Printed Sept. 24, 2000

By KIMBERLY O'BRIEN
THE ROANOKE TIMES

A drifter searching for a gay bar because he wanted to shoot gay people walked into the Backstreet Cafe in Roanoke Friday night, calmly ordered a beer and then opened fire, killing one person and wounding six others.

Witnesses said the man didn't say a word as he pulled a 9 mm handgun from underneath his black trench coat and methodically fired at least eight rounds, sending bar patrons scrambling for cover. Bullets struck people at random as they ducked and threw up their arms, trying to protect themselves.

Police charged 53-year-old Ronald Edward Gay, found about two blocks from the Salem Avenue watering hole, with first-degree murder. Gay had already tossed aside his gun because, he later told detectives, he didn't want to hurt a policeman.

"He put the gun down, knowing we'd be coming for him," said Lt. William Althoff, who heads the Roanoke City Police Department's criminal investigations division.

Witnesses who survived the shooting described a chaotic, horrifying scene that left many wondering why the crowded bar, popular with gay and straight people, was targeted by a man no one had seen before. The incident is being investigated by police as a hate crime.

Danny Lee Overstreet, sitting at a table closest to the gunman, dropped when a shot hit him in the chest. The 43-year-old Northwest Roanoke man died within minutes, despite efforts to help him.

"It was terrible," said a patron named Chris. "Blood everywhere. He was gagging on his blood, so we put him on his side. He died before police got there."

Chris, a bisexual man who asked that his last name not be used for fear of losing his job, said he watched the suspect come in, hunker down to the bar and order a mug of beer. Chris said he was headed to the bathroom when a noise behind him made him turn around.

"Like firecrackers ? pop, pop, pop, pop," he said. "I saw John fall. . . . I held his hand. He wouldn't let go."

John W. Collins, 39, was among those most seriously wounded, shot in the abdomen. Other victims include Iris Page Webb, 39, shot in the neck; Susan S. Smith, 45, shot in the right leg with the bullet exiting her buttocks; Linda R. Conyers, 41, shot in the right arm and hand; Joel I. Tucker, 40, shot in the small of his back; and Kathy S. Caldwell, 36, shot in the left hand and right shoulder.

"He started shooting anybody that was moving," Tucker said in a telephone interview from his hospital bed. "The only thing I saw was one woman running past me. Her finger had been shot."

Anna Sparks, celebrating her 37th birthday with her partner, at first thought she heard balloons popping. She turned around and watched in horror as people began falling to the ground.

"He was just swinging his arm and people were going down and dropping," as he worked his way around the room before he leveled the silver gun at Sparks, she recounted. Terrified, she couldn't move.

"He was staring at me like he was saying, ?You are next,? ? she said, her voice shaking with emotion.

But the man didn't fire again. He put his hand down, turned around and walked out of the bar like nothing had happened, Sparks said. The manager locked the door, and people inside began pulling off their sweaters and jackets, putting them onto the wounds of those hit to stop the bleeding.

"People were pulling together in that crisis situation," said Tucker, who said he's not gay and was at the bar with his girlfriend and another couple. "I didn't know any of these people and they were great."

Patrons said police officers at the scene were compassionate.

Five of the victims are from Roanoke; Tucker is from Roanoke County; and Webb is from Dublin. Saturday night, Smith, Tucker and Caldwell were listed at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital in stable condition, Webb was in very serious condition and Collins was in guarded condition. Conyers had been discharged.

Roanoke police still don't know why Gay, who confessed to the crime, did what he did. But his actions leading up to the shooting were bizarre. After giving away money and some belongings to people who rented a room near him at the Jefferson Lodge, he approached an employee in an alley outside Corned Beef & Co.

"He asked where the gay bar was, because he wanted to waste some gay people," said police spokeswoman Shelly Alley. Then the man pulled aside his trench coat, displaying a gun.

Police said the employee, probably thinking the man was joking, pointed him toward The Park at 615 Salem Ave., and the man walked away, heading in that direction. That was between 11 and 11:30 p.m. Seven minutes later, the employee called police, who reached Corned Beef by 11:39 p.m.

At 11:46 p.m., the officer broadcast a description of the man on his police radio. But five minutes later, the call came: A shooting at 356 Salem Ave. Not The Park, but a tiny bar called Backstreet Cafe.

Officers, some on foot, rushed to the scene. It was shift-change time, so officers on the midnight shift were outside the police department, waiting for the evening shift officers to turn over their cars. Those in cars drove to the area, some branching off to search for the suspect.

Within 10 minutes of the 911 call, an officer happened upon a gray-haired, gray-bearded man at First Street and Campbell Avenue. The man was Gay, who calmly put his hands in the air when asked. Then he told police the gun was in a trash can near the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

The gun was an autoloader, meaning it spews out casings as it fires. It contained a magazine that held 10 rounds, but police found only eight shell casings inside the bar. Gay purchased his gun late last year from a Roanoke gun dealer, and still had the receipt in his pocket when police apprehended him, police said.

Police asked Sparks and other witnesses to identify the suspect. Sparks peered through the window of the police cruiser and saw Gay staring into space.

"He didn't try to hide his face," she said. "He had this look on his face like, ?I'm proud.? I just wanted to get a hold of him and strangle him. He has no clue as to what he's done to these people and their families."

Police don't know much about Gay. Police weren't aware of a criminal record in Virginia on Saturday. Members of the gay community didn't know his name and hadn't seen him before.

Gay carried an identification card with an address in Citrus Springs, Fla., but he claimed to have been living at various addresses in Roanoke for about a year. He had checked into the Jefferson Lodge on Friday afternoon, and had recently been camping at Roanoke Mountain Campground. He told detectives he had been in Roanoke in the mid-1980s, and remembered a club in Southwest Roanoke that catered to homosexuals.

"He may have been looking for that," guessed Althoff, the police lieutenant. "We are not sure why, or why now."

Althoff, in his more than 20 years as a police officer, said he couldn't remember another incident like this one. The last mass shooting in Roanoke was on Jan. 1, 1995, when five people celebrating the new year were killed in an Old Southwest carriage house. But Roanoke has had few hate crimes, and those reported have been isolated incidents -- individuals threatening each other, epitaphs scribbled on buildings.

"I've never seen anything when anyone has gone after a group of people like this," Althoff said.

Gay is being held in the Roanoke City Jail without bond. Although charged only with a count of murder, police said more charges are anticipated. Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Don Caldwell said additional charges will likely be for aggravated malicious wounding and malicious wounding, both of which carry stiffer sentences than attempted murder.

The status of the victims still in the hospital could determine whether capital murder is considered, Caldwell said.

"It's clear this has a malicious act, which in of itself is malice, which is hate," he said. "Based on the evidence I've heard, certainly this man is looking at being locked up for the rest of his life."

As prosecutors prepare to bring the case before a grand jury Oct. 2, Caldwell said various statutes will be examined. But Virginia's hate crimes statute cannot be used. Although lawmakers have tried to add sexual orientation to the statute, that provision never made it out of committee.

Fred Jackson and Roy Mitchell, two friends who brought purple and white flowers and a balloon to the bar Saturday afternoon, said the public needs to realize that gays matter -- that crimes, when committed against them, count.

Jackson and Mitchell were only two of those who paid tribute, pausing to pray or to place flowers before the door. As the brightly colored blooms grew in number, one rose wrapped in tan paper stood out.

On the card were three words:

"Hate will kill."

Staff writers Zeke Barlow and Jon Cawley contributed to this story.

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Did Torment Over Name Push Man to Killing?

Printed Sept. 24, 2000

By ZEKE BARLOW
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Ronald Gay didn't like his last name.

In between his violent spats and drunken stupors, he complained his name was supposed to mean "happy," not "homosexual," according to his ex-wife, Laura Ramsey.

Ramsey said Gay, 53, felt a lifelong torment over his name, but didn't openly hate homosexuals. Friday night would suggest something different. Gay is suspected of shooting seven people in a Roanoke gay bar Friday night, killing one.

That it happened after Gay, a Vietnam War veteran who complained of post traumatic stress disorder, spent the day drinking was no surprise to Ramsey, who lives in Florida.

For those who spent Friday with Gay at the Jefferson Motor Lodge on Jefferson Street in downtown Roanoke, the news of Gay's arrest seemed shocking at first, then made sense in hindsight.

He spoke of death, religion, violence and of never coming back.

Shortly after he checked into the hotel Friday afternoon, he extended his arm with a Marine Corps tattoo to Virgil Glover and offered him a cigarette. Later, it was bourbon he offered, then money, his glasses and his room key. He was like a man preparing for his suicide.

"He said, if he wasn't back by morning, turn on the 8 o'clock news -- that's all he said," before he left the hotel Friday night, Glover said.

"He was an awful friendly guy it seemed," Glover said Saturday, as he stood just outside Gay's hotel room.

Now, Glover realizes Gay said and did some peculiar things.

At one point, Gay was sitting on the balcony watching a group of Christian singers in Elmwood Park. He saw two police officers ride by on appaloosa horses. Glover said that Gay, with a Bible beside him, said, "Death rides a pale horse."

Glover thought Gay was talking about the Bible. "I thought he had just read it in Revelations," Glover said. "Who would have thought the man had a gun in the room right there."

Glover said Gay didn't seem like a killer, but now Glover believes it was not a random comment.

"I think he was indicating something. I think he believed he was the justice, prosecutor and executioner," he said.

At first, Gay seemed to be a kind, giving man to Glover.

Gay gave $2 to the 2-year-old granddaughter of Virgil Glover's friend Kay Lawrence, then later bought two large pizzas for Glover, Lawrence and five of her relatives.

Gay said he bought the pizzas because he wouldn't see them anymore, according to Tanya Crookshank, another of Lawrence's granddaughters.

When Lawrence's grandson carried a table up to Gay's balcony, Gay gave him $5. Then he gave Crookshank a portable radio, and Lawrence a country-western tape called "Crying in the Chapel" to "listen to when you are sad," Lawrence said Gay told her.

He even offered one of Lawrence's children a shirt to wear when he thought she was cold. Gay was wearing that same shirt when he was arrested.

He showered about 9:30 p.m., then gave Glover his room key. He reeked of bourbon, Glover said.

"You got my key," Lawrence remembered Gay saying. "I may not be back. If not you can have my stuff in the room."

Gay said he was going to grab a hamburger and watch some fireworks.

Three hours later, he was arrested on a first-degree murder charge.

All this came as no surprise to Ramsey, Gay's fifth ex-wife.

Gay walked out on Ramsey and their 18-month-old son two years ago. She said the only time she saw him again was when he busted into her house on Father's Day this year, assaulting her and her new husband. She took out a restraining order and filed charges against Gay, she says.

"It doesn't surprise me that he killed somebody," she said.

Gay was often drinking Canadian whiskey and he always had a gun, Ramsey said. Once, she came home to find Gay with a gun to his head while their 6-month-old son sat on the floor. Ramsey said on one drunken Christmas, Gay started masturbating in front of her mother.

Gay was being treated at different Veterans Affairs hospitals for his post traumatic stress disorder, Ramsey said. She said he described Vietnam as a bloody confusion of fighting and picking up his buddies' body parts.

Ramsey said Gay told her he came to Virginia to get treated. He had no fixed address but had been in Roanoke for about a year, police said. He frequented Sharon's Graffiti and Tony's Place, both on Salem Avenue a few blocks from the site of the shooting. He never said much and kept to himself, regulars said.

He often talked about building a house in Virginia and settling down here, Ramsey said.

Saturday night, Gay was in Roanoke. Alone, in a city jail cell.

Staff writers Jon Cawley and Ron Nixon contributed to this story.

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Victim's Family Remembers Man's Joy

Printed Sept. 24, 2000

By JON CAWLEY
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Danny Lee Overstreet had a family that loved him.

He had a poodle named Friday that was his world. And the man with a quick and hearty laugh had a regular job like many in Roanoke.

Overstreet also had a sexual orientation that cost him his life.

He was gay.

For that, an angry stranger sentenced him to death.

A burst of gunfire at a dimly lit Salem Avenue bar struck seven people.

Overstreet, closest to the gunman, took a bullet in his chest. The 43-year-old crumpled to the floor of the Backstreet Cafe.

Several of Overstreet's family members were at his home on Spring Hollow Avenue in Northwest Roanoke on Saturday afternoon changing the locks, but they still can't believe he won't come home again.

Overstreet wasn't a drinker -- it was the socializing that brought him to the cafe on a semi-regular basis, they said.

Danny's mother, Ann Overstreet, said she was awakened by a friend of Danny's ringing her doorbell about 1 a.m. She was told to " 'Hurry up, get your clothes,? ? she said.

There was no other explanation.

"I was thinking, what happened? A car accident?" Ann Overstreet recalled. "But nothing like this. I cannot believe what happened."

The pain showed in the dull gaze of her eyes. It sounded through words that still refer to her son as if he were still alive.

"He's my youngest, my baby," she said.

The two were very close. Overstreet had a beautician's license but worked for Verizon as a customer service representative. He would perm his mother's hair, she said.

Mother and son ran errands and went shopping regularly -- just last week for furnishings for Ann Overstreet's new home. They were supposed to go shopping today, and Overstreet was scheduled for jury duty in October, she said.

"He was wonderful," Ann Overstreet said. "He was jolly. More so than all my children. He had a big, loud laugh. He got tickled at the slightest thing."

Overstreet had two sisters and a brother in Roanoke and a brother in Delaware. Another brother died in 1995 of throat cancer.

His sister, Darlene Overstreet, said two characteristics sum up her brother's life.

"He was the life of the party and he was always the center of attention," she said. "And everyone liked it that way. He was like a magnet. He drew people in to him."

John Goodhart Sr. of Rocky Mount worked with Overstreet at Verizon. "He was just one of those quiet, funny guys. Pleasant," he said. "He was overweight. Had a pot bigger than mine. He was just a mild-mannered guy -- the last person you would ever think would die a violent death."

Despite all his friends, Overstreet wasn't in a relationship, his family said. He filled that gap by doting affection on his poodle, Friday. He took took the dog everywhere ? even to the picket line during the Verizon strike.

"That was his joy, that little dog," Ann Overstreet said. "That was his company. He needed that."

For all the things he was, one thing Overstreet wasn't was political, his family said. They said they and friends knew he was gay, but coworkers may not have.

Longtime family friend Deb Smith said Overstreet never said anything about being afraid or that he suspected he would be someone's target.

Smith said Overstreet had been to Pride in the Park a couple of times, but she did not think he attended this year's gay pride event.

"He lived his life as normal as people can. It feels like he's going to get out of the car and walk up the steps," Darlene Overstreet said, turning away as tears filled her eyes. She put her arm on a porch column for support.

When she heard her brother had been shot, Darlene Overstreet went to the bar and waited. "So he wouldn't be alone, lying on the floor," she said.

She recalled advice she had given Danny Overstreet in the past. "Never leave your back to the door," she implored. "People are crazy. They've lost their minds."

Along with Overstreet, six others suffered wounds -- four women and two men. As of Saturday evening, one victim remained in critical condition and one had been released. The others fell in between.

