was the exact area where Dolores had reportedly gone for her walk. So all things considered, the NPS wasn't totally off base in thinking that she'd just fallen. Fast forward a few days though, and investigators were forced to reconsider that conclusion when they interviewed Dawn.

Because while walking authorities through his movements on the evening of Saturday, December 5th, his description of what he'd heard while across the street and above the Tunnel View parking lot seemed to contradict with what Stevie Gray, Dolores' husband, had told authorities. You see, Stevie claimed that when his wife failed to return from her walk, he'd hollered her name over and over again for about 15 minutes or so.

However, when authorities interviewed Don and his friend, they told investigators that they'd never heard anyone calling out the name Dolores. The only thing they'd heard was the verbal argument, the scream, the sound of the glass bottle dropping, a car door shutting, and then a vehicle driving off. No further yelling, nothing. Law enforcement's suspicions that something wasn't quite right with the case grew even stronger when they escorted Don to the cliff above where Dolores' body had been found.

While looking around, he mentioned that there appeared to be what looked like skid marks or some kind of disturbance on the ground near the edge. And because Don had a lot of experience in the park and was a rock climber himself, his insights and observations were helpful to investigators who, at that point, according to Don, hadn't even looked for evidence in the area or treated the cliff like a potential crime scene.

In fact, Don told me that when he was first taken to the cliff, the FBI and staff for the U.S. Attorney's Office straight up told him that park rangers had pretty much trampled the scene during the search for Dolores, and they'd done nothing to preserve or collect evidence after she was found. So unfortunately, because of that, and the fact that investigators didn't have hard evidence to actually detain Stevie, the case stalled. Stevie went on living his life, and Don moved on too.

But behind the scenes, a few FBI agents weren't willing to let their suspicions lay. They spent months periodically interviewing Stevie and digging into the Grays' lives. And what they found was eye-opening.

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According to coverage by the Fresno Bee, in 1987, Stevie Gray, who was also 24, was an enlisted sailor for the U.S. Navy and stationed at Lemoore Naval Air Station, which is located south of Fresno, and about a three-hour drive from Tunnel View Overlook in Yosemite.

As investigators stitched together his and Dolores' lives, they learned that the couple had met in May 1987 and gotten married a few months later in August, about four months before her death. Shortly after saying, "'I do,' Stevie had taken out two life insurance policies on his wife that, when combined, totaled about $437,000."

Dolores also had an insurance policy with her job for the Internal Revenue Service in Fresno, and that was reported to be worth $66,000. So in total, with all three policies accounted for, Stevie was the beneficiary of just over half a million dollars. Now, as you can imagine, the FBI became really interested in this life insurance situation.

And they discovered court records which showed that one day after Dolores' death, Stevie had tried to cash in on the funds, but the insurers didn't want to pay out. So instead of taking no for an answer, he'd sued the insurance companies in civil court. Evidence he used to support his case was the life insurance policies that bore Dolores' signature, indicating that she'd approved such large amounts of coverage being taken out on her prior to her death.

But still, Stevie trying to claim the insurance proceeds and then suing for the money so quickly after his wife died just left investigators feeling very icky. And they weren't alone. Dolores' mother, Ramona, and other relatives who lived in Dolores' hometown of Clovis, California, had never felt quite right about Stevie's version of events.

They'd followed up with investigators after Dolores died and encouraged officials to keep looking into Stevie's background because they suspected he might have been abusive toward her during their brief marriage, and he'd possibly hurt other women throughout his life.

For example, an article by Charles Mylos for the Fresno Bee quotes one of Dolores' brother-in-laws, who said that when Stevie first came into Dolores' life, he'd seemed really nice. But then after they got married, he changed. Like, literally within a few days of getting hitched, he and Dolores were said to have fought a lot. And this happened in Ramona's house where they were living at the time. Eventually, things got so bad between them that Ramona, Dolores' mother, ended up having to move out of her own home.

During that time, Stevie would also leave for weeks on end and tell Dolores that he was on assignment at sea for the Navy. But turns out that wasn't the whole truth. Dolores' family ended up discovering that he was living with another woman near the air station during the time he wasn't at home with Dolores.

