Missing Woman’s Boyfriend Surrenders

A Garden Grove man who was wanted in the suspected killing of his girlfriend and had been missing for a week surrendered to police Thursday.

Police Lt. John Woods said Robert Martin Gray Jr., 30, was accompanied by Downey attorney Kirt Hopson when he turned himself in at the Garden Grove police station.

Hopson, who declined to say whether he had known Gray previously, said he surrendered the suspect to detectives at 3 p.m. Hopson said Gray confessed to killing Debbie Ann Lee, 24, who was last seen Friday.

“He contacted me about surrendering,” Hopson said.

The attorney said that after the surrender, Gray took Garden Grove detectives to a large orange grove on the outskirts of Corona in Riverside County to search for Lee’s body. But a police spokesman said Thursday night that detectives had not found a body.

Hopson said he had not yet been retained to represent Gray but “probably” would be his attorney by the time he is formally arraigned.

Woods said Gray was arrested on a murder warrant that had been signed by a judge earlier in the week. He was questioned until after 10 p.m. before he was transferred to the Orange County Jail, Woods said.

Police had been searching for Gray since Lee disappeared last week.

Before Gray’s confession, detectives had based their case on what they said was circumstantial evidence of foul play at the woman’s residence and at a travel trailer that Gray kept behind his radio store.

Earlier in the week, police had identified a bloodstained cloth found at an empty grave site in a remote area of northeast Orange County as being from a piece of clothing belonging to Lee.

As early as Monday, Garden Grove detectives had said they were certain Lee was a homicide victim whose body probably had been buried.

Friends of Gray, who has owned Cross Radio Service in the 12700 block of Brookhurst Street in Garden Grove since 1981, said earlier this week that he and Lee had dated only casually and had not seen each other for some time.