Joel I. Tucker, 40, of Bonsall Lane in Southeast Roanoke County, was shot in the lower back. He was the only victim who agreed to be interviewed.

Tucker said doctors had decided to leave the bullet in his back because surgery would be too damaging to the soft tissue surrounding the bullet, lodged about an inch from his spine.

"I was one of the least hurt of anyone," he said.

Tucker had his back to the door when he said he heard a sound like firecrackers.

"I jumped up and the guy shot me," he said. "If I was sitting I think he would have shot me in the head.

"It's pretty scary. I never saw him. I jumped up and he clipped me in the belt line."

Tucker said the wound burned like a bee sting.

"Who would have thought something like that would happen," he said. "We were out on the town for the night, shooting pool. We thought that would be the end of it."

Staff writers Mike Hudson and Kimberly O'Brien contributed to this report.

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City's Gay Community Turns Out to Mourn

Printed Sept. 24, 2000

By MIKE HUDSON and MARY BISHOP
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Candles flickered along Roanoke's Salem Avenue on Saturday night as more than 300 people gathered to express their grief -- and their determination to fight the hate that killed Danny Lee Overstreet.

"I'm not going back. I didn't come to Roanoke to hide in the closet," said the Rev. Catherine Houchins, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge, a congregation with a large gay and lesbian membership. She urged the people in the tearful crowd: "Don't grieve like those with no hope."

Friday night's shootings in a Roanoke gay bar prompted waves of outrage among gays and lesbians and others across the nation.

All day, the shootings dominated gay-community Internet conversations, said David Elliot, of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He said it was one of the worst episodes of anti-gay violence in recent years.

The Washington-based task force is sending its field organizer here today to lend moral support to local gay activists. Houchins' church, at 110 Kirk Ave., will host a community meeting at 7:30 p.m. today to discuss hate crimes in Roanoke.

In Roanoke, gays and lesbians spent the day trying to learn more about what happened and how to respond.

By early afternoon, word was out: Gather on the sidewalk in front of the Backstreet Cafe, where Overstreet was shot to death and six others were wounded.

People began arriving at 7 p.m. -- some striding up alone, some in small groups, others in a contingent of 15, who walked from Highland Park in Old Southwest accompanied by the rhythm of mournful drumming.

By 9 p.m., the crowd spilled onto Salem Avenue, forcing Roanoke Police to cordon off the block. Organizers began the formal ceremony by asking anyone who didn't want to be photographed by the news media to step to the back of the crowd.

It was an indication that many gays and lesbians still hesitate to acknowledge their sexual orientation -- for fear of how their families, their employees and strangers will react.

But few people stepped back. Instead, many stepped forward, held hands and sang spirituals.

The scene provided a hopeful ending to a day full of painful emotions and questions.

Saturday afternoon, Roanoke Mayor Ralph Smith and City Manager Darlene Burcham called a news conference to decry the shootings. "We do not want this to reflect upon our community at all," Burcham said.

Saturday morning at Hale's Exxon at the Plantation Road exit of Interstate 81, manager Tom Hale and his customers talked about the shootings. Most people were saddened, he said, but at least one person expressed support for Ronald Edward Gay, charged with first-degree murder: "It's a shame he didn't have more bullets."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Hale told him. "We all have a right to live. Nobody in that bar was causing any of us harm last night."

All day long, people came to mourn at Backstreet Cafe.

Nancy Dancy, 43, wanted to come to the bar Friday night, but her friend Gayle Beverly, 57, preferred to watch the Olympics. So the two stayed away, and now they feel as violated as if they'd been there.

Dancy said gays and lesbians "don't hurt anybody. We don't press ourselves on anybody. We just want a place where we can go and feel comfortable and not be harassed or chastised or put down."

For many, the shootings may prompt a deeper resolve to fight for the civil rights of homosexuals.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported 29 anti-gay murders in the United States last year, and 26 the year before. All reported violent incidents -- anti-gay assaults, vandalism, verbal abuse and other attacks -- totaled 1,965 around the country in 1999, and 2,017 in 1998.

Shirley Lesser, executive director of Virginians for Justice, an anti-hate-crime group based in Richmond, said perhaps 90 percent of anti-gay assaults go unreported.

She said anti-gay incidents often rise after gay pride events. Roanoke held its annual Pride in the Park a week ago. There was no indication Saturday whether or not Gay visited or knew about Pride in the Park.

Sam Garrison, a Roanoke lawyer and gay activist, said Friday's shootings should prod legislators to add sexual orientation to Virginia's hate crimes statute. National activists said the shootings offer more proof that stronger federal laws are also needed.

Toward the end of Saturday night's vigil, Kathleen Fowler spoke up softly from amid the crowd: "Can I say something?"

"It's not a matter of just the gay and lesbian community," she said. "Everybody has to step up. It's gays, lesbians and everybody else. . . . I expect better from the rest of us."

Staff writers Jon Cawley and Mike Allen contributed to this report.

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Church Fills With Mourners

Printed Sept. 25, 2000

By MIKE HUDSON, KATHY LU and CODY LOWE
THE ROANOKE TIMES

The crowd Sunday night came to grieve, share information, vent anger -- and talk about how to stop the hatred and violence that left one dead and six wounded this weekend in Roanoke at a bar frequented by gays and lesbians.

It was the second night in a row that gays, lesbians and heterosexuals gathered in large numbers to talk about Friday night's shootings. More than 150 people tried to cram into a Kirk Avenue church with a capacity of a few dozen people. Twenty minutes into the community forum, the word came that the city fire marshal had asked the meeting be moved outside Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge.

Overfilling a venue is "a good problem to have," Dan Hawes, an organizer with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, told the crowd as it reconvened in the street in front of the church. He said it was a sign that people are ready to come together and fight for change.

And he said it's not just happening in Roanoke.

"This is starting to bust out all over the country," Hawes said.

Sunday in San Francisco, the gay pride rainbow flag that flies over the Castro district was lowered to half staff in memory of Danny Lee Overstreet, who died in the Roanoke shootings that police say were motivated by anti-gay feelings. Hawes said people across the nation are prepared to hold vigils to coincide with a large ceremony being planned for Thursday night in Roanoke.

The location for the Thursday vigil is undecided, but smaller candlelight vigils will be held every night until then outside Backstreet Cafe, the Salem Avenue tavern where the shootings happened.

Hawes also announced that a fund is being set up to pay for therapy and medical bills for the shooting victims and those who witnessed the violence.

As he was announcing that he already had a $100 pledge, someone walked up and put a $10 bill in his hand. It came from Loretta and Jim Ferrin, a married couple who said they came to the meeting to represent Mountainville Neighborhood Watch, a group in Roanoke's West End.

"This is the type of crime Roanoke doesn't need," Loretta Ferrin, 63, said. "I don't care if you're straight or not, this injustice is intolerable."

Ronald Edward Gay, 53, has been charged with murder in Overstreet's death. Police say they also expect to charge him with several counts of malicious wounding.

Police spokeswoman Shelly Alley said all six remaining shooting victims are expected to survive. Two of them, Kathy S. Caldwell and Joel I. Tucker, were discharged from Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital on Sunday. Iris Page Webb remained in critical condition. John W. Collins was in stable condition, though he was heavily sedated in intensive care.

Since the shootings, churches, community groups and individuals have been trying to find ways to respond.

Emotions were high Sunday morning at Metropolitan Community Church, a Christian congregation whose membership is predominantly gay and lesbian.

Its 11 a.m. service drew almost 70 people -- including about a half-dozen reporters and photographers -- and was marked by tears, hugs and prayers.

The congregation included three women who had been in the Backstreet Cafe at the time of Friday's shootings: Anna Sparks, who identified the shooting suspect to police; her partner, Sue Stroud; and Pulaski County resident Judy Opincar.

Opincar said she came to church to be with family, "people who support me."

Sparks said it was "a little hard getting back out into the public, but on the other hand it's hard to be by yourself. . . . We keep the TV or something on all the time."

Both Sparks and Stroud wore black Backstreet Cafe shirts. Sparks said they wanted to show their respect for the the cafe "and to let the people there know we still love them."

Another churchgoer, Rhoda Chattin, said the shootings sent a chill of fear throughout the gay and lesbian community. Gathering at church "gives us the strength to do all we need to do" to fight intolerance and hatred of gays and lesbians.

A week ago, more than 1,000 people came to Roanoke's Highland Park for Pride in the Park, which celebrated tolerance, diversity and gay pride.

"We were so elated," Chattin said. "It was like we were invincible. Then this happens, and now we're picking up and beginning again."

Staff writer Mike Allen contributed information to this story.

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Suspect's Family Looks for a Reason

Printed Sept. 25, 2000

By MIKE ALLEN
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Ronald Edward Gay's father hated it when his children got into trouble. When Ron was 12, he started hanging around with the wrong crowd. His father, Cecil, became so angry that he made his son strip naked and whipped him.

But William Gay, 51, Ronald's brother, said the incident was the only time he could remember his father acting out of anger. Cecil Gay was a loving father who was very protective of his family, but "he was very strict. He didn't like trouble."

Late Friday night a bearded man wearing a black trench coat went into Backstreet Cafe on Salem Avenue in Southwest Roanoke, ordered a beer, then stood up and fired at least eight shots from a 9 mm handgun. One man was killed and six others were wounded. Police have charged 53-year-old Ronald Edward Gay with first-degree murder in connection with the shootings.

"He admits to shooting people," said Lt. William Althoff, head of the criminal investigations unit of the Roanoke City Police Department.

Police videotaped Gay's confession and it will be submitted as evidence against him. He is to be arraigned today.

Gay's mother, Rita Hack, who lives in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, said that Gay's sister Marilyn spoke to Ronald Gay on Saturday night at the Roanoke City Jail. "He said, ?I know, sis. I'm in trouble.? ?

Lt. Chuck Ferguson of the Roanoke City Sheriff's Department said Gay has been calm, cooperative and quiet. "He's not on a suicide watch."

"I didn't think it was going to happen to this family," Hack said. "I'm just in a daze. I think I cried all day." She said her son had called her a few days ago. "He said, ?I love you, Ma.? ?

Roanoke police said Gay approached a Corned Beef & Co. employee just before the shooting, asked where a gay bar was, said he wanted to kill some gay people and showed the employee his gun. The employee directed the man toward The Park at 615 Salem Ave., then called police after the man left. Instead, the man went to the Backstreet Cafe, a bar frequented by gays, at 356 Salem Ave.

William Gay is baffled by his brother's actions. Reached at his home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Gay's voice often wavered and faltered. "He phoned me about four days ago," he said. During the conversation, his brother told him he was making plans to come to Dartmouth to visit.

He said his brother didn't hold anything against gays, but sometimes complained that the family name had taken on a new meaning of homosexual. "When I went to school, gay just meant ?happy,? ? he said.

Gay said his brother had been unable to obtain the medicine he took for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Salem Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "He is really frustrated with that hospital. He was reaching out. When they did not give him his medication . . . they were creating a time bomb."

Hack said that Ronald Gay had told his sister he was trying to get medication, but the VA hospital would not help him.

William Gay said the fact that his brother approached someone and said he was going to go to a gay bar and kill gays was a cry for help, as if he were saying, ? ?I'm going to do this, can you do something to stop me?? ?

A spokesperson for the Salem VA Medical Center could not confirm Sunday night whether Gay was a patient there.

As a child, he excelled in sports, loved baseball and bowling, and was meticulous about his appearance, his brother said.

When he was a teen-ager, Ronald Gay left Canada for the United States to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps. His father died while he was in training at Parris Island, S.C., William Gay said.

Ronald was teased often because of his last name while in the military, his brother said.

Ronald Gay served one tour of duty in the Vietnam War. His mother said he saw seven friends killed when their truck struck a land mine. His brother said Ronald cleaned up the bodies.

When he returned from the war, "that's when everything started to go downhill bad," his brother said.

Gay's fifth ex-wife, Laura Ramsey, said he had prescriptions for Prozac, an anti-depressant, and Clonipin, an anti-anxiety drug. She said he took his medication daily while they were married, but also drank constantly. She said he had a problem with alcohol.

After the Vietnam War, Ronald Gay spearheaded a land dispute his family was involved in.

In 1941, the Canadian defense department had taken 400 acres of the family's land for its use, William Gay said. Cecil Gay demanded the government pay his family for the value of the land. At the time of his death, the dispute had not been resolved.

The family finally reached a settlement with the government two years ago, William Gay said. The frustration of the long fight, coupled with his experiences in Vietnam, made Ronald bitter. "He still wasn't satisfied."

William Gay said his brother remains embittered by two losses: the U.S. loss in Vietnam and the long struggle to restore the land taken from his father, a man who hid his dispute with the government while his children were growing up.

"We didn't know it was a bad world out there," Gay said.

The Washington Post contributed to this story.

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Gay Had Been Ordered to Surrender Guns

Printed Sept. 26, 2000

By TAD DICKENS and KIMBERLY O'BRIEN
THE ROANOKE TIMES

A Florida judge in June ordered Ronald Edward Gay to surrender all his firearms and submit to a psychological evaluation after a domestic incident with an ex-wife.

Less than three months later, he still had at least one weapon -- a black Ruger 9mm pistol. And police say he used it Friday night in what national activist groups say is one of the worst anti-gay attacks in U.S. history.

Gay sat stone-faced Monday morning as a judge arraigned him on a first-degree murder charge for the shooting death of a Roanoke man at a downtown bar frequented by gays and lesbians.

Gay remained in jail with no bail.

Police say a man walked into the Backstreet Cafe on Salem Avenue late Friday, pulled a gun from his black trench coat and fired at least eight rounds at scrambling patrons.

Danny Lee Overstreet, 43, was killed by a gunshot wound to the chest. Six other people were wounded, two seriously.

Gay, who police say confessed on videotape, reportedly had been distressed about his last name.

Police did not find any anti-gay literature among his possessions, and they haven't found any information that he was linked with any anti-gay group, Roanoke police spokeswoman Shelly Alley said.

Police found no other firearms among his things in searches at the Jefferson Lodge and at Roanoke Mountain Campground, where he recently had stayed, Alley said.

Gay bought the pistol Oct. 25, 1999, at a Roanoke-area gun shop, according to a receipt he had in his pocket. Police would not name the gun shop.

On Father's Day, June 18, Gay came into the Citrus Springs, Fla., house of Laura Ramsey, his fifth ex-wife, according to police and Citrus County, Fla., court documents. Gay, overdue on his child support, had not seen their 4-year-old son in three years when he forced his way in. She forced him back out, then he pushed her and threatened her and their son, "stating he would shoot us," according to court documents.

He "just wanted to see his son," he said when he forced his way inside, according to Ramsey.

On June 30, 5th Judicial Circuit Judge Barbara Gurrola issued a protective order requiring Gay to surrender his firearms and ammunition to Florida authorities. The order, however, only applied to Florida.

The protective order also required Gay to have a mental health evaluation. It was not clear whether he reported for that evaluation, according to authorities in Citrus County.

But he had been in and out of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem. Dr. Stephen Lemons said Gay last had been to the VA on April 26, but wouldn't say for what. On July 11, he called to say that he was leaving the area and wouldn't be back for a while, Lemons said.

