The unsolved killing of Leroy McCray continues to trouble those who knew him best, leading his relatives to consider bringing in a private investigator if they don’t get answers from local law enforcement soon.
McCray family members also suspect a connection between the disappearance of a Pike County woman and the death of their brother, and they hope the public can help with both cases.
Meanwhile, Pike County sheriff’s investigators are staying tight-lipped about the investigation, saying that releasing the information the family wants to learn about the case would be “imprudent.” Chief investigator Lance Falvey said the department has pursued several leads but would not discuss specifics.
“We’ve interviewed quite a number of people. I can’t confirm or deny who we’ve talked to or whether they have connections to one another. I can only say that information continues to develop, and as it develops, we consider the case a top priority,” he said.
McCray, a local waiter whose likeable personality made him popular throughout the area, was found shot dead Jan. 27 on a remote road just north of the Louisiana state line. He had been missing for three days before a passer-by found his body.
In the search for answers in his brother-in-law’s slaying, Keith Gilmore uses snippets of evidence he has pieced together over the months, mixed with what he has been able to gather from the sheriff’s department, friends, family and word on the street.
It’s an incomplete collage, he said.
“There are pieces missing and we need more. We’re getting very little from the (sheriff’s) department,” Gilmore said.
He cites a known relationship between a Pike County woman, Sabrina Whittington, who has been missing since March.
What is known for certain is that the night of his disappearance, McCray went to Martin’s Chapel Church in Summit for a service. Afterwards, he met with friends for coffee at their usual hangout at the Marathon convenience store at the Presley Boulevard-South Broadway intersection in McComb.
Video surveillance shows McCray left the store at 10:45 p.m., but it’s impossible to tell if anyone was with him, Gilmore said. He went home and left shortly thereafter, Gilmore said.
When he didn’t stop by his mother’s house just down the street the next morning, as was his habit, relatives attempted to reach him by phone. His son drove to his house on Gradyville Road to check on him.
McCray’s family would later learn that clothes they found lying on the bed matched what he was wearing when he left the convenience store.
They believe McCray was meeting a woman the night he went missing and that’s why he changed his clothes.
“If he was going somewhere he would have kept his church clothes on. If he was meeting up with the guys, there’d be no reason to change,” Gilmore said. “We think he was called by a woman and she set him up.”
The medical examiner’s report showed McCray was shot eight times — twice in the head, once in the back, twice in the left leg, once in the left arm and once in the right lower leg — by two different guns, a .22-caliber and a .45-caliber, leaving open the possibility of more than one gunman.
Gilmore said he believes he brutality of his brother-in-law’s killing suggests it was motivated by revenge.
“They didn’t have to do that if this was just a robbery. This says it was personal,” Gilmore said.
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McCray had several female acquaintances, his family said. One that sticks out, though, is Whittington, a Pike County resident who was reported missing about a month after McCray’s death.
Her family has not heard from her since then, and the sheriff’s department has a separate investigation into her disappearance.
McCray’s relatives say they know there was at least a personal connection between the two.
The family has a letter postmarked from a Mississippi Department of Corrections facility in Flowood addressed to McCray from Whittington. She was held there on a drug-related charge.
In it, Whittington writes to McCray, “Look, I’m at restitution now. You said you would get me out so please do! Leroy, I really need you to pay my fine now! I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you! ... I want to come home to you and cook, clean (and) sleep with you every night.”
One of McCray’s sisters, Tina Allen, said she knows of at least one occasion where McCray traveled to the restitution center in Flowood, picked Whittington up and brought her back to McComb.
One time, McCray put Whittington on the phone.
“I talked to her on the phone a couple of times,” she said. “But I told Leroy I didn’t know who she was and didn’t want him to bring her over to the house.”
Whittington’s mother, Brenda McKenzie, remembers McCray and has some theories about the nature of her daughter’s disappearance.
After Whittington failed to call McKenzie on her birthday or contact her two boys on theirs, she began to think the worst.
She said her daughter’s last known whereabouts was at a home in Gillsburg.
McKenzie believes her daughter was the target of a hit by a drug dealer that she reportedly informed against.
“I’m a mother. I know in my heart,” she said.
McKenzie doesn’t think her daughter will be found alive.
“I know, I just know,” she said.
Falvey hasn’treached that same conclusion, saying that if Whittington was worried about retaliation from drug dealers, she could be in hiding.
