Prosecutor Decided Evidence Too Slim for Murder Conviction : AIDS Obsession Key to Manslaughter Plea

An Orange County prosecutor said Tuesday that late-arriving evidence showing that Debbie Ann Lee had a lethal dose of cocaine in her system helped to persuade his office to let her former boyfriend plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in her 1986 death.

Robert Martin Gray Jr., who had been in Orange County Jail for more than a year on murder charges in Lee’s death, reportedly told a friend that he wanted to kill her because he mistakenly believed that she had given him acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“We knew he killed her, but we just couldn’t put a finger on the kind of evidence that would make it a murder charge,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey L. Robinson said.

Gray, of Garden Grove, was sentenced to four years in state prison Tuesday following his guilty plea to the manslaughter charges in Superior Court in Santa Ana.

Lee was last seen Aug. 2, 1986, and her badly decomposed body was found near Corona six months later. Riverside County officials were unable to determine a cause of death.

But a witness, Bobby J. Estrada, testified at Gray’s preliminary hearing that Gray talked about wanting Lee, 24, dead because he believed that she had given him AIDS. Estrada, who worked for Gray at his radio shop, said that he saw Lee at Gray’s trailer the night she was last seen and that she was crying and had bruises on her face.

Because Lee’s body was found in Riverside County, the autopsy was performed by Riverside officials.

“We kept waiting for the results, and they went months and months without sending them to us,” Robinson said.

When the inconclusive autopsy results arrived, he said, his office discovered that Riverside officials had also removed a bone marrow sample that had been untested.

Tests on the bone marrow showed that Lee had enough cocaine in her system to kill her in some circumstances, Robinson said.

“We know he beat her; we think we could have proved he provided her with cocaine,” Robinson said. “But we’re not in the business of trying to hoodwink jurors when we don’t have sufficient evidence.”

Robinson added that psychiatric tests on Gray while he has been at the Orange County Jail have shown that “he really does have an obsession with AIDS.”

Gray’s mental state may have made it impossible for him to form the intent to commit first-degree murder, the prosecutor said.

Robinson added that Lee’s family was disappointed with the district attorney’s office’s decision but that “I think they understand why we had to do it.”