At the Roanoke City Jail early Saturday morning, Gay told Roanoke sheriff's deputies that he had been suicidal 15 times in the past, Sheriff George McMillan said.

Gay said little at his hearing Monday. "Don't matter," he said when Roanoke General District Judge Julian Raney asked him whether he protested having cameras in the courtroom for the hearing.

It probably won't be the last time he'll see them. And it's not likely that first-degree murder will be the only charge he will face, Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell said outside the courtroom.

Caldwell said he will seek grand jury indictments in October on six malicious wounding charges, some aggravated, and seven related firearms charges.

"Of course, if anyone else dies, we'll be looking at a capital murder charge" for Gay, Caldwell said.

Gay will not, however, face federal charges. Sexual orientation is not one of the protected categories under federal civil rights law.

The U.S. Attorney's Office did forward news stories about the case for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to look into, said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ruth Plagenhoef.

Roanoke police clarified earlier information they released about Gay's encounter with a Corned Beef & Co. employee before the shooting.

Police said Monday that the employee had no idea of Gay's intentions when he directed him to The Park, another gay bar farther up Salem Avenue from the Backstreet Cafe.

The employee, whom police are not identifying, told investigators he was in an alley outside the restaurant when Gay approached him sometime between 11 and 11:30 p.m. and asked where the nearest gay bar was. The employee told him about The Park. It was then that Gay showed him his gun, saying he was going to "go waste some faggots," according to Lt. William Althoff.

After Gay left, the employee went inside and called police at 11:37 p.m., Althoff said.

Jason Hurd, an employee at Corned Beef & Co., said the person who told Gay about The Park was very upset.

"He's taking some time off," Hurd said.

After getting directions to The Park, Gay apparently headed up Salem Avenue. Police believe he heard music coming from inside Backstreet Cafe, and walked in and ordered a beer at the bar.

Police had broadcast lookouts, based on a description from the Corned Beef employee, at 11:44 and 11:46 p.m. At 11:51 p.m., someone from inside Backstreet Cafe called 911 to report the shooting.

After shooting for about 20 seconds, Gay walked out and headed toward the Virginia Museum of Transportation, Althoff said. There, he removed his black trench coat, wrapped his gun in it, and stuffed them in a trash can near the museum's front entrance, Althoff said. Witnesses told police they saw a man wrapping something in his coat, but didn't know what it was, he said.

An officer apprehended Gay at First Street and Campbell Avenue within 10 minutes of the shooting. Inside the patrol car, the officer told Gay of his rights and asked him if he wanted to talk, Althoff said. A video camera inside the police car caught Gay's comments on tape.

Gay told the officer he "came from the fag bar and blew them away."

In interviewing Gay, detectives learned about his discomfort with his last name, Althoff said. Gay said he often was chided, and was bothered that his sons later changed their last names.

"That was distressing that they were not going to use the family name," Althoff said.

Roanoke police say Gay is 53, but, according to Florida court documents, he is 54.

Staff writers Zeke Barlow and Jen McCaffery contributed to this report.

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Victim Describes Shooter Stepping Over Him

Printed Sept. 26, 2000

By KIMBERLY O'BRIEN
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Lying in a puddle of his own blood, John Collins played dead.

Around him, turmoil reigned. Bullets flew through the air. People were screaming, crying, diving for cover.

He felt the arms of his good friend, Danny Overstreet, wrapped tightly around his legs. But suddenly, the grip loosened ever so slightly.

"I realized Danny was already gone," Collins said. "There was nothing I could do for him."

Collins was lucky. One of the most seriously injured in the Friday night shooting at the Backstreet Cafe, he lived to tell the tale of losing his friend of 25 years and to tell the horror that filled the Salem Avenue bar that night.

He almost didn't make it. Doctors told his mother, Lois Collins, that it was touch and go. Shot in the stomach, Collins lost parts of both intestines and his colon. He'll have to wear a colostomy bag for at least three months before another operation to try to repair the damaged organs.

The emotional damage is another thing.

Speaking Monday afternoon from his room in Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, the 39-year-old Northwest Roanoke man recounted the minutes when a man opened fire in the crowded bar, killing one and wounding six.

A drifter named Ronald Edward Gay was later arrested and charged with murder in connection with the shooting.

Less than a half-hour earlier, Gay had told an employee at another bar he wanted to "go waste some faggots," police said.

Collins was at the bar, known to cater to gays and lesbians, at the invitation of Overstreet. It was a place he periodically went to hang out with friends and play a few rounds of pool.

The night started uneventfully. Collins saw some buddies at the bar and grabbed a stool. He ordered a Zima and went to the bathroom. When he returned, he saw Overstreet at a table with another friend.

Collins grabbed his Zima and went to say hello. He knelt down and chatted for a few minutes. As he got up, he leaned over and gave Overstreet a hug. Collins is always hugging people, his mother says.

Then it began.

The bearded man sitting across the table stood up. He pulled a gun from beneath a black trench coat and looked Collins in the eye.

The man fired. A bullet pierced Collins' stomach.

"It was so fast," Collins said. "I said to myself, 'This isn't happening.' I looked down and saw the blood, and it started burning. It was a terrible, terrible burn. I went down to the floor. I was crawling toward the door. The pain was so intense, and there was so much blood."

While crawling, Collins felt Overstreet latch onto his legs. The man was still shooting, so Collins stopped, thinking that if he wanted to survive, he had better play dead. Then the pop-pop-pop that sounded more like firecrackers than bullets stopped.

The man stepped over Collins and headed for the door. Collins, on his side, felt the long coat rake across his shoulder. When the man left, pandemonium grew as patrons tried to help the wounded.

Overstreet, shot in the chest, was dead. Collins and five others were rushed to the hospital. Monday, he and one other victim, Iris Page Webb of Dublin, remained at Roanoke Memorial. Webb, shot in the neck, still is in very serious condition.

Collins, speaking calmly, said the reality of what happened hasn't quite sunk in. He does know, however, that he's angry. He's angry that his friend had to die. Angry that he is in so much pain. Angry that a stranger so filled with hate changed so many lives forever.

National gay and lesbian activist groups have called the shooting one of the worst anti-gay attacks in U.S. history.

In his hospital room, his mother pleads with him not to hate. Hate, after all, is what brought him here in the first place.

But Collins is adamant.

"I don't know if I can ever forgive him," he said. "Maybe eventually. It'll give me some time to figure out why. But when you kill a man right in front of me who means something to me, then right now I can hate this man."

Since the shooting, Collins has had nightmares in which he relives the scene again and again.

He knows that once he gets out of his hospital bed, he'll have a huge task before him. He'll have to come to grips with the fact that Overstreet, a perpetually happy man who was the brother Collins never had, is gone.

"The doctors want to get my body working before I start dealing with my mind," Collins said. "I haven't had time to mourn his death yet. That's coming."

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Co-Workers Stunned, Friends in Disbelief at Man's Death; Others Hope for Lesson Learned

Printed Sept. 26, 2000

By MARY BISHOP
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Danny Lee Overstreet's cubicle was a place where phone company workers often stopped for a laugh.

Monday morning, it was a shrine of flowers, sympathy cards and money collected for the family of the popular Verizon employee shot to death by a gunman in search of gay targets.

"Thank you Lord for sharing Danny with me in my life," Jana Hull wrote on a card for the family of the 43-year-old Overstreet. He died Friday night after a man shot him and six others at Roanoke's Backstreet Cafe, a favorite bar of gays and lesbians, as well as many straight people.

Overstreet handled orders and complaints about home service at the Verizon center on Airport Road. Counselors spent five hours there Monday listening to grief-stricken workers, many wearing bits of white ribbon in Overstreet's memory. Other Verizon offices handled calls so people could begin to process their loss.

Atop Overstreet's computer monitor a friend placed a framed picture of the rotund Overstreet sitting there, grinning and raising his arms with his usual exuberance.

On his desk lay eight white roses -- one for each of the seven members of his work team and one for his supervisor, Judy Scearce. She had been on vacation and didn't learn of his death until she heard phone messages at home Sunday night. Then she picked up Sunday's newspaper and couldn't believe what she read. Monday, her face was red from hours of intermittent tears.

Days ago, she said, Overstreet's team talked about Halloween costumes. Somebody wanted to be a werewolf. Overstreet volunteered to save trimmings from his poodle, Friday, to glue on their face and arms. It was just another way, Scearce said, that he threw himself into work and play. His was the first violent death of a co-worker that Scearce, 62, could remember in 43 years with the company.

"He had an infectious laugh," said his 17-year-old niece, Misty Overstreet. Her uncle's enthusiasm for plays and old black-and-white movies inspired her to take theater classes at William Fleming High School, where she is a senior.

He sometimes performed in drag under the name Iwanna, she said. An animal rights advocate, he donated regularly to organizations such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

"This man did not have a shred of prejudice in his body." That's why, she said, everyone who knew him and learned of his murder said, "No, not Danny!"

People around the Roanoke Valley have been trying to make sense of the shootings.

The shootings were the cause of much prayer and soul-searching Sunday at Unity Church of the Roanoke Valley, where Bruce Steele, 60, is a member. Though the shootings have brought unsavory national media coverage, it shouldn't reflect on Roanoke, he said. Instead, "it reflects on people who don't get the concept of getting along."

Before the shootings, Wendy Moore heard clergy say that Roanoke doesn't have hate crimes. She is director of the regional chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice and vice president of the Roanoke Valley Ministers Conference.

"I'm sorry somebody had to die," she said, "but now we need to come together and say this is not going to happen in our town." On Oct. 11, NCCJ and the ministers conference will sponsor a forum on "Hate Crimes and the Response by the Religious Community" at 7:15 p.m. at Temple Emanuel on Persinger Road Southwest.

"The church has to say something," said the Rev. William Lee, pastor of Loudon Avenue Disciples of Christ. "We have to talk about this intolerance of persons who openly declare they are gay, and not pretend like it's not real."

At Virginia Western Community College, professor Betty Shepherd said the shootings prove Roanoke is not immune to violence. "We shouldn't think it wouldn't happen to us because we're too good or too small."

Despite what happened Friday night, City Councilwoman Linda Wyatt said, Roanoke is still a tolerant community as a whole. "I do hope it's a wake-up call to our community," she said, "that we need to teach our children about love and acceptance -- and not hate."

Staff writers Cody Lowe, Mike Allen, Kathy Lu and Todd Jackson contributed information to this story.

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Activists Ask Lawmakers to Expand Hate-Crime Laws to Protect Gays

Printed Sept. 26, 2000

By MIKE HUDSON
THE ROANOKE TIMES

In the wake of a shooting spree in Roanoke, gay-rights activists are pushing to expand state and federal hate-crime laws by including attacks based on sexual orientation.

The Friday night violence at a bar that is frequented by gays and lesbians has prompted a Roanoke Valley legislator to rethink his opposition to including anti-gay violence in the provisions of Virginia's hate-crime law.

"What it has pointed out to me is there is a lot of diffuse hate out there," Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton, said Monday. "This is something that will tear our society to shreds if we don't get a handle on it."

Opponents of hate-crime laws say they are unnecessary because crimes such as assault and murder can already be prosecuted under criminal statutes.

Supporters say violence motivated by hatred of a group warrants extra law enforcement and tougher punishments because the violence not only harms the victim but intimidates the whole group.

On the federal level, gay activists are asking Sen. John Warner, R-Va., to reconsider his opposition to legislation that would expand the definition of hate crimes.

Passage of the provision would give federal law-enforcement agencies the authority to investigate and prosecute crimes that target gays and lesbians.

Warner is a member of the House-Senate conference committee where the hate-crime bill is stuck. A letter from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says Warner "has the ability and therefore responsibility to ensure that the existing federal hate-crimes law is expanded to cover crimes based on actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender or disability."

A spokesman for the task force said the letter is being circulated among gay activists in Roanoke to get their signatures before it is sent to Warner.

Carter Cornick, a spokesman for Warner, said the senator is "profoundly concerned about what occurred in Roanoke." He said Warner has opposed the hate-crime provision, which has been attached as an amendment to a defense bill, because it might threaten military funding, because it might not survive constitutional review, and because it might overrule tougher state hate-crime laws. Warner did support a study proposal aimed at finding out whether there are hate crimes that are not being prosecuted at the state level.

Roanoke police say the suspect in the Friday night shootings expressed a desire to kill gay people and was searching for a gay bar when he entered the Backstreet Cafe and opened fire. One person was killed and six others were wounded.

Virginia's hate-crime statute makes it a felony if someone assaults another person based on the victim's race, national origin or religion. A conviction carries a mandatory 30-day sentence.

Attempts to add sexual orientation to the law have failed in recent years. Cranwell has voted against the expansion, saying he had qualms with using the status of the victim as a way of elevating the perpetrator's punishment.

Once you start adding protected groups, he has said, "where does it stop?"

Cranwell said an expanded hate-crime provision wouldn't make any difference in the case of Ronald Edward Gay, the man held in the Backstreet Cafe shootings.

Don Caldwell, Roanoke's commonwealth's attorney, has said Gay "is looking at being locked up for the rest of his life."

Prosecutors plan to bring Gay to trial on a first-degree murder charge along with several felony counts of wounding and firearms violations.

In light of the shootings, Cranwell said Monday an expanded hate-crime law might be one way of sending a message that "hate based on status" is not acceptable.

Other legislators continue to oppose including sexual orientation in the Virginia law.

Asked about efforts to expand the hate-crime law, Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said: "Gee, I thought they'd be pushing to allow law-abiding citizens to arm themselves in restaurants. Because those who are determined to commit crimes are going to have the guns."

Having guns probably would not have protected the first victims, Griffith said, but "based on what I've read, you would have to wonder how many of those other folks would be in serious condition" if they'd had weapons to defend themselves.

As for the hate-crime law, Griffith said he didn't believe it was right to single out any group of victims for special provisions in the law. "Anybody who's assaulted or wounded or maimed ought to expect the law to punish the perpetrator no matter what the underlying motive is," he said.

According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 23 states and the District of Columbia include sexual orientation in their hate-crime statutes. Virginia is one of 17 states that does not. (Ten states have no hate-crime laws.)

Del. James Almand, D-Arlington, and state Sen. Patsy Ticer, D-Alexandria, have been the perennial sponsors of legislation to expand hate-crime provisions to include anti-gay violence. Both said they will try again when the General Assembly meets in January.

Each year, Ticer said, her bill has come a little closer to passing. Last year it fell one vote short of gaining committee approval and coming to a vote in the full Senate.

"I will keep trying," Ticer said. "And I think with each vicious crime that gets publicity, people will get to know the innocent faces of the victims. Then I think people will open their hearts.

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Anti-Gay Minister Says He'll Orotest at Overstreet Funeral

Printed Sept. 26, 2000

By CODY LOWE
THE ROANOKE TIMES

As the Roanoke Valley proceeds with its mourning of Danny Overstreet, killed Friday in the Backstreet Cafe, some familiar signs will be visible at his funeral and vigil.

"God hates fags."

"AIDS cures fags."

"No tears for queers."

