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Printed July 24, 2001
By TAD DICKENS
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Delusions and prejudice festered for years in Ronald Edward Gay's mind, but it took less than a minute for Gay to give in to what those things were telling him to do - kill homosexuals.
The murder of Danny Lee Overstreet and three aggravated malicious woundings at the Backstreet Cafe resulted in four consecutive life sentences for Gay, a Roanoke judge ruled Monday.
Gay, who opened fire Sept. 22 in the Salem Avenue nightspot, also received three five-year suspended sentences on three counts of malicious wounding.
He pleaded guilty to the crimes May 10.
If the 55-year-old Gay should ever be released from prison on geriatric parole, he will remain on intensive supervised probation, Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein ruled. He would be eligible at age 65, but would have to be in very poor shape to be released, Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell has said.
As victims, their friends and family members walked away from the courtroom, some expressed satisfaction at the result.
For victim Kathy Caldwell, relief came through simply looking Gay in the eyes and letting him know she was OK. From the witness stand, she told the court about the loss of her left middle knuckle, and the struggle to regain relatively good use of that hand. Before she finished, she turned her eyes from the judge to the defendant's table.
"He just made me a stronger person. That's all he done to me," she said, as she and Gay stared straight at each other. Then she began to laugh, and kept laughing as she walked away from the stand.
Gay nodded his head up and down, then continued to look at her even as she sat down. He stared at her until one of his attorneys, Assistant Public Defender William Browning, interceded.
After the hearing, Caldwell said Gay pointed his index finger skyward, which she interpreted as an allusion to judgment day. Gay was just trying to intimidate her, she said.
"His intimidating days are over," said Caldwell, who also was shot in the right shoulder. "Now intimidation comes to him, when he goes to the big house."
Gay, who drifted in and out of Roanoke for years, is a native of Canada who became a naturalized citizen while he was a U.S. Marine fighting in Vietnam.
In an interview with police, he said he was angry about what the word "gay" had come to mean. He also told authorities that he had been on a mission to kill homosexuals since about the mid-1980s, but had not acted on it until that night at the Backstreet Cafe.
According to psychological reports, that was among four missions Gay says God had entrusted to him, Probation Officer Rebecca Farmer testified. The missions were: having all gay people move to San Francisco and to stop the spread of AIDS; stopping government corruption; stopping communism; and bringing fellow Vietnam veterans out of the mountains.
Gay and several family members and friends say that his experiences in the Vietnam War began the psychological problems that finally led him to prison.
Evan Nelson, a forensic clinical psychologist who testified for the defense, said that he may not have been entirely well even before he entered the service.
The Marines received "sort of a fragile egg" in Gay, said Nelson, one of two doctors who analyzed Gay when the defense was considering a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. It was a "close call," Nelson told Weckstein.
"He was an odd fellow before this," he said. "He is clearly a much more odd fellow in his adulthood."
But by the time he left Vietnam, he had been traumatized by at least one horrible war experience - the destruction by land mine of a convoy vehicle carrying several fellow soldiers, including one with whom Gay had just switched places.
In the mid-1980s, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Nelson said. But he had other problems, too: psychosis that was "not simply a function" of the stress disorder, and a heavy dependence on alcohol.
That night at the Backstreet Cafe, Gay walked in, clad in a black trenchcoat, and ordered a beer. Iris Page Webb, sitting with friends in the bar, had already seen him minutes earlier, she testified Monday for the prosecution. She had ridden by him at the bus station on Salem Avenue, just before she went to the bar. Their eyes met.
"I got the weirdest vibes I had ever got from being around someone," Webb told the court.
Gay was looking for a gay bar. He had gotten directions to The Park, just up Salem Avenue. But he wound up inside the Backstreet.
Fifteen minutes later, Gay and Webb again locked gazes, this time inside the bar, Webb said. Again, Webb got the same feeling.
Gay sat down by Kathy Caldwell, Overstreet and several others at a table near the front. About midnight, Overstreet and friend John Collins hugged. Gay rose, pulled a 9mm Ruger from his jacket, and began firing.
He hit Overstreet first, in the chest. Overstreet, 43, died on the barroom floor.
Webb, who said she had kept a wary eye on the stranger, still was struck in the head and nearly died.
Linda Conyers was shot in the right arm and hand. Collins was shot in the stomach. Susan Smith was struck in the right leg. Joel Tucker was hit in the small of the back.
The gunshots to Webb, Conyers and Caldwell caused them pain and disability that continues today, a requirement to support the aggravated malicious wounding convictions and their accompanying life sentences.
Gay, in a letter to The Roanoke Times in March, wrote that he was a Christian soldier working for the Lord.
After the sentencing, Webb said Gay doesn't fit the requirements.
"Christian soldiers don't go out and kill," she said. "I'm a Christian soldier. I don't have no hate. I dislike the man for what he done to me. He put me in pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but I don't hate him. That's not how you get things in life."
Webb said she has forgiven Gay.
Before he was sentenced, Gay told Weckstein that he could take months discussing himself and his case.
"Perhaps I could put it in a book," he said, "and save somebody's life from the actions I took."
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