How Dana Gray became one of the most feared women in America

An old photograph shows her as a athletic, smiling child.

But the woman she became would shock a generation. Unlike most female killers, who turned to poison or guns, she hunted her victims up close, hands-on, strangling elderly women across Southern California in the early 1990s.

Her story is a haunting reminder of how darkness can sometimes hide behind the most ordinary faces.

Her mother was a former Hollywood starlet

We all have a fairly clear image of what a serial killer looks like: usually a man, a loner, filled with hatred toward women. The person we’re focusing on today defied that stereotype. She was impeccably dressed, meticulously groomed, and spared no expense on herself.

Yet beneath her polished exterior lurked a chilling truth: a serial killer who preyed on elderly women, murdered them violently, and then used their credit cards to fund extravagant post-murder spending sprees.

Born in California in the late 1950s to a glamorous but volatile mother and a father she would soon lose touch with, she entered the world after several miscarriages had already shaken her family.

Her mother, a former beauty queen and former Hollywood starlet, was aggressive and vain, and their home was far from nurturing.

After her parents’ divorce when she was just two, she struggled to connect with others, acting out in increasingly dramatic ways — stealing money for candy, lashing out in fits of anger, and forging notes to skip school.