Wife convicted of killing husband

A 61-year-old Newport, Wash., woman faces at least 25 years in prison for murdering her 70-year-old husband last year – a crime her 71-year-old boyfriend helped cover up. With a backhoe.

A Pend Oreille County Superior Court jury took two hours Wednesday to convict Mary Rosalee Gray of first-degree murder in the May 2006 shooting death of her husband, Robert Allen Gray.

Including a mandatory five years for use of a firearm, Mary Gray faces 25 to 31 2/3 years in prison. Judge Rebecca Baker is scheduled to sentence her Nov. 30.

A murder charge against Gray’s boyfriend, John Kingsley Pate, was dismissed in August 2006 for lack of evidence. He pleaded guilty this month to first-degree rendering criminal assistance, in a plea bargain that required him to testify against Gray.

Pate faces six months to a year in the county jail. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 1.

Gray didn’t testify, but her attorneys, Chris Bajalcaliev and Barrett Scudder, suggested Pate committed the murder.

Deputy Prosecutor Mike Carbone said Gray, who has wed at least eight times, married Robert Gray shortly after he was widowed in February 2005. Carbone said a sheriff’s investigation showed Mary Gray got her husband to deed his home in Newport to her on May 17, 2006, and she shot him to death five days later.

Carbone said Pate and three other witnesses testified that Mary Gray later told them she killed her husband. The witnesses included two friends and a grandson Gray legally adopted.

One of Gray’s daughters also testified against her. Jennifer Renee Holden became suspicious of her mother and reported her stepfather missing a week after he disappeared.

Gray had offered friends and relatives several conflicting explanations for her husband’s absence.

Holden said she saw her mother and stepfather driving toward Holden’s rural acreage on Sky Ranch Road, near Sacheen Lake, as she and her husband were driving away on May 22, 2006 – the day Robert Gray is believed to have been murdered.

Holden said her mother told her in a cell phone conversation that she and her husband planned to go for a walk on Holden’s land.

Holden told authorities she never saw her stepfather again, but she frequently saw Pate at her mother’s and stepfather’s home in Newport. She said Pate was helping her mother dispose of Robert Gray’s personal belongings.

Then, on May 30 last year, Holden’s husband told deputies he had remembered his backhoe was moved on the day he and his wife saw the Grays approaching their home as they were leaving. So he followed the backhoe’s tracks to a remote area where a hole had been dug and filled.

Also on May 30, Mary Gray’s friend Margaret Ann Luke told deputies that Gray told her in a phone call that she had killed her husband and was on the lam.

Carbone said Mary Gray’s cellular phone was traced to a transmission tower near Missoula, and Missoula police subsequently located her vehicle at a Motel 6. Police arrested Gray and Pate after coaxing them out of their room with a ruse about a gas leak.

Authorities found Robert Gray’s body buried where the backhoe tracks ended. He had been shot twice, and one round pierced his heart.

The bullets and two shell casings that were found nearby matched a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol Pate admitted hiding for Mary Gray.

Pate testified that Gray asked him to check the gravesite for fear she hadn’t buried the body deep enough, and he tried to improve her work.

A witness testified he heard shots and saw Pate and Gray using the backhoe, and she told him she killed and buried a dog.

The family dog’s “death” figured into various explanations Gray offered for her husband’s disappearance, but authorities found the animal alive and well.

The dog was kenneled for more than a year as evidence, but wasn’t called into court.