The Rev. Fred Phelps and his family from Topeka, Kan., "have got our bags packed" for a trip to Roanoke, he said Monday. The luggage will include the signs that have become a familiar sight in recent years at the funerals of gays and at gay pride events around the country.

Phelps, pastor of a small Primitive Baptist church, says the Bible teaches that God hates some sinners, as well as the sins they commit.

His Web site defends the practice of picketing at funerals as a way "to warn the people who are still living that unless they repent, they will likewise perish. When people go to funerals, they have thoughts of mortality, heaven, hell, eternity, etc., on their minds. It's the perfect time to warn them of things to come. Is it mean, hateful, uncompassionate, etc.? I'm sure it is, according to your standards. However, according to my standards, it would be infinitely more mean, hateful, uncompassionate, etc., to keep my mouth shut and not warn you that you, too, will soon have to face God."

Phelps also is motivated by political concerns, arguing against the passage of hate-crime laws. "We say all crimes are the same, all victims ought to be treated the same."

"We've been victims lots of times" of vandals who have attacked his church and counter-protesters, he said, but "they don't call that a hate crime."

In Seattle recently, Phelps said it took 100 police officers to protect him and other pickets from a hostile crowd.
"That would be all the city needs for that guy to show up," said Lt. William Althoff, head of the Roanoke City Police Department's criminal investigations division.

Police here have been monitoring Phelps' Web site.

Phelps said he will have a lawyer meet with police before he pickets to impress on them the need for protection.

Roanoke police plan to have uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives at the vigils and the funeral, Althoff said.

"We have concern for the victims and his family," Althoff said. "We want the gay community to know we're not there to spy on them; we're there to ensure their safety. We're aware and concerned about copycat crimes."

Police spokeswoman Shelly Alley, talking about the events planned by the gay community, added: "Whatever we can do to accommodate them this week, we'll do."

The Rev. Jerry Falwell called Phelps "another idiot" in an interview Monday in which he condemned the killing of Overstreet.

"It is a terrible thing when a bigot or even a deranged person because of his hatred sets out to hurt another human being." If shooting suspect Ronald Gay "is not deranged, I'm sure he will be penalized to the full extent of the law, which in my opinion should be execution."

Falwell said the shooting does not increase the urgency for continued talks such as those he had with gay rights advocates, led by the Rev. Mel White, last fall.

"I don't think for a moment that the man who pulled the trigger had just left a Billy Graham crusade," Falwell said.

"Preaching against the sin of homosexuality is the responsibility of every minister who takes the Bible seriously. . . . I don't believe preaching God's truth in love ever engenders violence."

Falwell "is a media genius," White said. "He knows the answer for every question, but they're the wrong answers."

White was a ghost writer for Falwell and other evangelical Christian leaders until he acknowledged his homosexuality. With his partner, he now directs an organization called SoulForce advocating nonviolent passive resistance to bring attention to gay and lesbian concerns.

"I'm glad Fred Phelps is going to be there with those sickening, revolting, hateful signs. At least in Fred Phelps we see what Jerry Falwell is really like at heart. . . . At least Phelps is honest enough to be open and not hide behind a patina of self-righteousness.

"We need Phelps to hold up his signs to see what we are really up against.

"I sat down with him for an hour and a half one time," White said. "He believes every word on those signs, that if he doesn't shake us loose, we'll not find the kingdom of heaven.

"I'm hoping like everything that we won't hurt Fred Phelps, take our anger out on him, and make him a martyr."

Staff writer Kimberly O'Brien contributed information to this report.

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Task Force Readies to Face Anti-Gay Activist

Printed Sept. 27, 2000

By MARY BISHOP
THE ROANOKE TIMES

It was raining and chilly Monday night, but mourners still came to the candlelit door of the Backstreet Cafe.

People have come every evening since Friday night, when a man police say was hunting homosexuals shot and killed one gay man and wounded six other people in the little bar. Monday night, mourners stayed almost all night outside the closed club.

Few knew each other, but they were bonded in anger by the news that Fred Phelps was coming. Phelps, an anti-gay minister from Kansas, picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student brutally murdered in Wyoming in 1998. He has announced plans to bring his "God hates fags" signs to today's funeral of 43-year-old Danny Lee Overstreet.

"I was so angry yesterday, my mother and all my friends were trying to calm me down," said Eddie Ratliff, a Web builder in Salem.

Overnight, outside the cafe, Ratliff and others came up with a way, they say, to turn Phelps' visit into a positive thing. They're calling it a "Phelps-A-Thon."

For every five minutes Phelps protests, the new Hate Free Roanoke Task Force is asking people to pledge a dollar amount toward the victims' medical expenses and for counseling of others in the club that night. Kathryn Marlow, 22, had heard of a similar counteraction at a Ku Klux Klan rally years ago and helped hatch the plan.

The task force will post a pledge box near Phelps at the funeral in Vinton and at any other events where Phelps protests. A poster thanking Phelps for picketing will say, "Fred, you've already helped us raise" -- followed by a blank space where the amount will be updated every five minutes.

Tuesday, Marlow asked the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg and First Baptist Church on Third Street in Roanoke for pledges. She also asked "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" for a mention. She hadn't heard back Tuesday night.

Dan Hawes, a field organizer with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, warned people at a meeting Tuesday not to say or do anything to Phelps. "In no way engage with him," Hawes said. "First of all, you're not going to change his mind, and it's going to provoke a lawsuit," which is how Phelps raises money, Hawes said.

Cathy Renna, a regional spokeswoman for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in Washington, has seen Phelps in action many times. "I think the bottom line," she said, "is to maintain a safe environment and to allow him his free speech, however vile that speech may be."

Oakey's Funeral Service is in charge of Overstreet's funeral today at 6 p.m. at Oakey's Vinton chapel. Sammy Oakey, president of the funeral home, called Casper, Wyo., this week. He talked with the Episcopal priest who led Shepard's funeral about how to deal with Phelps and his band of picketers. "The main thing he said is to completely stay away from them."

Phelps accused Roanoke police in a Tuesday fax of encouraging violence against him. Asserting his right to protest on public sidewalks, Phelps told the police that their statements in the news media "give us grave concern that you are either unable or unwilling to protect us." A police spokesman had no comment and noted that the funeral is in Vinton, not Roanoke.

Investigator Craig Harris of the Vinton Police Department said three or four of its officers will be at the funeral, and that Roanoke County police and state police will be on call.

Tuesday, the Roanoke Valley Ministers' Conference issued this statement about the shootings: "As people of faith, we recommit ourselves to be agents of healing and reconciliation, welcoming all as God's children. We envision a community that is inclusive, honoring our unique religious traditions, sexual orientations and cultural and ethnic differences."

The Washington Post ran a front-page story on the Backstreet Cafe shootings Monday, and the Los Angeles Times published stories Sunday and Tuesday. Planetout.com, a gay and lesbian news service, continued to play the story as its lead Tuesday. The unitedagainsthate.org Web site included a color photo of Overstreet with its story.

Two groups are collecting donations for the shooting victims:

Marlow, of the Hate Free Roanoke Task Force, is taking pledges for the "Phelps-A-Thon" at 343-4494, or at phelpsathon@yahoo.com. Donations to the task force also can be sent to Christ the Good Shepherd American Catholic Church, P.O. Box 3359, Roanoke 24015, with checks made out to the church but designated for the Hate Free Roanoke Task Force.

Overstreet's co-workers at Verizon have set up a fund for his family. Checks, made out to the Danny L. Overstreet Fund, may be sent to First Citizens Bank, 1959 Valley View Blvd., Roanoke 24012. Donations are being accepted at all First Citizens branches.

Staff writers Cody Lowe, Kimberly O'Brien, Kathy Lu and Lisa Applegate contributed to this story.

Mary Bishop can be reached at 981-3358 or at maryb@roanoke.com

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Mourners Celebrate Life

Printed Sept. 28, 2000

By ZEKE BARLOW
The Roanoke Times

Death brought talk of laughter.

For if there was one defining thing that Danny Lee Overstreet brought to this world, it was laughter, his family said.

A laugh that pierced the soul, a laugh that his family said will live on past Overstreet's grave.

Beside Overstreet's casket at his funeral Wednesday, pictures of him laughing and living reminded people of the man gunned down in a bar Friday night. Six others who were shot at Backstreet Cafe on Salem Avenue live to remember the night. Overstreet, 43, died on the floor of the bar in minutes, paramedics said.

He hung out at the gay bar because of the camaraderie, his mother, Ann Overstreet, has said. He never drank, but always smiled.

"He was the laughing man," his niece, Misty Overstreet, said in a eulogy. "He hated to see sadness."

Mourners overflowed from the Oakey's Vinton Chapel, about 800 people in all. Once the chapel was full, the remaining 300 people stood outside in the warm sunset.

Inside the chapel, tears flowed as Misty Overstreet said the eulogy for the man she said was like her older brother and great friend.

"He was taken before his time in a way no man or woman should have been," she said. "Danny was there for all of us, and he still is there for all of us."

Men hugged men. Women hugged women. Men hugged women. Many wore white ribbons, which have come to symbolize innocence.

The Rev. Catherine Houchins, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge, which has a large gay and lesbian membership, presided over the service.

"What's happened in the city of Roanoke is horrible. What's happened to you and your life because you knew Danny is horrible," Houchins said during the service. "But we have to block the hate of the world with love."

The shock of the slaying is being felt all around Roanoke, some said.

"It's the non-gay community, too, that's grieving," said Richard Ward, who stood as part of the Hate Free Roanoke Task Force. "It's not just one orientation; it's all orientations."

Many who never heard Overstreet's name before it became national news attended the funeral.

Donald Hitchcock with the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., was on hand for the week, helping people understand the crime and keeping people focused on the message of ending them.

Lee Phillips and Tricia Goadagni, Hollins University students from New York, never met Overstreet. They just wanted to make a stance against hate crimes.

Kathy Caldwell was there, too. Although she didn't know Overstreet, she does know what he went through Friday night. She was one of the seven shot. Wearing a cast that held her finger that was almost severed by a bullet, Caldwell walked up to the open casket, shook her head and walked away, tears puddling in her eyes. It was one of the first times since the shooting that she's gone out in public.

"When someone's life drains away in front of you, you want to show your respect," she said earlier in the day. Caldwell was the only victim at the funeral.

As the mourners were preparing to leave the service, Bishop Anthony Hash of Christ the Good Shepherd American Catholic Church called on the approximately 300 people who remained outside to join in a circle for prayer.

"Lord, we thank you for the courage to stand up as people against hate," he said, while beseeching God to heal those injured physically and psychologically by the shooting.

The crowd spontaneously burst into song afterward, singing the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome." Smaller circles of mourners hugged, cried and continued to sing the hymn "We Are Standing on Holy Ground," and John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance."

Talk of Overstreet and his exuberance continued throughout the songs and chants.

Ann Hines, who knew Overstreet for more than 20 years, was in the crowd.

"He had a laugh you couldn't forget. A smile as big as the outdoors. I've never seen him angry," she said.

"I know one thing -- he's smiling right now."

Staff writers CODY LOWE and KIMBERLY O'BRIEN contributed to this story.

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Pastor Who Planned Protest is a No-Show

Printed Sept. 28, 2000

By CODY LOWE and KIMBERLY O'BRIEN
The Roanoke Times

Fears that Roanoke Valley law-enforcement agencies wouldn't protect them apparently dissuaded Kansas pastor Fred Phelps and his followers from picketing at Wednesday's funeral for Danny Lee Overstreet.

Roanoke City Police Department statements, such as "all we need is for that guy to show up," published in Tuesday's Roanoke Times, "set an atmosphere and a tone ... that said it was open season on the picketers," said Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps' daughter, who serves as legal counsel to his church.

Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., is known for picketing the funerals of gays who die by violence or AIDS, holding up signs that say such things as "God hates fags" and "AIDS cures fags," and yelling to the mourners that the deceased is burning in hell. The confrontations sometimes degenerate into shouting matches, and the pickets are occasionally pelted with eggs or other objects.

Phelps-Roper said from Kansas that her father was attempting by "moral suasion" to change the lives of homosexual people he believes are condemned to hell if they do not change.

In a telephone interview Wednesday night, Phelps-Roper said she advised her father not to make the trip. She wasn't sure he took her advice, she said, because she had been gone on a business trip for the last two days.

About 50 officers from Vinton, Roanoke County, Virginia State Police and the Roanoke County Sheriff's Office were at the funeral and nearby in case there were any problems.

"All of it may turn out to be unnecessary and I'll end up taking these guys to dinner," Vinton Police Chief Herb Cooley said at 5:30 p.m., when it looked as if Phelps would definitely be a no-show.

The only apparent protest came from a car that drove by with a white banner that read, "Ronnie Gay for Pres." Members of the Hate Free Roanoke Task Force formed a protective wall at the curb and turned their backs to it .

"You ignore stuff long enough and it'll go away," said Ann Sines, who represented both the gay community and the Mountain View Neighborhood Watch in Southwest Roanoke.

One man, standing across Hardy Road, surveyed the crowd gathered outside the funeral home and called the showing a "damn disgrace" and the police presence a "waste of taxpayers' money." The man would not give his name.

That view was clearly in the minority, evidenced by the more than 800 people who turned out.

Kathryn Marlow of the Hate Free Roanoke group said a planned "Phelps-a-thon" to raise money for the shooting victims and their families was a success even without his appearance. Donors were asked to pledge money for each minute Phelps picketed. About $4,200 was pledged, and Marlow said she expected most people would make the contributions anyway.

An additional $1,500 already has been raised for the fund, said Bishop Anthony Hash of Christ the Good Shepherd American Catholic Church. Several in the funeral crowd stopped him to present donations Wednesday night.

"It's good to see this many supporters out there," said Susan Hristov, of Vinton, who stood across the street and watched with her husband, Peter, and their 11- and 13-year-old daughters.

Cooley said that Phelps, even by not coming, accomplished one thing he wanted.

"He did what he expected to do -- disrupt the community," Cooley said. "He got his media attention and didn't have to spend the money."

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Death of Danny Overstreet Mourned Here and Across the Nation

Printed Sept. 28, 2000

By KATHY LU and LISA APPLEGATE
The Roanoke Times

Prayers in Florida. A vigil in Detroit. An in memoriam passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

All in memory of Danny Lee Overstreet, a gay Roanoke man who was shot to death Friday night at Backstreet Cafe. Six others were wounded in what national activist groups say is one of the worst anti-gay attacks in U.S. history.

"We were struck by the brutality of what happened," said Tom Ammiano, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He is one of three openly gay members of the 11-member board. "This is just so horrible. My hope is that it will educate people so he will not have died in vain."

News of Overstreet's death has spread quickly across the country, especially among the gay and lesbian community. Just two days after his death, the rainbow flag that flies over San Francisco's Castro district was lowered to half staff in his honor.

Wednesday evening , members of the Metropolitan Community Church of Tampa, Fla., included Overstreet and his family and friends in their prayers and will do so again Sunday. Prayers also were extended to Ronald Gay, the man charged with killing Overstreet.