So I imagine this, oh, and plus the fact that Dolores' brother-in-law also said they'd learned Stevie had gone to Yosemite National Park like three or four times one month before Dolores died, naturally made family members suspicious of him and just not big fans. Which is why Ramona and other relatives had raised red flags to investigators after Dolores died.

Ramona also retained an attorney and countersued Stevie in civil court to try and prevent him from obtaining the life insurance money for Dolores. Regarding this issue, Dolores' brother-in-law told reporter Charles Mylos, quote, We're just trying to keep him from getting it. We're not trying to get it. But we don't want him to get it. End quote.

Eventually, the case took a major leap forward when on Friday, October 20th, 1989, almost two years after Dolores' death, a federal grand jury in Fresno reviewed the case and decided to formally indict Stevie for her murder. At his arraignment the following Monday, he pleaded not guilty and was held without bail pending his trial.

The maximum sentence he could receive if he was found guilty was life in prison without the possibility of parole. His public defender told the court that the case against Stevie was entirely circumstantial, which he wasn't wrong. It was. But the assistant U.S. attorney over the case responded that despite that fact, the evidence that did exist was overwhelming and suggested that Stevie had premeditated Dolores' murder.

By the time this all went down, the Navy had discharged Stevie back in May 1988, and when he was arrested, he was no longer living on base at Lemoore Naval Air Station. He was actually sitting in jail in nearby Hanford, California, after being arrested and convicted for, wait for it, abusing a woman he'd been living with.

And kind of a side note, an interesting detail I read about that situation explained that during the day, Stevie was, I guess, allowed to be in a work program or something, and then at night he had to report to jail and be physically behind bars. I know, it seems like such a strange arrangement to me, but that's what I read.

Anyway, him having that conviction on his record, I'm sure, didn't do him any favors. And as his murder case approached trial, there was his personal and criminal history for the court to consider, as well as a lot of other things, including how exactly the government planned to present the location of the crime scene to future jurors.

The Fresno Bee reported that at one point during pretrial proceedings, the judge contemplated allowing potential jurors to physically travel to the Tunnel View overlook and, you know, walk the edge of the cliff where Dolores had died. But that was going to require a safety walkway be built, but like not where it would impede jurors' ability to see the rugged condition of the terrain.

And I guess because this task just posed too much of a potential danger to future jurors, the idea was eventually abandoned and a model of the landscaping cliff was created instead. Which came with a pretty substantial price tag, by the way. Some $18,000 in late 1980s, early 90s money. So not cheap. In mid-June 1990, about eight months after Stevie's arrest and nearly three years after Dolores' death, the trial got underway.

The prosecution presented the argument that Stevie had pushed Dolores on purpose so that he could claim her life insurance money. The government used its model of the scenic overlook where she died to show jurors exactly where he'd been and where her body had ended up. They also used the model to give panel members a sense of how their argument all fit together. And when I say the prosecutor didn't pull any punches when he gave his opening statement, I mean it.

He outright accused Stevie of being a liar, a philandering husband who was motivated by greed, and a manipulative person who'd essentially lured his unassuming wife to a violent death.

One major detail the prosecution couldn't prove, though, was whether Dolores had been assaulted prior to going over the cliff, or like forced to the edge. Because she'd suffered such horrible injuries, there was no way for authorities to delineate between what damage had been caused as a result of her impacting the granite rock face, and, for example, what might have been the result of having been beaten. The defense's argument about what happened stood in stark contrast to the government's allegations.

Stevie's team claimed that it was Dolores who'd initially gotten the idea to take a trip to Yosemite National Park in the first place. However, when the couple arrived, Dolores got upset with Stevie and confronted him about him cheating on her with other women. One thing led to another and they had a verbal fight in the Tunnel View parking lot, which ended with Dolores walking away, by herself, to try and find a restroom.

