Bloody New Year: The Harvey Family Murders
A Crime of Opportunity
New Year’s Day, 2006, was going to be a busy one for social butterflies Bryan Harvey, his wife Kathryn and their daughters Stella and Ruby, nine and four respectively. With plans to host a lunchtime barbeque for friends and family, they had gotten up bright and early to make preparations for the festivities to come.
Forty-nine-year-old Bryan was a local celebrity who had tasted fame in the 1980s as the singer/songwriter for the underground indie band House of Freaks. Though he and his musical partner, Johnny Hott, had gone their separate ways professionally in the 90s, they had remained close friends. A dedicated musician through and through, Bryan had taken the stage at a New Year’s Eve show on what would turn out to be the last night of his life.
Kathryn, age thirty-nine, was successful in her own right as the co-owner of a popular toy store called World of Mirth. A pillar of the community, she was an artist at heart who lent her talents wherever they were needed.
On that fateful Sunday morning, Bryan had stepped out of their home in the trendy Woodland Heights area of Richmond, Virginia to retrieve the newspaper. As he perused the front page, he had absentmindedly gone back inside without locking the door. Since they lived in a relatively safe neighborhood, this oversight wouldn’t normally have been cause for concern. However, on this day— unbeknownst to him — a pair of opportunistic predators were lurking nearby.
Kathryn was in the kitchen baking cookies for the guests who would be arriving in a few hours when she heard voices in the living room. Thinking that someone had shown up ahead of schedule, she went to greet them. To her horror, instead of being met with familiar faces, she found herself staring at two men she had never seen before.
In the harrowing moments that followed, Bryan, Kathryn and little Ruby were herded downstairs to the basement playroom. Stella, who had spent the previous night at a slumber party, was not yet among them.
Once they had the family confined to the small space, the intruders bound them with electrical cords and packing tape. They were in the process of ransacking the house when they heard someone knocking on the front door.
The man who seemed to be in charge untied Kathryn and told her to get rid of whoever was at the door. Before allowing her to leave, he warned her that if she asked for help or tried to make a run for it, he would kill her daughter and husband.
Since they were expecting Stella to be dropped off at any time, a shaken Kathryn found herself stuck between a rock and a hard place. If she answered, she would be putting her daughter in the same predicament the rest of the family was facing. If she ignored the persistent knocking, she risked drawing the ire of the men who clearly had the upper hand. Ultimately, she decided that the best option was to cooperate. With that, she opened the door.
Before she knew it, Stella had bounded past her and headed straight for the playroom where the family spent most of their time. When her daughter’s friend attempted to follow suit, an ashen-faced Kathryn had blocked her path.
The girl’s mother, Kierston Perkinson would later say that she had been taken aback by the action, which had been completely out of character. When she asked if everything was okay, the normally exuberant Kathryn had responded that she wasn’t feeling well before abruptly ending the conversation and closing the door.
When she returned to the basement, Kathryn saw that a terrified Stella was now tied up alongside the rest of the family. Once everyone was securely restrained, all hell broke loose. Without warning, the man who had been calling the shots had produced a knife he had taken from the Harvey’s kitchen and started methodically slicing their throats, including those of the little girls. After complaining to his partner in crime that they were refusing to die, he had grabbed a claw hammer and bashed them over the head until they stopped moving.
After removing the wedding ring from Kathryn Harvey’s finger, the killers had set the room ablaze to cover up evidence of their despicable deeds. As they fled the house, they had helped themselves to a DVD player and the plate of freshly baked cookies that sat cooling on the kitchen counter.
A short time later, Johnny Hott arrived for the celebratory get-together. When he opened the front door, a cloud of smoke came billowing out. Overcome by the acrid stench of something burning, he had immediately phoned 911. When first responders made their way inside, they discovered four bodies — still intact — in the smoldering basement.
Police officers and paramedics who had seen the worst of humankind were said to have found the grisly scene so disturbing that some had openly wept. The knowledge that the parents had been forced to watch their children being butchered, and vice versa, had simply been too much for them to bear.
Their autopsies revealed that Bryan and Kathryn had died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head. Stella had succumbed to a combination of blunt force trauma and smoke inhalation. These findings indicated that — despite her horrific injuries — she had been alive when the fire started. Four-year-old Ruby had died from stab wounds to her neck and back.
Though an investigation into the killings was launched right away, evidence was scant. Knowing that criminals like to talk, they reached out to the public for help. A few days later, they would get the break they were looking for.