John Goodhart Sr. of Rocky Mount, Overstreet's co-worker at Verizon, will be the guest speaker today at a vigil in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. Sponsored in part by Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the vigil will focus on hate-crime legislation.

Vigils will be held around Virginia tonight. A vigil at an Arlington church will be sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

In Detroit, Jeff Montgomery, executive director for the Triangle Foundation, said his organization is sponsoring a vigil tonight because violence against gays is a universal problem. In fact, he said, a gay man was shot and wounded outside a Detroit bar Tuesday night.

"These incidents happen in large cities and small towns all over the country every day, unfortunately," he said. "That's part of why these vigils are important."

In Denver, Equality Colorado is sponsoring a symposium on hate crimes tonight. Lori Girvan, executive director, said the event was planned months ago, but they added a vigil for Overstreet.

New Yorker and actor Paul Lucas has a personal reason to try to organize a vigil soon. He was "Jinx" in the play "Forever Plaid," performed at Mill Mountain Theatre in 1995. Lucas said he and fellow cast members went to Backstreet Cafe often while in Roanoke.

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Carrying flickering candles, roses, incense and heavy hearts, a large crowd turned out Thursday night for a vigil and march through the streets of downtown Roanoke.

They showed up not just to celebrate Danny Lee Overstreet's life, but to use his death to urge Congress to pass hate crime legislation that would include protection for homosexuals.

Starting at Elmwood Park, the mostly gay and lesbian group walked through the City Market in a trail of light that stretched for nearly two blocks. The procession turned left onto Salem Avenue and headed west, taking the same route that Ronald Edward Gay did a week ago today.

By taking the same path, the marchers declared that what happened that night will not turn them back.

"Fear will not conquer Roanoke," the Rev. Catherine Houchins told the crowd minutes earlier at the vigil. "We've come together and we've said, ?not here.? ?

The march was the largest public reaction so far to a shooting that killed Overstreet and wounded six other patrons of the bar, a popular nightspot for gays and lesbians. Organizers said they hoped the vigil and others across the country will help persuade Congress to pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The Rt. Rev. Neff Powell, Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, urged the crowd to contact U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., whose opposition to the measure seems to be wavering.

"We can't legislate morality, I know that, but we have to regulate behavior," Powell said.

Roanoke Mayor Ralph Smith said the city's heart goes out to the shooting victims and anyone else touched by what activists are calling one of the worst anti-gay crimes in U.S. history.

"To anyone who would further threaten the peace and security of the citizens of the Roanoke Valley, I say, ?No more, not again, not on my watch,? ? Smith said. "We will not let the darkness of hate overcome the light of our love."

It took the crowd about 15 minutes to walk to the Backstreet Cafe. More people spoke there, including Ron Biagiarelli, a coordinator of the newly formed Hate Free Roanoke Task Force. After proudly announcing to the crowd that he was gay, he urged everyone to keep the momentum going.

"We've built a bridge to city officials that did not exist before," Biagiarelli said. "Not only were the doors to the closet torn off, but the closet was torn down."

"I'm prouder of this city than I ever have been in my entire life," said Beard, 25, who was born and raised in Roanoke. "This is a terrible thing that happened, and I'm so proud of the way the city has pulled together."

For the march, city police blocked off Church Avenue, Market Street, and Campbell and Salem avenues. Though many people spilled out of businesses to watch, there were no disturbances.
Standing in front of the Backstreet Cafe, Jeannette Kenny said she would definitely go back to it once it reopens.

"You have to be committed to the places that provide a safe haven to gay people," Kenny, 23, said. "I still feel safe here. I'm not afraid."

After the vigil, marchers left their candles and roses in front of the bar, further illuminating the dark street.

? John Collins, who was shot in the stomach as he talked with Overstreet, was released from Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Iris Page Webb, who was shot in the neck, is the only victim still hospitalized. She was listed in serious condition Thursday.

? Downtown Roanoke Inc. passed a resolution condemning the "senseless violent act targeted at the gay and lesbian community" and called for increased tolerance and understanding.

? The Roanoke 7 Fund has collected $4,200 in pledges -- including two from California -- to help cover the victims' medical expenses.

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Sen. Charles Robb told a crowd of 250 in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that while no one can erase prejudice from people's hearts, legislation can punish those who act violently on it.

"Those who harbor hatred must know that American society will punish them for their actions, and that we will not tolerate their acts of inhumanity," said Robb, D-Va.

Robb, along with other political, religious and human rights leaders, gathered at a park in front of the White House to remember the victims of the Backstreet Cafe shooting in Roanoke and push for the passage of hate crime legislation.

The lunchtime rally was one of several events across the country commemorating the death of Danny Lee Overstreet and the wounding of six others. Vigils in Detroit, Baltimore, Arlington, Williamsburg, Richmond, Norfolk and Blacksburg coincided with one in Roanoke Thursday evening.

Robb, who is running for re-election against former Virginia Gov. George Allen, did not specifically endorse the hate crime legislation being considered by Congress. The bill would expand Justice Department jurisdiction over violent crimes motivated by race, religion or sexual orientation.

Other speakers, including Roanoker John Goodhart, encouraged vocal support of the bill. Goodhart worked with Overstreet at Verizon and is active in the Roanoke chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

"When we are silent, we send the message to the Ronald Gays of the world that we don't care if he kills," Goodhart told the crowd, referring to the man charged with Overstreet's death. "We must accept part of the blame."

In Michigan, organizers had a vigil in Birmingham, a Detroit suburb represented in the state legislature by a Republican who has opposed hate crime legislation.

About 50 people stood under a banner that read, "Remember the Ronoake 7." Although misspelled, the banner and the vigil reminded those in attendance "to recommit oneself to the struggle for human lives," said retired minister Renee McCoy.

About 200 gathered in front of Virginia Tech's Alumni Hall for a candlelight vigil organized by the school's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Alliance. University President Charles Steger, school officials and representatives of seven campus religious organizations were there.

Reggie Elam, the gay organization's vice president, called the climate at Tech "mostly good" for homosexual students, but he still receives the occasional threatening note or harassing e-mail.

"I never took it seriously before," he said. "After this [Overstreet's death], I think I probably should."

Elam said the shooting hit Tech's gay community hard. Many gay students go to Roanoke on weekends because they feel more comfortable in the city's nightspots than the bars in Blacksburg.

The Rev. Jim Griffin, a Catholic priest, decried the prejudice that underscored the Roanoke shooting.

"Prejudice is really us saying God is a sinner," Griffin said. "That seems impossible . . . but that's what prejudice is really saying."

Staff writer Michael Sluss and correspondents Elissa Milenky Golan from Washington and Martha Hindes from Detroit contributed to this report.

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Except for a few street crews, police patrol cars and delivery trucks, the roads are mostly vacant. But on Salem Avenue, there is life.

Burning candles scent the night and fresh-cut flowers line the wall in front of Backstreet Cafe, a neighborhood bar that patrons affectionately call "a hole in the wall."

Before the night of Sept. 22, when a drifter from Florida walked in the door, ordered a beer, pulled out a gun and fired eight rounds into the crowd there, Backstreet enjoyed a subtle reputation. It attracted a group of regulars, composed mostly of gays and lesbians, and occasionally newcomers.

"This is the only bar I would normally come to," said Karen Adkins, 30. She stopped by the shrine about midnight Wednesday, on her way home from work as a policy processor at Allstate Insurance.

"I know the bartender and it's a safe and friendly place," she said. "When I heard about the shooting, I felt like someone had come into my living room and started shooting."

Now, the sidewalk outside the small bar serves as a temporary shrine for Danny Lee Overstreet, who died in the shooting, and the six others who were wounded. The candles, flowers and posters compel many who have never been to Backstreet to slow if they're driving by or stop if they're walking.

The bar has become a symbol of weakness and strength, hate and love. For while it is the place where blood was shed, it also has become the place where people grieve and find solace in old and new friendships.

And though both gays and straights have lighted candles and placed flowers there, Overstreet's death is a reminder that there is an undercurrent of intolerance in society -- and in Roanoke.

"This hate against each other has got to go," said James O'Neal, 46, who stopped at Backstreet a little after 5 a.m. Thursday. He was walking to work. "We don't have to agree with each other on beliefs, but everybody's got to get along in the world."

O'Neal, who is straight, said he walks by Backstreet every morning, but this was the first time he decided to stop. He wanted to read the posted messages, including the poster that spelled "PEACE" and the quote that read, "Peace is in the moment -- it is you, it is me."

"I think they're doing the proper thing by leaving messages and not protesting," O'Neal said. "It shows 100 percent more respect. I'm really proud of what they've done."

Nightly vigils have been held outside Backstreet since the shootings. On Wednesday, after Overstreet's funeral, about 50 people gathered in front of the bar to sing and share their feelings. The vigil officially ended at 8 p.m., but people arrived through midnight.

About 9 p.m., Kathy Caldwell, one of the shooting victims, came to see the shrine. It was the first time she has visited the bar since she was wounded. She was shot through her left hand and in her right shoulder, both of which were bandaged. She stayed for about half an hour.

"I thought it was really nice," Caldwell, 36, said of the shrine. "But to be honest with you, right now, I'm not feeling anything. I don't have any feelings toward anything."

The candles are housed in a plywood shelter, which was built by the Hate Free Roanoke Task Force, which formed as a result of the shootings. A colorful collage of wax drippings covers the ground around the candles. Glitter sparkles on the ground by the flowers.

"Every night, I plan to go somewhere else, but I come here instead," she said. "I'm here partly because it hit me so hard . . . and partly to show that I'm not scared."

Adkins said she's been coming to Backstreet for about five years. She was supposed to meet friends at the bar the night of the shooting, but decided at the last minute she was too tired to go.

Martin Jeffrey, one of Roanoke's most outspoken black activists, also visited the shrine Wednesday night. He wanted people to know that the violence affects not only the gay and lesbian community, but all minorities as well.

"Hate is hate," said Jeffrey, 38. "I'm here to tell this group of minorities that the group I represent understands. We support their right to exist as we do our own."

About 11:45 p.m., Megan Wilson of Bedford County sang "Amazing Grace" in a deep, strong voice. About 1 a.m., a group of men asked to form a circle of prayer. By 1:45, everyone went home.

But visitors came throughout the morning. At 2, a man dropped off a single rose. At 3:15, a taxi cab driver pulled over to study the candles and messages. And at 4, a straight couple who live nearby and frequent the bar dropped by to show their respect. Throughout the night, police cars passed by about once every 20 minutes.

Just after sunrise, however, a tall young man ambled by the bar and stopped. He wore camouflage pants, a grimy parka and a baseball cap sideways on his head.

He looked into the candle shelter, read the fliers, and put his cigarette into his mouth so he could fold his hands into the shape of gun.

Then he pointed the imaginary weapon into the shelter and made machine gun sounds, his hands jerking with each shot. He took another few seconds to look at the cross hanging from the middle of the shelter, then walked away.

Backstreet is scheduled to reopen next week, and many regulars have said they plan to go back. But Caldwell isn't sure she will ever return.

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In London, a neo-Nazi was convicted this summer of planting a nail bomb at a gay bar in the city?s Soho district, killing a pregnant woman and two male friends and injuring 70 others.

In Grant Town, W.Va., two teen-agers stand accused of punching and kicking a gay man to death, then driving over his body to make it look like a hit-and-run.

From Texas to New Jersey to Virginia, authorities have yet to solve the killings of as many as 30 gay men and transvestites, thought to be the work of several serial killers.

In North Carolina and elsewhere, law officers are still looking for Eric Robert Rudolph, who is charged with the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing and a bombing seven months later that injured five people at a gay nightclub in Atlanta.

Experts on homophobic violence say the shooting spree last weekend in Roanoke that killed Danny Lee Overstreet and wounded six others was one of the worst anti-gay attacks in U.S. history.

But those who track hate crimes say it is not unprecedented. Rather, they say, it?s an example of the continuing tide of violence directed at gays, lesbians, bisexuals and other sexual minorities.

"It's not unique in terms of the way lesbians and gay men have been victimized in the United States," said Gregory Herek, a psychology professor at University of California at Davis who is working on a book about sexual prejudice. "To say that doesn't lessen the tragedy for the victims and the victims? families."

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, a gay-rights organization, says reports of anti-gay incidents rose for five years in a row before showing a slight decrease last year. The number of anti-gay murders in the United States rose from 26 in 1998 to 29 in 1999.

Coalition spokesman Jeffrey Montgomery said anti-gay violence has remained high, even as the overall crime rate in the United States has plummeted.

The coalition recorded 1,965 anti-gay incidents last year. That figure includes assaults, bomb threats, vandalism, police harassment and other forms of discrimination. The group estimates 65 to 70 percent of such incidents don?t get reported.

Tod Burke, an associate professor of criminal justice at Radford University, said many gays and lesbians are reluctant to report crimes against them because they're afraid they'll be "outed," or that they'll be treated poorly by police or judges.

Most hate crimes don?t target large numbers of victims at once, as happened in the Roanoke, London and Atlanta incidents. More commonly, the violence is targeted at a couple or a single victim, as in the Grant Town killing.

? In Happy Valley, Calif., two white supremacist brothers have been charged with murdering two gay men in the couple?s mobile home. One of the brothers told a newspaper that he shot the men because he believes homosexuality is a sin: "I'm not guilty of murder. I'm guilty of obeying the laws of the creator." The brothers also face charges in three synagogue fire-bombings and an abortion-clinic arson.

? In Cleveland, two gay men were leaving a bar when two young males jumped out of some bushes yelling "faggots" and "Queers, you are going to get it." The attackers hit the two men with plastic milk crates and chased them down the street.

? In Massachusetts, a woman with lesbian pride bumper stickers was struck at a traffic light by three men in a truck who called her "dyke" and "fag." The woman sped away but the men caught her and smashed into her truck repeatedly, giving each other "high fives" as they drove away.

Most gays and lesbians haven't personally been victims of hate crimes. But gay-rights activists say the threat of mayhem is a day-to-day reality, like lynching in the Jim Crow era, that undermines people?s sense of well-being and their freedom to live their lives as they choose.

"It?s just a fact of gay life in this country," the anti-violence coalition's Montgomery said. "I?m not suggesting that gay people walk around constantly looking over their shoulders and being in fear. But it?s part of the psyche that at any moment, something like that can happen to us."

The public often doesn't understand this, Radford University's Burke said, but the Roanoke shootings may help educate people about the prevalence of hate crimes against sexual minorities: "You can't downplay it when you have seven people shot."

Major episodes of violence have often served as a rallying point in the fight for gay rights.

In 1978, Daniel J. White, an ex-cop and former San Francisco supervisor, walked into City Hall and shot and killed the city?s mayor and Harvey Milk, San Francisco?s first openly gay supervisor. Milk became an icon of the gay-rights movement in the city and across the nation.

In 1980, Ronald K. Crumply, a mentally deranged former New York City transit cop, shot and killed two people and wounded six others outside a Greenwich Village gay bar. Two days before the shootings, he called his father and claimed he was being pursued by hundreds of gay men. It was one of a series of serious attacks in Greenwich Village that helped spark organized efforts to combat anti-gay violence in the city.

