The Events of Sept. 22, 2000
Ronald Edward Gay
Aftermath
Danny Overstreet & The Roanoke 7
Hate crimes come in many varieties. Some of the most reported hate crimes against gays and lesbians include verbal or physical assaults, anti-gay graffiti, and various acts of discrimination. They include everything from anti-gay words spray-painted on car doors, store fronts, and school lockers to brutal beatings and just about everything inbetween.
When most people hear the phrase “Gay Hate Crime” they tend to think of people like Matthew Shepherd, the young man from Wyoming who was beaten and left for dead against a fence post. This became national news as Shepherd lay in his hospital bed in a coma, a vivid reminder of what the face of hate can do. After his death, his story continued to flood the media as pro-gay groups started calling for better education about hate crimes and better hate crime laws.
The sad truth, however, is that most hate crimes against gays and lesbians tend to go unreported by the national news media. In most places, the local news media does not seem fit to publish these stories either. But, sometimes they do.
The point of this is not to criticize the news media, but to point out that anti-gay hate crimes happen more often than we are aware of.
On Friday, September 22, 2000, Ronald Edward Gay gave away some money and belongings to a few people who rented a room near his at the Jefferson Lodge, a nice Roanoke hotel. His next appearance was in the alley next to a restaurant where he asked an employee where the nearest gay bar was, stating he wanted to “waste” some gay people, and pulling back his trenchcoat to reveal a small handgun. The employee thought it was a joke, and pointed him to a nearby bar called The Park. However, after reconsidering it, the employee called the police department and reported what had happened.
At 11:46P.M., the police broadcast a description of the man. Approximately the same time, Ronald Edward Gay walked into The Backstreet Café. He sits down at the bar, orders a beer, and then calmly pulled out a 9mm handgun, firing eight rounds into the crowd. Six people were wounded. Danny Lee Overstreet lost his life.
As soon as he was finished, Ronald Edward Gay lowered his hand and calmly walked out of the bar. The police found him a short time later, a few blocks away from the bar. He had already dropped the gun because, he later told detectives, he did not want to hurt a policeman. "He put the gun down, knowing we'd be coming for him," Lt. William Althoff of the Roanoke City Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division said according to the Roanoke Times newspaper.
What made these events puzzling for those involved is that nobody recognized Ronald Edward Gay, and there was no apparent motive for what he did. Without warning, Gay walked into the bar, ordered a beer, and minutes later began firing, taking everyone by surprise. When it was over, he left. In the days following this incident, more information on Ronald Edward Gay came to light.
One of the first possible motives reported came from Gay’s ex-wife, Laura Ramsey who was quoted by the Roanoke times saying that Gay was tormented over his name and that he felt it should have meant “happy” and not “homosexual.” She also said her ex-husband did not openly hate homosexuals. She had not seen her ex-husband except for one time when he came to her house and assaulted her and her new husband. She filed a restraining order against him after that. She also said Ronald Edward Gay was a Marine in Vietnam and had been under treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, saying he felt that Vietnam was a bloody confusion of fighting and picking up the body parts of your friends.
The story Ronald Gay was reported to have told for thirty years was that he truly loved being a Marine. One morning in particular, Gay was getting ready for an early morning run to take supplies to faraway troops. A fellow Marine scheduled to take a slightly later trip begged Gay to trade places with him. Gay refused at first but after the Marine pleaded with him, he eventually agreed. Ronald Edward Gay watched as the truck left and moments later struck a land mine. He first located the Marine he traded places with and puts his remaining body parts into a bag and then helps clean up the other eight men onboard.
After the incident with his ex-wife and her new husband, the Florida courts ordered Gay to hand over all his firearms and submit to a psychological examination.
According to Gay’s family, he had been having troubles with the VA Hospital in Roanoke, where he had supposedly gone for treatment. He was unable to get the medications he felt he needed. His brother commented that the VA Hospital turned Gay into a walking time bomb.
In the hours before Ronald Edward Gay entered The Backstreet Café, he spent some time with friends. He talked some about religion, death, violence, and never coming back. He offered his friends cigarettes, some bourbon, money, as well as his glasses and his hotel key, saying if he did not return they should turn on the morning news.
