Murder or suicide in Roy, NM?

Geraldine Ray, the 89-year-old matriarch of a well-known Harding County ranching family, was found unresponsive in bed on Jan. 9. Jerry, as she was known, was the daughter of homesteaders who was born and raised on the family ranch, and news of her death spread fast in Roy, a village of a little more than 200 people. She was a hunter, a singer and fiddler with The Gloom Chasers band back in the ’40s, and a fixture at community events. Sadness quickly turned to unease when police called her passing a “suspicious death” and strung crime scene tape around the old brick ranch house where she lived with her only daughter, Donna. Police interviewed members of the Ray family, and took fingerprints and DNA samples from both Donna Ray and her ex-husband. They came back to Roy three months later with an arrest warrant...more