The defense claimed that Dolores didn't know there wasn't a bathroom facility located at the viewing area, so she'd mistakenly kept walking along an unmarked trail in the dark until she fell to her death. Meanwhile, Stevie had apparently drunk too much champagne and fallen asleep in their car, seemingly unaware of what had happened to his wife. About two hours later, he'd woken up and realized Dolores had never returned, and that's when he alerted authorities.

But according to news coverage and court documents, Stevie had given a few different accounts of this story when he'd spoken with park rangers and FBI investigators prior to his arrest. On the night he initially reported Dolores missing, he'd told two park rangers that he'd fallen asleep and then woken up to find his wife was gone.

While speaking with even more rangers about a month after Dolores' death, he'd said something similar but also brought up the fact that insurance money he had coming to him likely wouldn't cover the cost of a funeral for her. When he first spoke with FBI agents a few weeks after the incident, he said he had never attempted to collect on his wife's life insurance. But then later retracted that statement and admitted that he did know about the policies and how much they were worth.

An article by the Fresno Bee stated that when authorities continued to press Stevie, he eventually admitted to hearing his wife scream after she walked to find a restroom. But then he'd passed out in their car. Another version he provided was that he'd actually followed a path that he believed led to where she'd gone walking. But then he turned back after hearing some screams because it was dark and he didn't have a flashlight to help him see where he was going.

That version of the story never really seemed to add up though, because when park rangers searched his vehicle, they discovered a flashlight was just sitting inside, which I imagine wasn't a good look for Stevie. Anyway, if all that wasn't bad enough, his story changed yet again while in another meeting with the FBI a few weeks after giving his first statement to them. During that interview, he gave another variation of his story, and when things got tense between him and one of the interrogating agents, he asked for an attorney.

He did, however, allow agents to collect samples of his handwriting and copies of his fingerprints for analysis. And it was the handwriting samples that would become crucial at trial, along with damning earwitness testimony from none other than Dawn.

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That's promo code PARCPREDATORS at TaskRabbit.com for 15% off your task. TaskRabbit, book trusted help for home tasks. Okay, so like I mentioned at the start of this episode, Don is not the real name of the earwitness I talked to in Dolores' case. He asked me to respect his privacy and not name him directly because this case was very well known in the Fresno area in the late 80s and 1990s, and he still lives in California.

So I respected that, and in return, he agreed to do a formal interview. He was one of the government's star witnesses at trial, and because of that, he was involved in several meetings with the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office to go over his statement and testimony. During a few of these meetings, he picked up bits and pieces of information about the case that now, years later, he was willing to share with me.

According to Don, court filings, and an article by the Fresno Bee, investigators believed very early on that in addition to taking out the life insurance policies on Dolores, Stevie had also forged her signature on the documents, naming himself as the beneficiary. Apparently, Dolores had been completely in the dark about the policies, and something that kind of supported that was the fact that her name had been misspelled in her signature on one of the documents.

That was a red flag because Dolores worked as a government clerk for the IRS and reportedly signed her name on paperwork all the time, like multiple times a day. So it didn't make sense that she would misspell her own name. To further prove this point, Don told me that the FBI went through Dolores' work records and compared her signature to the one on the life insurance policy. And not only had she never misspelled her own name on any of her work documents...

Her signature that was on those records and the one that was on the life insurance paperwork wasn't a match. Don told me that during the trial, the prosecution called handwriting experts who testified that the signature on the policy was not Dolores's. In his own defense, Stevie took the stand and tearfully explained to jurors that he might have heard his wife fall to her death, but he wasn't next to her when it happened.

He said that the original story he'd told authorities about passing out in his car while Dolores took a walk to find a bathroom was a lie, and claimed that the real story was that he'd had some alcohol that evening and fought with Dolores about his extramarital relationships after they'd arrived at the parking lot. Then she walked away. He told the court the more investigators questioned him in the days and months after the incident, the more he began to suspect that they would eventually accuse him of killing his wife.

He stated that he loved Dolores and had nothing to do with her death. But investigators and the prosecution disagreed with that statement and maintained that the circumstantial evidence indicated Stevie had planned his wife's murder for months, perhaps even as early as before they'd formally exchanged marriage vows. The government argued Stevie had only married Dolores to eventually cash in on her death.