Gay had also, at one point, been standing outside on a balcony listening to some Christian singers in the park below when two Roanoke police officers went by on horseback. Gay made a comment quoting the bible, “Death rides a pale horse.” When gay left the hotel later that evening, he made a comment about grabbing a hamburger and watching the fireworks.
After his arrest, Ronald Gay wrote a “nearly indecipherable” letter to the Roanoke Times in which he called himself a “Christian Soldier working for my Lord”. In the letter, he also says that homosexual “meeting places and bars will be destroyed with them" unless they move to "their city," San Francisco, and that God prefers that they be "burnt to kill" the AIDS virus, "or slow it down.” The letter focuses on Gay’s issues toward homosexuality, and what he perceives to be their moral flaws. He accuses homosexuals of pedophilia, promiscuity, and other sexually deviant acts. He says, “Jesus doesn’t want these people in his heaven.”
Nobody who knew Ronald Gay before the nightclub shooting ever remembered him referring to himself as a “Christian Soldier”, however there had always been some level of religious undertones to the man.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is another factor which should be considered while trying to understand Ronald Gay. When information on PTSD was first being published in the 1980s, lots of material on the subject related to events such as the Nazi Holocaust, The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and controversial elements of the Vietnam War, the later being the subject of many conspiracy theories. Over one million war veterans developed PTSD symptoms after the Vietnam war.
The events Ronald Gay has described from his experience during the Vietnam War, including the experience of watching the truck he was supposed to be on hit a land mine, certainly can qualify him for a PTDS diagnosis. He had also been undergoing psychological and psychiatric treatment for a number of related mental illnesses.
According to the DSM-IV(TR) official definition, PTSD is caused when an individual witnesses or is a participant in a traumatic event where there are serious injuries or death, or the threat of injury or death, and where the individual’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Symptoms of PTSD include reliving the traumatic event, flashbacks, disturbing dreams, emotional numbness, sleep disturbances or insomnia, depression, anxiety, irritability, and outbreaks of anger, frustration, or violence. Feelings of intense guilt are also common. People with PTSD also tend to be more prone to alcohol or drug addictions, depression, or anxiety disorders.
In 1980, Ronald Gay married Jeannie Rogers. She later reports of a tale shortly after they were married when she would witness Ronald’s paranoid actions. He would wake her up stating people were outside with guns waiting to get him. He would sometimes choke his pillow too. He said they were being watched.
She remembers occasions where Gay would send bibles and cryptic messages to both the US President as well as the Canadian Prime Minister.
After this, she states Gay was treated in Roanoke for PTSD and put on two antidepressants. Ronald Gay did not take his medications for long, and returned to his paranoid state, causing Jeannie to flee back to Nova Scotia fearing for her life. She once commented that she thought it would be her that Gay killed.
It is difficult to understand what happened next. He tells of other hospitalizations and treatments, receiving disability benefits from both the US and Canada. He has several failed relationships, before marrying his fourth wife, Laura Ramsey. He would go back and forth between periods where he took his medications, and periods where he wasn’t. When he was under treatment, he seemed to be doing better, but when he would be off his medications, the paranoia came back with a vengeance.
In 1999, he got back together again with Jeannie Gay. They remarried September 30 th. Jeannie recalls pleasant memories of sitting on their balcony listening to country music on Gay’s favorite radio – a radio he happened to give a little girl shortly before his visit to the Backstreet Café.
After his remarriage, he buys a pistol from a Roanoke gunsmith, and after this he barely ate, spoke, or slept. They sought treatment in Salem, Virginia, but the doctors had a problem. They could not prescribe medications while Gay was still under the influence of the alcohol, and they felt taking away his alcohol would make him even more explosive.
A short time later, Ronald Gay told Jeannie he began talking to God, and that God told him she had to go. Unable to take the stress of Ronald Gay any more, she fled to Florida. Several weeks later, Gay said God had told him she could come back. She didn’t – she stayed in Florida.
In April 2000, Gay was burned when he poured gasoline on a Christmas tree and set fire to it. Jeannie Gay, still in contact with her ex-husband from afar, believed he also burned his military records. The next month, his entire house burned to the ground. He was found sitting on the neighbors porch with a suitcase in one hand and a bottle in the other. The official cause of that fire was a faulty drier.