The 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming, produced an outpouring of outrage and activism across the United States. Soon after, a Time/CNN poll found most Americans believed the same kind of attack could happen in their hometowns.

The murder fueled efforts to add sexual orientation to federal hate crime protections. Legislation to do that is now the subject of negotiations presided over by U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

"When Matthew Shepard was killed, it was huge in terms of people's response," said Shirley Lesser, executive director of Virginians for Justice, which tracks anti-gay violence. "It started to turn the tide."

Social change comes slowly, Lesser said, but she expects the Roanoke shootings will foster more activism and more change -- in Roanoke and across the nation.

"Any time that the reality of discrimination and hate hits people in the face, they're spurred to action," Lesser said. "The question is how long that action will continue."

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The easy assumption, of course, was that Roanoke's gays and lesbians would be driven deeper into the proverbial closet after the shooting death of Danny Lee Overstreet.

Why would they be inclined otherwise, after a gunman reportedly sought out a gay bar, walked into the Backstreet Cafe, killed Overstreet -- a gay man -- and wounded six other people?

Something unexpected is happening here, though, something the most venerable gays in town struggle to comprehend.

Overstreet's death nine days ago has brought the greatest surge of gay courage and heterosexual empathy the region has ever seen.

It has led untold numbers of gays to reveal their orientation publicly for the first time, produced Roanoke's first gay political action committee in years, persuaded two lawmakers to reconsider their opposition to adding sexual orientation to hate crime laws, and brought international attention to Roanoke's heretofore barely visible gay citizenry.

Until now, average straight Roanokers probably didn't think they knew any gay people, said the Rev. Catherine Houchins, a lesbian minister. "Now they're finding out we're their neighbors, their customers . . . their employers, their employees."

Roy Mitchell came to work heavy of heart Monday morning. He's a customer service worker at First Union National Bank's operations center on Plantation Road. He had brought some of the first flowers to the growing shrine at the Backstreet Cafe the morning after the shootings, and had attended vigils there the first two nights.

Before he could reach his desk Monday, people were hugging him and asking for snippets of white ribbon to wear in sympathy for the dead and wounded. His boss had been out of town all weekend, and she'd worried about him.

At 59, Mitchell makes no secret of being gay, but he rarely talks about it with his mostly straight co-workers.

"All of this outpouring of love," Mitchell said late in the week. "I still have not ceased to be amazed. I've seen things from people that I never thought would happen here."

Gays and lesbians from throughout Western Virginia have long sought refuge in Roanoke, the region's largest city. Its close-knit homosexual society has offered a privacy and acceptance impossible for gays in smaller towns. The Roanoke Valley, with a population of about 225,000, has at least 10,000 gays and lesbians, activists say.

Most of Roanoke's gay life proceeded quietly in people's homes. In general, straight Roanokers were able to glimpse it only on visits to a succession of predominantly gay bars near downtown.

But it hasn't been entirely undercover or trouble-free. Controversies have arisen over police arrests of gay men charged with soliciting sex in Wasena Park; over an advertising firm's refusal to allow a "Diversity Enriches" message on its local billboards; and over the yanking of the National Public Radio show "Fresh Air" from WVTF for its supposedly "hidden agenda to promote homosexuality." This year, the show was returned to the air.

Roy Mitchell settled down in Roanoke about 1980. He grew up in Newport News, where he feared even saying the word "homosexual." He attended Virginia Tech and came back to the Blacksburg area after working at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He later moved to Roanoke.

He had marched and been arrested in Southern civil rights rallies as a teen-ager. In more recent years, he demonstrated for AIDS support and against the Rev. Jerry Falwell's anti-gay statements. In Roanoke, Mitchell tried for two decades to inspire political action within the homosexual population.

There were high moments -- such as a night in 1990 when Roanoke activist and lawyer Sam Garrison and 200 other gays and lesbians confronted City Council about anti-gay bigotry. But Mitchell eventually realized that the same 10 people were doing all the behind-the-scenes work of activism. Begrudgingly, he came to accept Roanoke's apathy.

The morning of Sept. 23, he woke up to hear on CBS national news about the shootings at the Backstreet Cafe. Every day since, his life as a gay man in Roanoke has been different.

Mitchell, a liberal Democrat, has seen Roanoke's conservative Republican mayor, Ralph Smith, vow that he will tolerate no more hate crimes on his watch. He's seen Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton, and U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., rethink their opposition to including sexual orientation in state and federal hate crime legislation.

Mitchell has seen downtown merchants call for greater tolerance and understanding for gays and lesbians. He has seen more than 1,000 people come out for Thursday's downtown vigil, one of the largest rallies of gays and straights in the city's history.

Mitchell has stood outside the candlelit door of the cafe late at night this week and watched cars quietly glide by on Salem Avenue. Gays? Straights? He doesn't know. Drivers nod their heads solemnly, and he senses their understanding.

"Perfect strangers," he said, "will come up and give you a big hug like they've known you forever." It's a shame, he says, that somebody had to die to wake people up.

Cigarette smoke and the sound of sizzling hash browns surrounded the Friday regulars at the Waffle House on Franklin Road. It was lunchtime -- time enough for a short-order grilled sandwich with lots of cheese.

Nobody was talking about the Backstreet Cafe shooting until a reporter asked. Even then, few wanted to give their names.

Three men -- one named John, one named Lee, and a 67-year-old man dressed in business-casual black -- said they didn't want their co-workers or customers to see their full names in print. Not because they are gay, but because they don't agree with being gay.

"I don't mind speaking my mind, but I don't want to get people mad," Lee said. Truth is, he said, homosexuality is immoral and unnatural.

"It says so in the Bible," he said. He said gay people "need to get their mind straightened out."

John, in a work shirt from an automotive repair shop, said his family and friends haven't spent much time talking about the shootings, and he wonders why others still are.

"It's done," he said. "It needs to be a public issue, but not when it's forced down people's throats."

"There are certain things in everyone's lifestyle that you keep to yourself," John said. "What goes on in your bedroom, you keep it to yourself."

"As long as they do their jobs and live their own lives, fine," the 67-year-old man added. "But, sure, seeing two guys sitting at that bar kissing, well, that's just not my cup of tea."

The shooting wasn't right, they say, but hatred and violence have been part of life for centuries.

Joe Hegarty, in a booth near the counter, said he was shocked by the shootings. But Ronald Edward Gay -- the man charged with killing Danny Overstreet -- is an outsider, Hegarty said, and his crime is not a reflection on Roanoke.

"Everybody's attitude that I've talked to is that he was out of his mind," Hegarty said. "One mental case is not a barometer for Roanoke."

Roanoke is very diverse when it comes to lifestyle choices, he said, but Roanoke is behind the times when it comes to accepting that diversity. "Around here you got the yeehaws -- the rednecks -- and they hang around together and don't look past that. Anything beyond them is different."

Occasionally, waitress Kimberly Moore rushed by, filling a coffee mug or slapping down a bill. It was hard to hear what she mumbled under her breath as she hurried past. Only later did she reveal that she and some friends planned to go to the Backstreet Cafe the night of the shootings, but changed their minds at the last minute.

"It hits home," she said. "Like they said, it could have been a redneck bar or a black bar, but it's going to hit home for someone somewhere."

Ann Sheehan, 40, wonders how any Roanoker can be untroubled by what happened at the Backstreet Cafe. She is straight and has two young sons. She became active in the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays after her uncle died of AIDS six years ago.

Sheehan was touched by the spiritual support gay people give one another, "despite having been told they were going to hell and that they were the lowlifes of society."

She sees enlightenment growing among heterosexuals here, but she's still not sure Roanoke gets it. It's a great place to raise a family if you're considered "normal," she said. But is it such a great place if you're different?

Freeda Cathcart is another straight woman who's been moved by the shootings. She plans to ask Roanoke City Council to turn the Mill Mountain Star the colors of the rainbow in honor of those who died and were wounded at the Backstreet Cafe. "I don't want my children to be around hate."

Renae Swain, 26, came to Overstreet's funeral Wednesday with her 27-year-old husband, Cliff. The Bedford County couple have gay friends and wanted to show their concern. The couple embraced outside the overcrowded funeral chapel.

At her office at Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield in Roanoke, Renae Swain said, female co-workers were feeling sympathy for Roanoke's gay population. "I'm hearing a lot about how people shouldn't judge the gay community, that they should leave it up to God."

But some of her friends' husbands don't feel that way. When one of her friends told her husband that God preaches love for all people, he said he couldn't help it, but he still has a problem with people being gay.

Houchins, the minister, is proud that straight Roanokers who never saw gays and lesbians out in force before have seen them at their best.

In other cities, she noted, violence has sometimes followed the assassinations of gay people. "What they have seen here are vigils," said Houchins, 49, pastor of the mostly gay Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge. "They've seen people speaking out, but they've not seen the gay community punish Roanoke for this tragedy."

Many gays, lesbians, bisexuals and other members of the homosexual community took vacation days or forfeited income so they could organize vigils and political action last week. Houchins hopes the leadership remains in place when emotions die down. She hopes the newly formed Hate Free Roanoke Task Force's political work will lead to tangible amenities sorely needed by gays, such as a community center so people who don't go to bars can have someplace to go after work Friday nights.

For all the good that's come from the shootings, the Rev. Ed Harris, a gay man and retired Baptist minister, has heard far too little from churches.

The region's Episcopal bishop spoke at Thursday night's vigil. St. John's Episcopal Church offered its building for the vigil in case of rain. St. Andrew Catholic Church is providing offices for free counseling for people affected by the shootings. And prayers for the victims have been said at Our Lady of Nazareth Catholic Church, Central Church of the Brethren and other churches.

But Harris says the Roanoke Valley's biggest churches have made few public statements. "Silence is abuse," Harris said. "It was abuse in the times of slavery. It was abuse in the times when women were struggling for their rights."

"I don't think homophobia as an evil in our society will be addressed until we as Christian people address the matter of sexuality."

It's impossible to know what will come of Danny Overstreet's death and the woundings of the other people at the Backstreet Cafe.

Gay leaders and others pushing for tolerance and nonviolence may tire, "but it'll be in their heads, and it won't go away," said Rhonda Chattin, 27, coordinator of Outright, a Roanoke support group for gay teens.

Jim Osborn, 25, was a friend of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was lured by two men from a campus hangout almost two years ago, beaten and left tied to a fence to die.

Just as in Roanoke, he said, gays felt so vulnerable, they united in unprecedented numbers and sought public support.

"It's absolutely mind-boggling, the changes we've had here," Osborn said by phone from Laramie, Wyo., where he advises the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Association at the university.

But there will be backlash in Roanoke, he warned. Straight people will say, ? ?I?ve heard enough,? ? he said, ?and that?s very difficult to hear.?

On Oct. 12, the second anniversary of Shepard's death, Laramie will hold a night of poetry in memory of people everywhere murdered because they were gay. Names of the dead will be read aloud.

Because of what happened in Roanoke, they have added another name to the list -- Danny Lee Overstreet.

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I Saw the Fire Come Out of the Gun, I Heard the Bam . . . I Knew I'd Be Next?

Music and light spilled out of the Backstreet Cafe that Friday night, beckoning to those outside. After a warm week, the temperature had dropped below 60 degrees, and a light drizzle fogged the air.

So no one thought it unusual when the bearded stranger in a black trench coat walked in.

He went to the bar, ordered a beer and walked over to two tables pulled together in the corner. Gesturing to one of the few empty seats, he asked the people sitting there, "Can I sit here?"

Gene Flowers glanced up from his Michelob Light. Sure, he said, have a seat. Then he went back to talking to his good friend Danny Overstreet. Cigarette smoke swirled in the dim light, while the clacking of balls at the bar's single pool table punctuated the soft hum of voices.

"Everybody was laughing, moving from table to table, talking. The jukebox was playing," Kathy Caldwell remembered.

John Collins, noticing his friends at the table, grabbed his Zima from the bar. He walked over and knelt on the floor between Gene and Danny, joining the animated conversation interrupted only by Danny's booming laugh. Across the table, the stranger said nothing as he sipped his beer and glanced around the crowded room.

The trio paid the man no mind. Neither did the group of women gathered around the other end of the table.

No one had the slightest clue that about 10 minutes earlier, the man had walked up to an employee in an alley outside Corned Beef & Co. on Jefferson Street. Or that he had asked the employee, who was taking out some trash, where the nearest gay bar was.

The 17-year-old cook told him of The Park -- a gay and lesbian nightspot at 615 Salem Ave. It was then, police said, that the man opened his coat and showed the teen-ager a pistol. He told the teen he was going to "waste some faggots."

As the man in the trench coat walked off toward Salem Avenue, the cook went inside and called the police. An officer arrived within minutes and quickly broadcast a description of the suspect on his radio.

By that time, the man was probably striding along Salem Avenue, past the Greyhound bus station, under the part of The Roanoke Times building that stretches over the street. Three blocks before The Park, he came upon the Backstreet Cafe, a tiny bar almost hidden among the dingy building facades in the 300 block of Salem Avenue. He stopped a man on his way out the door.

A guy named Chris noticed the man in the trench coat come in, go to the bar and order a beer. The man seemed almost cocky, Chris recalled, and kept to himself as he walked to the table in the corner and sat down. Sitting at the table, he turned away from the group sitting there, leaning his right elbow on the surface while appearing to scan the back of the room.

At the table, John Collins wasn't paying much attention to the man, either. After talking with Danny and Gene for a few minutes, he pulled himself to his feet and leaned over to hug Danny. Then everything started to go very wrong.

Gene saw the man stand up and take a step backward. Without a word, his face expressionless, the man pulled a gun from beneath his coat, stretched out his arm and pulled the trigger.

"I heard Danny go, 'Uhh,? ? Gene said. "I think he shot him first. He shot John. I fell back off the chair, on the floor. I saw the fire come out of the gun, I heard the bam, bam, bam. I knew I'd be next."

But Gene wasn't next. Maybe the gunman thought Gene had already been hit, because he swung around and fired toward the back of the bar. Calmly, methodically, he continued to fire, shooting five more people.

"When he spun, it made me think of Batman," said Kathy Caldwell, sitting in the chair next to the one vacated by the stranger. "That black trench coat swung around him."

The first bullet struck Danny in the chest. The next hit John in the gut. One tore through Kathy's left palm, coming out above the knuckle on her middle finger and nearly severing it.

A bullet hit Linda Conyers in the right arm and hand. Another struck Page Webb, entering the top left side of her head, coming out her neck and striking her right shoulder. Medics later found another wound on her inner left thigh.

Then the gunman trained his Ruger 9 mm on the booth just behind the table. Hearing the noise, Joel Tucker, sitting with his back to the shooter, had risen from the booth to get away. A bullet hit him in the small of the back. Across the table, still another bullet entered the flesh on Susan Smith's right thigh, exiting through her buttocks and grazing the back of the booth.

Sue Stroud remembers ducking, a bullet whizzing over her head. Across the room, Sue's partner, Anna Sparks, was standing near the pool table when she heard what sounded like balloons popping and turned to take a look. Others later described the sound as firecrackers.