Don told me during our interview that he learned Dolores' family had kind of been duped into some of Stevie's alleged lies too. Like, apparently at one point Stevie had claimed to be a Navy officer and pilot, which wasn't true, and would even go as far as dressing up in an officer's uniform in order to pick up women at local bars. All the while, Dolores and her family were none the wiser and believed he was who he claimed to be.

Dolores' brother-in-law described her to the Fresno Bee as a trusting Christian woman who appeared to want to see the good in everyone. So, I mean, just based on that characterization, I think she could have been the perfect mark for someone like Stevie, who was clearly leading two different lives, maybe more.

What's interesting to me, though, is that Stevie testified in court that back in May 1987, so when he first met Dolores, he'd started thinking about getting life insurance because he'd learned that his naval squadron was due to deploy to the Persian Gulf sometime at the start of 1988. And according to court documents, the policies he'd purchased included coverage for himself, but also paid out about $145,000 if his spouse died.

plus an extra $32,000 if that death was the result of an accident. The prosecution proposed to jurors that because Dolores' clothing seemed to be in a state of undress when she was found, that could mean one of two things had happened. One, Stevie had waited for her to be in the process of relieving herself and then pushed her off the cliff, which might explain why her jacket was off and her pants were pulled down and her shirt was hiked up.

Or, scenario number two: her clothing had come off as a result of the fall. Which, to me, the latter feels less likely, but I get what the prosecution was trying to do. Basically, come up with a reasonable explanation for why Dolores' clothing was in such an obvious state of disarray. Now, I didn't find anywhere in the source material that indicated sexual assault was involved or suspected of being involved in this case.

Which is something that first came to my mind when I read the details about Dolores' clothing. But that doesn't seem to have been a factor. Anyway, on Friday, July 6th, 1990, Stevie's jury deliberated and found him guilty of first-degree murder.

Dolores' family was in court when the verdict was read and had an outburst of emotion. The assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case told reporter Royal Calkins that even though things weren't great between the family and Stevie, they had known that Dolores loved him very much, and so it made it that much harder for them to come to terms with the reality that he'd actually killed her.

Stevie was supposed to be sentenced this September after his trial ended, but that hearing was pushed to November to give the prosecution more time to respond to post-trial motions the defense had filed. Those filings argue that there was insufficient evidence to merit a conviction, and therefore Stevie should get a new trial. The defense attorneys also argued that the proposed sentence of life in prison was unconstitutional. A judge denied those arguments, though, and sentenced Stevie to life in prison without parole.

During the sentencing hearing, Stevie said, quote, it's unfair. This whole thing is unjust, end quote. He appealed his conviction in 1991 and again in 1995, but both petitions were denied. According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website, he remains in federal prison to this day. I searched an online database for the court records related to Stevie's federal murder trial and the civil lawsuits regarding Dolores' life insurance money.

But many of those records are either no longer around or they were never scanned into the Public Access to Court Electronic Records Service, also known as PACER. So I can't tell you exactly what happened with the money from her policies, except that it appears none of it went to Stevie since he's still incarcerated for her murder. The only detail I could find was that the lawsuits concluded in 1993 and 1994.

An article by Charles Mylos for the Modesto Bee stated that if Stevie's appeals were unsuccessful, which they were, then the funds would go to Dolores' family. So my hope is that's what happened. I know no amount of money will ever make up for the hole in their hearts, but I have to think that Stevie not getting a dime may have given them some peace.

I also read that ensuring Stevie's conviction for this crime felt like a personal mission for the team of FBI agents who worked nearly two years on it, and then even more years to see it through to trial. After Stevie's first appeal was denied, the former lead agent on the case told the Fresno Bee that the reason he'd remained so dedicated to seeing justice served was because he felt like his team owed it to Dolores to make sure that the person who took her life did not go unpunished.

And that's exactly what happened. Dolores got the justice she so very much deserved. And she could finally be at rest. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No!

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