A longtime West Oakland church deacon accused of strangling two women decades apart has spent four years in jail awaiting trial, and now the case itself is on hold while doctors determine whether he is mentally fit to face a jury at all. James Ray Gary, 80, of Fairfield, was charged with killing 46-year-old Latrelle Lindsay in 1980 and 46-year-old Winifred Douglas in 1996, two homicides that went unsolved for decades before DNA evidence pointed investigators back to him.
Gary is the co-founder and longtime deacon of Olive Branch Missionary Baptist Church in West Oakland, according to East Bay Times. His defense attorney, David Briggs, has cast doubt on Gary's mental competence for trial, a move that has suspended the court proceedings indefinitely while mental health professionals evaluate him. A judge is set to review reports from psychiatric interviews of Gary this week, though no new jury trial date has been set.
Two Killings, Decades Apart
Lindsay was attacked and strangled inside her Union City home in July 1980, per the same East Bay Times account. Douglas was found dead off a freeway in Vallejo in 1996. Gary was linked by DNA to both homicide scenes, investigators say, after police had collected his DNA during separate investigations into alleged sexual assaults.
As reported by FOX40, a 2012 DNA match linked the Solano County homicide evidence to the Union City case from 1980, though investigators had no suspect to tie to the profile at that time. The eventual break came years later during an unrelated traffic stop, when detectives obtained Gary's DNA from the mouthpiece of a breathalyzer after officers pulled him over on suspicion of driving under the influence, NBC News reported.
Competency Question Freezes the Case
Court records show two alienists examined Gary before July 13, when Briggs formally declared a doubt to Gary's mental competency, and two more alienists were appointed at that same July hearing, per East Bay Times. Gary's medical records have been placed under seal as the evaluation continues. If the court ultimately finds Gary mentally incompetent, he could be transferred to a state hospital, where doctors will try to restore his competency before any trial resumes.
Should Gary be deemed ready to stand trial, prosecutors intend to proceed in the order the homicides occurred — he would go before a jury on Lindsay's killing first, with the court process for Douglas's case starting afterward. Gary remains in custody at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on a no-bail hold while the competency question is resolved.
Cold Cases Cracked by Modern DNA Tools
The case reflects a broader pattern described by ABC7 News, which notes that several Bay Area and state law enforcement agencies have been able to link Gary to unsolved murders and other crimes going back more than 40 years using DNA evidence and forensic analysis developed over decades. For families of victims whose cases went cold for a generation, advances in DNA technology have become the tool that finally reopens the door to prosecution.
Competency findings in California do not necessarily mean a case disappears. According to a study cited by the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, the overwhelming majority of patients admitted to a state hospital for competency restoration — 87% in the study referenced — were ultimately restored and returned to court as competent, per the committee's staff memorandum. Separately, the California Department of State Hospitals notes that a court may release a patient found not guilty by reason of insanity before reaching a maximum commitment term if it finds the patient's sanity has been restored, according to the department's own guidance.
For now, the case against Gary sits in limbo, with his fate — and the fate of the two prosecutions against him — still unresolved.