But the man didn't fire. Instead, he put his hand down, turned on his heel and casually walked out of the bar. John, who had crawled toward the front door, felt the long coat brush across his shoulder. Kathy thought she saw the man take a swig of his beer, but because of the commotion, she's not sure.

He had been in Backstreet only about 10 minutes. The shooting took about 20 seconds. Police later found eight shell casings.

After the gunman left, the manager locked the door. Someone called 911. Chris wanted to chase the guy, but the manager wouldn't let him. It wasn't safe. So Chris and other patrons in the bar began tending to the wounded. Victims later called the patrons, especially four women who took charge, angels.

Her left hand throbbing, Kathy felt something cold on her right shoulder. Thinking someone had spilled beer on her, she looked down. Blood seeped through her shirt. A bullet had torn through her shoulder as well.

John, lying on the floor with Danny's arms wrapped around his legs, felt his friend's grip slacken. He knew Danny was gone.

At the police department a few blocks away, it was shift change time. Officers on the midnight shift were clustered outside the building, waiting for the evening shift officers to turn over their cars. But when the shots-fired call came, everyone snapped into gear.

Some officers sprinted in the direction of Backstreet, while others headed toward Corned Beef. One officer sped to The Park to warn the manager there to lock the doors, just in case.

At the rescue squad building at Fourth Street and Day Avenue, Darrell VanNess heard the dispatch call.

VanNess, chief of the volunteer Roanoke Emergency Medical Services, jumped to his feet. Paramedic-trainee Lorrie Camden pushed away the taco salad she had just reheated for the seventh time that day.

"They said there were multiple patients," VanNess said. "I looked over at Lorrie and said, 'This is going to be a bad one.? ?

As the ambulance neared Backstreet, VanNess and Camden noticed police officers creeping toward the bar with their guns drawn. VanNess barely had the vehicle in park before an officer tried to drag him out.

VanNess was the first rescue worker through the door, followed closely by Capt. Tim McSherry, EMS operations officer for the Roanoke Fire-EMS Department. The first person VanNess saw was John Collins. He had a hole in his belly.

VanNess, an emergency room nurse by trade, quickly surveyed the victims scattered around the room. He checked Danny Overstreet, who had a hole in his chest, wasn't breathing and had no pulse. Then he saw Page Webb. This was the patient he needed to tend to. Now.

Page, her head cradled in a woman's lap while another woman applied pressure to her neck wound, spoke with VanNess as he and Camden secured her to a backboard and readied her to go to the hospital.

Glancing around, VanNess noticed some of the other victims. Linda Conyers was standing near the bar until someone told her to sit down. Susan Smith smoked a cigarette, her beer still in front of her. Pleas for help rang out.

Camden looked up and saw someone slap Danny across the face, hard. "C'mon," she heard someone say, "I know you're in there."

VanNess heard the jukebox, still cranking out tunes. He can't remember the song. He turned to Camden.

They whisked Page outside and into the waiting ambulance. "I can't believe this happened to me," she repeated. "It hurts."

A few blocks away, at First Street and Campbell Avenue, Officer Shawn Matthews stopped the bearded man. Ronald Edward Gay didn't put up a fuss. He expected officers would be coming for him, he later told police. That's why he wrapped his pistol in his trench coat, tucking it into a trash can next to the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

Later, sitting in Matthews' police cruiser, Gay made a startling admission. I came from the fag bar, he said, his words caught on videotape. I blew them away.

Inside Backstreet, oblivious to everyone but their patients, rescue workers continued to care for victims. The lack of chaos was surprising. If ever there were people who deserved to panic, it was this bunch, McSherry later said.

"Here's the deal," McSherry barked into his radio to the emergency room. "I got seven shot, one dead. Four critical, two noncritical. Medic One is on his way, will arrive in about five minutes."

Reports of the Backstreet shooting had been crackling across a police scanner in the ER as the scene unfolded just before midnight. But McSherry's broadcast stunned the staff.

Brian Hancock, the charge nurse on duty, put out six gold alerts -- the most critical of calls. He knew he was going to need more than the normal emergency room staff of 13.

He called in two nurses and a secretary from Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital, the flight nurse and a paramedic from Life Guard 10 and two paramedics from the hospital ambulance service. In less than five minutes, 15 extra staffers stood waiting.

Two backup trauma surgeons rushed in from home. Dr. Paul Offermann began to discharge patients to make room for the onslaught.

The emergency room has just two trauma bays reserved for the most serious cases, so doctors devised a plan as they waited for the first ambulance to arrive.

Based on what they were hearing by radio, ER workers split into teams and stood waiting at six different areas. The most serious injuries were taken to the trauma bays; the others went to four acute care rooms.

"For about 15 or 20 minutes it was very loud and very hectic," Hancock said. "But everyone knew where they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to be doing."

Doctors performed emergency surgery on John Collins. The shot to his gut required doctors to open his abdomen, where a bullet had burned a hole through parts of his intestines.

Page Webb, shot in the neck, was sent to the neurotrauma intensive care unit. Other patients wound up in regular beds.

By 4 a.m., the emergency room was quiet. As the first light filled the sky, evidence technicians finished their work in the Backstreet Cafe. Across town, Ronald Gay sat in a cell at the Roanoke City Jail.

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Cpl. Ronald Edward Gay is preparing for a milk run, usually an easy run of supplies to faraway troops. Gay mans the 50 mm cannon on the first truck, ready for enemy fire.

That day, Cpl. John Anthony Penna asks Gay if he can switch places with him in the first truck. Gay says no, but Penna pleads. Gay relents and switches places.

Penna's truck rolls over a land mine. He and the seven men on board are blown up.

Gay watches it happen. He picks up charred pieces of the soldier he thinks should have been him. He zips up the body bags of the eight men and moves on.

That's the story Gay told for the next 30 years. It's the story that many think was the first in a long line of twisted events that led to his undoing.

An undoing that includes Bibles with cryptic messages to the president, stints at veterans hospitals, a land dispute with the Canadian government, three sons who changed their last name and six troubled marriages, including one to a woman with a lesbian past.

An undoing that some say led him to walk into Backstreet Cafe last week and fire a Ruger 9 mm, killing one and injuring six. Police have charged Gay with first-degree murder.

Gay was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Dec. 22, 1945. He was the second oldest of two brothers and a sister. In school he played football and paddled canoes.

Sometime during middle school, his brother, Bill Gay, says Gay heard the taunts for the first time.

After graduation, Gay filled out a job application at the Canadian Labor Department. The clerk told him he'd make an excellent ditch digger, says his sister, Marilyn Gay.

Hurt and frustrated, Gay headed toward the Boston area to work in his uncle's garage.

It was 1966; the war in Vietnam was building. His uncle suggested he do something with his life and join the armed forces. He chose the Marines.

Soon, he would be shipped off to Vietnam. His father, Cecil Gay, wept for his son.

While Ronald Gay was in boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., in January 1967, his father died. Cecil Gay and family were in the midst of a land dispute with the Canadian government. They said the government never compensated them for land the government took in the 1940s. Gay was crushed by the death of the man he so admired.

Casualties in Vietnam climb; the depth of the American involvement deepens. Gay watched eight men die. He saw other atrocities during his 13-month tour of duty, he told other vets and complete strangers. Missiles dive-bombing foxholes in the crease of darkness. More bodies. But Penna's death lingered.

"I think it shook him up for the rest of his life," his brother says. "I always said Ronnie's body came back, but his mind never did."

He seemed fine at first, settling down in Springfield, Va., marrying a woman named Dusty and having a son in 1969 who bore his name. He worked in a post office.

At some point in the early 1970s, Gay left his wife and went back to Halifax, in part to fight the battle his family was waging against the government. Gay wanted to carry out the legacy his father started and win what he believed was theirs.

With a German shepherd and pop-up camper, Gay set up camp on the land to claim it.

He drove a truck full of sand to the property to make sandbags, but the truck axle broke on the way.

"I was sort of glad it broke," his brother says. He thought it was a strange move. "It was kind of the beginning" of Gay's troubles.

He moved to Rocky Mount, Va., to be closer to his son, but returned to Nova Scotia in a few years. Now that Gay wasn't around, his first son, Ronald Edward Gay II, changed his last name.

In 1978, Gay and girlfriend Jeannie Rogers had a son, Joshua. He managed a muffler shop, spent time with his son, cheered at ball games.

"Be quiet, be quiet, they're out there with guns," he whispered to Jeannie Gay. There was nothing going on outside, she later found out, but plenty going on in his head.

He'd kick and scream in the night, choke his pillow and sometimes her. She'd wake to find him on his hands and knees, sobbing. He told her they were being watched.

Over the next six years, he was gone as much as he was home. He'd take off for months on end, leaving no clue where he went, then show up at the dinner table like nothing had happened.

He started to think he was a prophet of God, Jeannie Gay says. She remembers his sending Bibles and cryptic messages to the Canadian prime minister and U.S. president. The U.S. Secret Service has a file on him that the Roanoke Police now have.

"I always thought I'd be the one he'd kill," Jeannie Gay says. "I always believed he was a very sick person." She didn't see him for almost two years.

In early 1986, Gay checked into the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem. Jeannie Gay says doctors diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and he was given 10 percent disability.

Doctors say PTSD is caused when a person experiences a traumatic or life-threatening event. That can range from being threatened at gunpoint to being sexually abused as a young child. People will experience the trauma over and over in their minds, resulting in angry outbursts, trouble sleeping and a tense, jumpy demeanor. This may begin two weeks after the trauma, or take years.

In March, Jeannie Gay moved to Roanoke to help out. Gay checked out of the VA and the two rented a place at Bent Tree Apartments in Roanoke County. He was taking medication -- Prozac and Klonopin -- to tame the depression and worries. He took a job selling windows.

One day she came home and he was standing over the toilet, flushing his medication. He became paranoid and sometimes violent, she says. He was off his rocker when he was off his medicine, she says.

Jeannie Gay left him in November of that year, moving back to Nova Scotia to get away from him. She feared for her life. She didn't think he could control his.

Jeannie Gay divorced him, his son changed his name, he was homeless for a time and he married a third wife in Tennessee. He spent some time at the Johnson City, Tenn., VA hospital, officials confirmed. He was last there in 1992. His brother visited him there briefly.

He later told Jeannie Gay that VA officials gave him 100 percent disability in 1992. By the time of the Backstreet Cafe shootings, he told authorities, he was getting $2,700 a month from the Canadian and U.S. governments combined.

He lived in Florida, where he married his fourth wife. They divorced. She introduced him to Laura Ramsey. Gay married Ramsey in 1994 and had a son, Kyle, in 1995.

Ramsey said when she met Gay she was living with a lesbian in a sexual relationship, but she says Gay knew about it and he never took issue with it. She heard him complain about homosexuals taking his last name, but never heard him say he hated gays.

In 1997, he left Ramsey and their son. He gave up custody rights to Kyle. In time, Kyle would change his last name, too. William Gay says Gay was a great father when he was present, and the fact that his sons changed their names tore him up. He and Ramsey divorced later that year and he moved back to the Roanoke area.

On Dec. 26, 1997, Gay called Jeannie Gay and said he wanted to see her. She knew his past, his demons, but she said she couldn't deny him. In July 1999, she moved in with Gay at the home he rented on Smith Mountain Lake in Huddleston.

"He seemed like his old self," Jeannie Gay said. "He laughed easily, there was a light in his eyes."

In August, he made his first trip to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. He told friends it was a difficult trek, filled with flashbacks and memories, but a journey he had to make.

At one point, he took Jeannie Gay to the woods on the side of Mill Mountain, where he said he had camped out for a year. He said he'd walk into town sporadically, pick up some noodles and bread, then head back to the hills.

Things were good for the two at the lake. They reconnected and he seemed at peace. They remarried Sept. 30, 1999, in Bedford County.

Jeannie Gay remembers his spending a lot of time alone, listening to country music on his portable radio. He gave that radio to a little girl about eight hours before police say he confessed to shooting seven people.

He bought a 9 mm pistol at a Roanoke gun store that fall. From then on, Jeannie Gay said, it was never far from its holster on his hip. He didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't talk.

She took him to the Salem VA to get his medication organized. He was drinking a lot of Canadian whiskey.

The doctors told him he couldn't mix the medication and booze. Jeannie Gay says they told him they wouldn't give him the pills if he was drunk.

But doctors told Jeannie Gay that taking Gay off his medications would be like taking the fix away from a heroin junkie. Jeannie Gay knew he would be dangerous if he was off his pills.

He told Jeannie Gay that God started talking to him again in March of this year. She had to go, Gay said God told him.

Two weeks after she left for Florida, he called her and said God said she could come back. She didn't want to start the cycle again. She stayed in Florida.

In April, he was burned when he poured gasoline on a Christmas tree. Jeannie Gay thinks he was burning his military records, too.

In May, fire trucks pulled up to Gay's house, engulfed in flames. He was sitting on a neighbor's steps, a suitcase in one hand, a bottle in the other. Fire officials said a faulty dryer started the fire.

That month, he moved to Dunnellon, Fla., where he lived with his sister, Marilyn Gay, at a hotel where she worked. She said her brother was relatively happy when he was there. He'd collect his spare change and toss it under a tree. When children checked into the hotel, he told them the hotel had a money tree, she said.

On Father's Day, another side showed. He burst into Laura Ramsey's house and demanded to see his son whom he hadn't seen in three years. He said he would shoot Ramsey and her new husband, court records show. He left before police arrived.

Later that month, a Florida judge ordered Gay to surrender his guns and undergo a mental health evaluation. There is no evidence that either happened.

In July, he contacted the Salem VA hospital and said he wouldn't be back for some time. His sister says he visited the VA hospital in Gainesville, Fla.

He continued to live in Florida for a few months, where his sister said he was doing fine except for the fact he was trying to wean himself from his medications. He went three days without them, got depressed and slept a lot.

Cabbie James Nichols first met Gay when he picked him up at a Roanoke hotel in mid-August. He drove him from hotel to hotel at different times over the next few weeks, often stopping at banks. He finally took Gay to Roanoke Mountain Campground, where he found the sunniest campsite.

Nichols took Gay to Wal-Mart to get supplies once. Halfway through the shopping trip, Nichols says Gay gave him some money and walked out of the store.

"He said he felt like the walls were caving in on him with all these people," Nichols says.

"There was this guy who was filthy dirty, and Ron went up to him and said 'Here's $10, go get yourself something to eat and get cleaned up,' " Nichols says. Later, he said, Gay told him, "that could be me out there."

"He told me he was just here," Nichols says. "No emotions. No ups or downs. He was just existing."

The last time Nichols saw Gay was about 11 a.m. the day of the shooting, when he gave him a ride to the Jefferson Lodge in downtown Roanoke so he could take a shower. Gay told him to pick him up at the motel the next morning.

Staff writers Laurence Hammack, Tad Dickens, Ron Nixon, Lisa Applegate and news researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this story.

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A grand jury indicted Ronald Edward Gay on Monday on aggravated malicious wounding and firearms charges in the Sept. 22 shootings that left one dead and six wounded at the Backstreet Cafe.

