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Murder Suspects Held
Separately
Under Top Security
From Style Weekly
by Brandon Walters
January 18, 2006
Murder suspects Ricky Javon Gray and his nephew Ray Joseph Dandridge
have long been partners in crime. Now they’re separated by jails.
The two men, both 28, are charged with conspiring to kill the Harvey
family, Jan. 1, and the Tucker-Baskerville family, found murdered
Jan. 6. They’re also suspects in an array of violent crimes from
Pennsylvania to Virginia. So it’s little surprise authorities are
taking extra precautions to assure they’re under lock and key and
constant eyes. Since being extradited from Philadelphia to Richmond
and appearing in Richmond General District Court at the Manchester
Courthouse Jan. 10, Dandridge was held without bond at Chesterfield
County’s jail until Jan. 12 when he was transferred to Riverside
Regional Jail in Hopewell.
According to Riverside’s watch commander, Lt. William Sanders,
Dandridge is being held on the following charges: one count of grand
larceny, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of robbery, one count
of conspiracy to commit grand larceny and five counts of murder in
the first degree. Sanders declined to say whether Dandridge is being
held in isolation at the facility.
Meanwhile, Gray has been held without bond and in isolation at the
Richmond City Jail, which has had problems with faulty cell-door
locks.
“[Gray] is separated from the general population,” says Tara Dunlop,
spokeswoman for the Richmond City Jail. “He’s on an isolation tier
and under constant observation.”
Before taking Gray into custody, Richmond Sheriff C.T. Woody met
with his deputies to discuss Gray’s security at the jail, Dunlop
says. Gray is allowed out of his cell twice a week to shower and to
use the phone, she says. When he does, Dunlop says: “He’s
accompanied by two sheriff’s deputies and a supervisor.”
But is Gray being held in a section of the facility known to have
problems with broken locks? “The locks are definitely not a
concern,” says Dunlop, adding that the jail has received a number of
calls from citizens inquiring about the locks since Gray’s arrival.
Furor over the faulty locks erupted after a Memorial Day incident in
which inmate Shamar Lamont Young wandered out of his cell and into
that of inmate Greg G. Robinson and beat him to death. Jail reports
later indicated inmates had routinely broken out of their cells and
roamed the jail.
The heightened security of Gray is a matter of standard procedure
for an inmate accused of serious crimes, Dunlop says, and not the
result of his high-profile status.
Gray is not the only high-profile inmate housed at the jail. It also
holds John Townsend Mustin, 19, who pleaded guilty Dec. 19 to
second-degree murder in the stabbing death of retired Army Maj. Gen.
John C. Bard. In June, after admittedly taking the hallucinogenic
drug LSD, Mustin stabbed his mother and himself and killed Bard
outside the Mustin’s Near West End home. Mustin will be sentenced to
prison March 2.
Unless directly indicted by a grand jury, a preliminary hearing in
Richmond for Gray and Dandridge is scheduled for Feb. 15.
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