“We don’t know for sure. If anything her mother says is true about the drug bust, well, that would give her a great reason to make herself unavailable to those she knows, including her family,” he reasoned. “So until we have solid evidence, we are operating under the assumption that this is still a missing persons case.”
Like McCray’s family, McKenzie suspects the two cases could be related, and solving one may lead to clearing up the other.
“I believe that if they solve Sabrina’s case, that could really help them with the McCray case. Maybe they can solve both at the same time,” she said.
McKenzie said she was aware of a connection between the two. She recalled Leroy as a kind-hearted and friendly man.
“I remember Sabrina would call on Leroy and he would help her out with things, like with money sometimes. Another time, she borrowed one of his cars,” she said.
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Pike County Coroner Percy Pittman responded to the call the night McCray was discovered.
He said a witness told him McCray was seen at the “Mack Hole,” a known drug hangout located on the state line, where criminals allegedly cross back and forth to evade authorities. That has led some to believe McCray could have been killed in Louisiana and his body brought to Mississippi.
Pittman also said he notified the sheriff’s department of information he heard about the case early on.
“Sometimes people will tell you things. Because you’re not the sheriff’s department they feel more comfortable talking,” he said.
Adding to the mystery, McCray was wounded in a stabbing 11 months before he died, but the case against the man accused of the attack was dropped due to McCray’s death.
On Feb. 16, 2014, police responded to a call coming from Southgate Apartments on Carroll Street in McComb.
According to a McComb Police report, officers “spoke to a Leroy McCray stating that he had been stabbed in the back with a knife.” The report saidMcCray did not know who attacked him. However, witnesses quoted in the report identified the man as Kendrick Smith — who is Sabrina Whittington’s husband.
Witnesses told police the assailant walked up to McCray, stabbed him and left in a white car.
At the bottom of the report, it’s noted that “the victim (McCray) said he would file charges at a later date.”
McCray filed charges against another man, Alfred Lee Grayson. In December 2014, a grand jury returned an aggravated assault indictment against Grayson.
Grayson pleaded not guilty in a Jan. 8 court appearance. By the next court date on Feb. 5, McCray’s body had been found, making the case moot.
In March, the District Attorney’s office presented a motion to remand the case to the file, in part “based on the unavailability of an essential witness,” according to the court records.
Gilmore recalls McCray receiving phone calls just before his death threatening him not to pursue the case.
“I remember him talking to someone on the phone, trying to explain to him that ‘I wouldn’t be testifying if this didn’t happen,’ ” he said.
Reward available
Over the summer, Crimestoppers of Southwest Mississippi upped the reward amount for information leading to a conviction in the McCray case to $3,500, but the leads have been few and far between, director Sam Sanders said.
“He was well known and liked. I hate to see that there hasn’t been an outcome yet,” he said. “I’m behind anything that can help get some answers.”
That’s also the motivation of the family in contacting the Enterprise-Journal. They believe details that haven’t been released could spur the investigation, and assist in capturing his killers. They said they are being kept in the dark by the sheriff’s department.
“I want a lot to be said here. I’m fed up,” Gilmore said. “We make calls from our home in West Virginia, asking questions and we get the same thing. If we don’t get our questions answered, we’re going to have to hire a private investigator to help.”
“I don’t care where the information comes from,” said Gloria Gilmore, another one of McCray’s sisters. “ I ask people to try and understand, we are looking for help, anything that can give us an indication of what happened to my brother. We need to have answers. We hope public attention could lead to social media posts or something.”
Falvey said he understands the family’s concern, but countered that the department is doing everything within its power to clear the case.
“We don’t want to put anything out there because we’re worried about the investigation could suffer. We find it critically important as we know it is to the family. And we’re ever hopeful that the information we receive will help us resolve the case,” he said.
McCray’s family noted that the circumstances surrounding his death are irrelevant. They want people to be reminded of his warm nature.
After his death, community members from many walks of life gathered at a candlelight vigil at the Days Inn, where he worked, to express their memories of McCray, recalling his tendency to loan vehicles to those who needed it most, and detailing cars and mowing lawns for people who couldn’t pay him.
“I want people to remember the good of Leroy. All the things he did for people. What he did for his family. What he did for folks he didn’t even know. He helped so many people out. He washed their cars and borrowed his cars to those who needed one. He was one of the most unselfish persons I know,” Gloria Gilmore said. “He would have been 68 in May.”