On January 6th, a woman named Latoya Pauley called police and asked them to perform a welfare check on her friend Ashley Baskerville. She explained that she was worried because the girl’s boyfriend and his uncle were the ones who had killed the Harvey family. She then dropped the bombshell that they had hidden evidence of their crimes at her home. The men’s names were Ray Dandridge and Ricky Gray.
With Murderous Intent
After verifying Latoya Pauley’s story, officers paid a visit to the house that twenty-one-year-old Ashley shared with her mother Mary Baskerville-Tucker and stepfather, Percyell Tucker. Upon entering the residence, they discovered that all three had been butchered in much the same manner as the Harveys.
Bound with duct tape, which had also been wrapped around their heads, Mary and Percyell bore deep gashes to their necks. A sock had also been shoved down Percyell’s throat. Ashley was found to have been suffocated with a plastic bag.
Suspecting that they were dealing with a pair of thrill killers, law enforcement agencies from all over the region worked together to find them before they could strike again. After tracing their movements back to their home state of Pennsylvania, Gray and Dandridge were apprehended in Philadelphia on January 7th.
During his interrogation, twenty-nine-year-old Dandridge had claimed that the killings had been his uncle’s idea. He had simply done as he was told. When confronted with these damning allegations, Gray, also twenty-nine, had readily confessed to murdering the Harveys and assisting in those of Ashley and her parents. While these matter-of-fact admissions were enough to make anyone’s head spin, as it turned out, he was only getting started.
A Killer Without Conscience
Of his own accord, Gray also admitted to having beaten his wife Treva to death in 2005 while Dandridge held her down. Shockingly, even though her brutalized body had been found buried in a shallow grave, authorities had ruled out foul play. Her husband, who was well-known to law enforcement, had not been a suspect in her death.
Gray also confessed to attacking twenty-six-year-old Ryan Carey as he was leaving his parents’ house on New Year’s Eve. Apparently for fun, he and Dandridge had jumped Carey as he walked to his car, stabbing him repeatedly and beating him within an inch of his life.
When asked to give details of the murders, Gray had described slitting the throats of the Harveys and their children without the slightest hint of reflection or emotion. As for the Baskerville/Tuckers, he claimed that the whole thing had been a set up that got out of hand. According to him, Ashley had been a willing participant up to that point. She had even sat in the car and acted as a lookout while they killed the Harvey family.
In need of some quick cash, the trio had come up with a scheme to rob Percyell, a fork-lift operator who was known to keep large sums of money in the house. Ashley, believing that her mother and stepfather would be more apt to cooperate if they feared that her life was in danger, had agreed to play the role of victim.
Once Gray and Dandridge had the family incapacitated, they decided to go ahead and kill everyone, including Ashley. A third wheel who had long since worn out her welcome, they agreed that the time had come to remove their cohort from the equation. When her body was found, officers noted that she was wearing Kathryn Harvey’s one-of-a-kind wedding ring.
A Just Resolution
On February 9, 2006, Ricky Gray was charged with five counts of capital murder. In another proceeding, Ray Dandridge was indicted on three counts of murder for his role in the Baskerville/Tucker slayings. Contrary to their earlier confessions, both men entered pleas of not guilty.
Following a six-month trial, a jury declared Gray guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Bryan and Kathryn Harvey. As punishment for taking the lives of Stella and Ruby, the court determined that nothing short of death would suffice.
In September of 2006, after learning of the verdict in his uncle’s case, Dandridge accepted a plea deal in order to avoid the death penalty. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
Ricky Gray’s legal team filed numerous appeals over the next nine years, most of which hinged on the argument that their client suffered from diminished capacity as a result of an abusive childhood. His case would make it all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was summarily shot down. On January 18, 2017 — all of his appeals exhausted — Gray was executed by lethal injection.
In Richmond’s Forest Hill Park, a granite monument marks the entrance to a foot bridge dedicated to the memory of the Harvey family, who had spent many joyous days at the site before their lives were tragically cut short. A bronze plaque depicting their smiling faces acts as a reminder of happier times before an evil they hadn’t known existed walked through the door, decimating everything in its path.
For more stories of the paranormal, true crime, and the unexplained, check out my books at amazon.com/author/cindyparmiter
Resources:
·richmond.com
·oxygen.com
·Richmond Times Dispatch
· cbs.com
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