Gay, 54, had already been charged with the first-degree murder of Danny Lee Overstreet, 43, at the Salem Avenue nightspot frequented by gays and lesbians. Overstreet's homicide was the fourth in the city this year.

Shots fired from a 9mm Ruger just before midnight hit six others at the bar that night, police say. But until Monday, Gay had not been charged in their shootings.

"This is just a formality now, to get these charges placed," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney John McNeil said.

The grand jury charged Gay with six counts of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of shooting into an occupied building. The jury also charged him with six counts of using a firearm in the commission of malicious wounding, meaning each came after the first shot fired in the club that night, McNeil said.

Police have said that Gay confessed to the shootings, which might have been sparked by his distress about connotations associated with his last name.

If convicted of all the charges, Gay could face a prison sentence of at least 180 years -- 20 years to life on the murder charge and each aggravated malicious wounding count, and 40 years on the firearms charges, McNeil said.

The aggravated malicious wounding charges may be amended later, though. To prove them, prosecutors would have to show the wounding caused "permanent and significant physical impairment," according to Virginia law. The commonwealth's attorney's office is tracking the victims' progress.

Only one -- Iris Page Webb, 41, of Dublin -- remains hospitalized. Webb, who was shot in the neck, was moved last weekend out of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital's intensive care unit. She was listed in stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said Monday afternoon.

John Collins, shot in the stomach, was released from the hospital Friday. Collins, 39, of Roanoke, lost parts of both intestines and his colon, and will have to wear a colostomy bag for at least three months.

Others wounded were: Susan S. Smith, 45, shot in the right leg with the bullet exiting the buttocks; Linda R. Conyers, 41, shot in the right arm and hand; Joel I. Tucker, 40, shot in the small of the back; and Kathy S. Caldwell, 36, shot in the left hand and right shoulder.

Gay faces an Oct. 16 preliminary hearing on the murder charge, and is tentatively set for trial in January.

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The booths and the cigarette machine are gone forever. So is one of its regulars.

But the music was there, competing with the laughter and conversation that always have drawn people to the Backstreet Cafe. Ten days after the shootings that forever changed the mellow, gay bar on Salem Avenue Southwest, regulars and newcomers came to its reopening to tell the world that they are not afraid, that this is their bar.

"This is our home," said Sue Stroud, who was in the bar Sept. 22 when a gunman police say was Ronald Gay shot seven patrons, killing one. "I can't let Ronald Gay take that away from me."

Stroud was shooting pool, chatting with friends and laughing just like she used to before the shootings. Still, she was cautious.

"I'm happy, but this is the same atmosphere as that night when the blasts and sparks happened," Stroud said in between suspicious glances at the door. "I got to focus on the positive, the good. I've got to take back my bar."

Manager Alan Blankenship said they were thinking about waiting until the weekend to open the bar, but "we felt like it was time," he said. "We missed our family. . . . It's good therapy for everybody."

The booths that used to line the wall were taken out in part because they were shot up, in part to give the smoky bar a new look.

Anna Sparks, Stroud's partner, was at the bar on Monday as well as the night of the shootings. She said Gay leveled his gun at her right before walking out of the bar. Monday wasn't easy for her.

Word of mouth traveled quickly that the bar was reopening. Sparks said she felt compelled to come, to show support.

"It's a little different, but it still feels like home," Sparks said, sipping a Zima and wearing a black Backstreet Cafe polo shirt with the logo "Good Food. Good Friends. Good Times."

Ron Biagiarelli, a coordinator of the newly formed Hate Free Roanoke Task Force, was on hand, though he didn't often frequent the bar.

Scott Lee was at the bar, too, sitting only a few feet away from where he talked to Ronald Gay nearly two weeks ago. Gay seemed like a nice man, said Lee, who left a few minutes before the shooting started.

"He's not going to scare me from being gay," Lee said, "I'm not going to be afraid of who I am."

"It wasn't a good thing that happened, "he said, "but we are going to make something good come out of it."

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John Collins had been in the Backstreet Cafe since the shootings, but not to that corner of the bar.

The corner where he was sitting when he was shot and his friend Danny Overstreet lost his life.

As it was, he rarely turned his back on the door the gunman walked through just before shooting seven people.

But when the slow music began, to signal the program commemorating Overstreet and the other victims, Kathy Caldwell felt compelled to go over there, so Collins went with her.

"To be with Danny," Caldwell tearfully said as she made her way through the crowd.

Both victims of the October shootings, Collins' and Caldwell's emotions seesawed throughout the evening.

They were there for a gathering to show support for the victims. Friday night marked three months since the shootings.

Early totals showed about $350 was raised to help pay the victims' mounting medical bills, according to bar manager Alan Blankenship.

"It's overwhelming to see all these people," Collins said of the roughly 200 people who showed up to give them support.

The reason for the gathering still lingers with them. Collins just recently got rid of his colostomy bag. Caldwell's hand that was shot still doesn't work. Page Webb, who was shot in the head, can't feel part of her face and constantly deals with pain.

People came up to them throughout the night, hugging them and shaking their hands.

Four phone calls from across the country came into the bar. The callers said their hearts were with the victims.

Another call also came in earlier in the night. The caller voiced support for Ronald Gay, the man charged with the crime.

Roanoke police Lt. Tim Jones, who was outside the bar making sure everything went smoothly, said the call was probably just a hoax.

Police kept an eye on the bar to"make sure that whoever might want to spoil the party won't," Jones said.

Early in the night, three drag queens paraded through the crowd. The current Ms. Roanoke, Diondra D. People, stuffed dollar bills -- which ended up in the donation jar -- into her outfit.

"I wanted to do this for my family," said Savannah Savage, known as Thomas Lane when not wearing a dress. "These are my friends."

At 11:51, the moment shots filled the bar three months ago, the Rev. Catherine Houchins, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge, led the crowd in a moment of silence.

"Nothing can kill our spirit," Houchins said afterward. "Roanoke is still a good place to be."

Sam Cox, who has been coming to the bar for almost 20 years, said the Backstreet isn't about being gay or straight.

"These are good people. It's not about sexuality," Cox said. "These are just good people."

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Bones splintered into her brain. The bullet shot out her mouth and into her right lung, puncturing it. Another bullet lodged into her right thigh.

Of the six people who survived the Backstreet Cafe shooting, Webb was the most gravely injured.

For the first time on Friday night, she returned to the bar where her life was forever changed.

Webb, 42, was one of the Backstreet survivors who went to the bar three months after the shooting to show the world that the gunman who ended one life didn?t stop theirs. The night before the gathering, Webb spoke to a reporter for the first time about the shooting and her life afterward.

She was suffering even before the shooting. She is on disability and suffers from fibromyalgia, a disease that will eventually cripple her. She?s had back surgeries that have left her bedridden for long stretches of time.

A few years back when she went through a spate of bad health, she said she found her God.

So when she felt the bullet enter her left temple and began choking on her own blood, she immediately prayed. If this is my time, take me, she prayed while a woman held her head and tried to stop the bleeding.

She can remember the bumpy ride to the hospital, the driver going so fast the medics were thrown back and forth. Then she went into surgery, where she lost five pints of blood.

Days later, when she was watching television in the hospital and heard that someone was still in critical condition, she prayed for that person. She didn?t know they were talking about her.

Eleven days after she was admitted to the hospital, she went home to cope with recovery.

All she could eat was pudding and other soft foods. She visits a pain therapist to learn how to deal with the simple things. It hurts her to lie on her right side, where a 9 mm bullet still lies. Touching her lip is painful. Regaining feeling in the right side of her face remains an uncertainty.

Still, she?s optimistic and wonders how the others from the shooting are doing. She hadn?t been able to get back to Roanoke from her Bland County home to see her friends until Friday night, partly because she was embarrassed about not having any teeth.

Doctors say she can?t open her mouth wide enough to get fitted with dentures. She recently learned her jaw was broken.

When she feels down, she picks a few chords on her guitar. She hopes to put together a few songs for the CD that Roanoke7.com, an organization that raises money for the shooting victims, plans to put out next year.

Webb receives Medicaid, but there are still plenty of bills to pay. She said without the money that Roanoke7.com and the Hate Free Roanoke Task Force raised, she wouldn?t have been able to pay for her groceries.

She figures her health is at about 70 percent and is looking forward to getting better in the next year.

?I?ve got to get my health back and get some teeth, then I have to start to do more,? she said. She said she wants to help the other survivors and work toward healing the mental wounds that were gouged in the bar.

The ordeal changed many things in her life, but has only made her more thankful for what she does have.

?I used to say my prayers before eating,? she said. ?Now I say them all the time.?

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The man accused of shooting to death one man and wounding six others in the Backstreet Cafe in September refers to himself as a "Christian Soldier working for my Lord," and condemns homosexuals in a rambling, nearly indecipherable letter to The Roanoke Times.

"When I am gone another will take my place," Ronald E. Gay writes in the letter the newspaper received Friday.

Gay does not implicate himself in the shootings at the predominantly gay and lesbian nightspot. Still, he says of homosexuals that "their meeting places and bars will be destroyed with them" if they don't move to "their city," San Francisco.

"Well that's just lovely," a clearly frustrated Roanoke Assistant Public Defender Roger Dalton said Friday when told of the letter.

Dalton said that a psychiatrist hired by Gay's family examined him in February. The analyst is still working on his evaluation, which Dalton expects soon.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney John McNeil said they had never heard Gay refer to himself as a Christian soldier. Gay's statement to detectives after his arrest, however, had "religious undertones," McNeil said.

Gay, 55, faces trial the week of May 21 for first-degree murder, six counts of aggravated malicious wounding and seven firearms charges. Police say he has confessed to slaying 43-year-old Danny Lee Overstreet and shooting six other Backstreet customers that night.

The native Canadian -- a naturalized U.S. citizen and Vietnam veteran -- has been jailed without bail since his arrest shortly after the shootings. He faces seven terms of 20 years to life on the murder and wounding charges, and at least 40 years on the firearms charges.

Police say Gay was angry over what his name had come to mean, and humiliated that three of his sons had changed their last name.

In the letter, he focuses on his perception of gays' moral flaws, and faults The Roanoke Times for leaving out those flaws in its four-part "Living Gay" series about gays and lesbians in the Roanoke Valley.

He accuses homosexuals of engaging in pedophilia and promiscuity and other sexually deviant behavior.

Of gay "meeting places and bars," Gay writes that God prefers they be "burnt to kill" the AIDS virus, "or slow it down."

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Delusions and prejudice festered for years in Ronald Edward Gay's mind, but it took less than a minute for Gay to give in to what those things were telling him to do - kill homosexuals.

The murder of Danny Lee Overstreet and three aggravated malicious woundings at the Backstreet Cafe resulted in four consecutive life sentences for Gay, a Roanoke judge ruled Monday.

Gay, who opened fire Sept. 22 in the Salem Avenue nightspot, also received three five-year suspended sentences on three counts of malicious wounding.

If the 55-year-old Gay should ever be released from prison on geriatric parole, he will remain on intensive supervised probation, Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein ruled. He would be eligible at age 65, but would have to be in very poor shape to be released, Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell has said.

As victims, their friends and family members walked away from the courtroom, some expressed satisfaction at the result.

For victim Kathy Caldwell, relief came through simply looking Gay in the eyes and letting him know she was OK. From the witness stand, she told the court about the loss of her left middle knuckle, and the struggle to regain relatively good use of that hand. Before she finished, she turned her eyes from the judge to the defendant's table.

"He just made me a stronger person. That's all he done to me," she said, as she and Gay stared straight at each other. Then she began to laugh, and kept laughing as she walked away from the stand.

Gay nodded his head up and down, then continued to look at her even as she sat down. He stared at her until one of his attorneys, Assistant Public Defender William Browning, interceded.

After the hearing, Caldwell said Gay pointed his index finger skyward, which she interpreted as an allusion to judgment day. Gay was just trying to intimidate her, she said.

"His intimidating days are over," said Caldwell, who also was shot in the right shoulder. "Now intimidation comes to him, when he goes to the big house."

Gay, who drifted in and out of Roanoke for years, is a native of Canada who became a naturalized citizen while he was a U.S. Marine fighting in Vietnam.

In an interview with police, he said he was angry about what the word "gay" had come to mean. He also told authorities that he had been on a mission to kill homosexuals since about the mid-1980s, but had not acted on it until that night at the Backstreet Cafe.

According to psychological reports, that was among four missions Gay says God had entrusted to him, Probation Officer Rebecca Farmer testified. The missions were: having all gay people move to San Francisco and to stop the spread of AIDS; stopping government corruption; stopping communism; and bringing fellow Vietnam veterans out of the mountains.

Gay and several family members and friends say that his experiences in the Vietnam War began the psychological problems that finally led him to prison.

Evan Nelson, a forensic clinical psychologist who testified for the defense, said that he may not have been entirely well even before he entered the service.

The Marines received "sort of a fragile egg" in Gay, said Nelson, one of two doctors who analyzed Gay when the defense was considering a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. It was a "close call," Nelson told Weckstein.

"He was an odd fellow before this," he said. "He is clearly a much more odd fellow in his adulthood."

But by the time he left Vietnam, he had been traumatized by at least one horrible war experience - the destruction by land mine of a convoy vehicle carrying several fellow soldiers, including one with whom Gay had just switched places.

In the mid-1980s, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Nelson said. But he had other problems, too: psychosis that was "not simply a function" of the stress disorder, and a heavy dependence on alcohol.

That night at the Backstreet Cafe, Gay walked in, clad in a black trenchcoat, and ordered a beer. Iris Page Webb, sitting with friends in the bar, had already seen him minutes earlier, she testified Monday for the prosecution. She had ridden by him at the bus station on Salem Avenue, just before she went to the bar. Their eyes met.

"I got the weirdest vibes I had ever got from being around someone," Webb told the court.

Gay was looking for a gay bar. He had gotten directions to The Park, just up Salem Avenue. But he wound up inside the Backstreet.

Fifteen minutes later, Gay and Webb again locked gazes, this time inside the bar, Webb said. Again, Webb got the same feeling.

Gay sat down by Kathy Caldwell, Overstreet and several others at a table near the front. About midnight, Overstreet and friend John Collins hugged. Gay rose, pulled a 9mm Ruger from his jacket, and began firing.

He hit Overstreet first, in the chest. Overstreet, 43, died on the barroom floor.

Webb, who said she had kept a wary eye on the stranger, still was struck in the head and nearly died.

Linda Conyers was shot in the right arm and hand. Collins was shot in the stomach. Susan Smith was struck in the right leg. Joel Tucker was hit in the small of the back.

The gunshots to Webb, Conyers and Caldwell caused them pain and disability that continues today, a requirement to support the aggravated malicious wounding convictions and their accompanying life sentences.

Gay, in a letter to The Roanoke Times in March, wrote that he was a Christian soldier working for the Lord.

"Christian soldiers don't go out and kill," she said. "I'm a Christian soldier. I don't have no hate. I dislike the man for what he done to me. He put me in pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but I don't hate him. That's not how you get things in life."

Before he was sentenced, Gay told Weckstein that he could take months discussing himself and his case.

"Perhaps I could put it in a book," he said, "and save somebody's life from the actions I took."

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