A year later, in May 2001, Ronald Edward Gay pleaded guilty to the first degree murder charge and several malicious wounding charges. He told the police he felt he had a “mission.” After pleading guilty, he was being routinely interviewed by the judge. He tells the judge this was not a hate crime because he did not know any of these people. He said that if it had just been because of his name, he would have done the deed ten years earlier. Later, he says he had wrestled with the idea of doing this for a long time. "But I buried that and I buried that until I was driven insane to do what I had to do," he told the judge. The judge did not sentence Gay immediately, but rather gave time for an in-depth psychological evaluation.
Later that month, his sentence of four consecutive life sentences was handed down. The judge said he would only be eligible for geriatric parole if he was in a very poor condition, and that if he was released, he would still be under heavy parole guidance.
Studying the events of September 22, 2000 can teach us all a fair number of important lessons.
Roanoke, Virginia is a small city just like any other located halfway between New York City and Atlanta, Georgia. Its population around 100,000. It is not a screaming megalopolis. Crime is low. Educational statistics are better than average. There are rarely any major crimes. Nothing like this had ever happened in Roanoke before.
Gays and lesbians tend to live quiet lives, just as the rest of the population does. Attractions consist of a small handful of gay nightclubs, restaurants, and social organizations. The people seem friendly, social, and outgoing – willing to accept just about anybody they cross paths with.
The stark reality is that major gay hate crimes can happen anywhere. They are not exclusive to the larger cities known for its larger-than-average gay populations, such as New York, San Francisco, or Chicago. This story is a vivid reminder that such events can happen even in places where we don’t expect.
People who live in cities such as Roanoke are often unprepared when events like this occur, which leads me to my second point. Since I began investigating gay related crimes, I have been frequently astonished by incidence where the police dropped the proverbial ball only because of the gay issue. There are so many stories of police inaction because the crime was committed against someone who was gay or lesbian. There are so many examples of situations law enforcement downplayed the events because someone was gay. Examples of domestic violence that became simple assaults just because the parties were gay. In many locations, there are definite double standards.
But, not in Roanoke. When the first call came in about a man in a trenchcoat who wanted to “waste” some gay people, the police department sprung into action. The events also occurred during shift change, which easily could have added to confusion, but did not. For days following the incident, the local gay and lesbian population complimented the police on how well they felt they handled the disastrous events. From what I have heard, I would have to say the same thing.
And it wasn’t just the police department either, but also the gay community as a whole. Minutes after the shooting in the Backstreet Café, the manager locked the door as everyone began to look after the wounded. Some have been reported to have ripped off their shirts in order to address the bloody wounds of those who had been shot. After everything, they kept their cool. They stood together in their time of crisis supporting each other in ways not seen often.
Forty-Three year old Danny Lee Overstreet, the sole casualty of the Backstreet Café, has been remembered as a very lovable guy with an infectious laugh. Starting the morning after the shooting, many people began making their way to the Backstreet Café to leave flowers and set up makeshift memorials for Overstreet and the six other who had been wounded. Later that evening, over three hundred people gathered in the street outside the Backstreet Café for a candlelight vigil. On Thursday, September 28 th, over a thousand gathered at a nearby park and then marched along the same route it is believed Ronald Gay took to the bar.
Danny Lee Overstreet will not be forgotten. Nor will any of the Roanoke 7.
There have been many memorials placed on the internet since September 22, 2000 in honor of Danny Overstreet and the rest of the Roanoke 7. http://www.roanoke7.com is but one example out of many with lots of information on what happened that night including the memorials and other testimonials.
The events of September 22, 2000 did not legally constitute a hate crime. The State of Virginia did have hate crime legislation, however, it covered crimes on the basis of religious status or race, but not sexual orientation. As of this writing, hate crime legislation for Roanoke, Virginia still does not include sexual orientation.
The images of Danny Overstreet and the rest of the Roanoke 7 are still often seen around town during gay pride rallys and remembered by those who knew and loved him – a constant reminder of what can happen in the face of hate.
Sources:
ABC News
Roanoke Times
Washington Post
© 2001; Corky McGraw