Lilly Gray-Victim of the Beast?

Tina Y
4 min readMar 28, 2022
Headstone of Lilly E. Gray, located in the SLC, Utah cemetery https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10550322/lilly-edith-gray

On the East side of Salt Lake City, Utah, there is a beautiful 120-acre cemetery, one of the largest city-operated cemeteries in the United States. I have personally visited there, it’s where my paternal grandfather is buried. Among the monuments and headstones, there is one located in the North East corner of the cemetery that has drawn a lot of attention from total strangers. It’s the grave site of a Mrs. Lilly Edith Gray, who has been interred there for almost 65 years. What is it that has drawn people from around the country to visit the resting place of a woman they never knew? It’s the strange inscription on her headstone, which was dictated by her husband, Elmer Gray. Under her birth and death dates, it reads “Victim of the Beast 666.” What does this mysterious statement mean? What happened to Lilly Gray, and why did Elmer choose such a dark way to memorialize her?

According to her death certificate, Lilly Gray was born on June 4, 1880, which is different from the date engraved on her headstone. She was born in Canada to Wilmer and Francis Gray. Her family immigrated to the U.S. by 1900, they are listed as living in Michigan on the 1900 Federal Census record. Not much else has been discovered about her life before she met and married Elmer Gray, who was her husband at the time of her death. They were married on July 10, 1952, when Lilly was 72 years old. Lilly’s family was opposed to the marriage, they didn’t like Elmer, and a little research into his past reveals possible reasons why.

At the time of their marriage, Elmer Gray had been out of prison for less than 5 years. Using the alias of Woodrow Lamb, Gray committed burglary in several states. His record lists charges from Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Utah. Gray served 11 years for his burglaries, then was released from the Utah State Prison on July 11, 1948.

Mugshot of Elmer Gray, from Department of Corrections. Inmate Services, Prison commitment registers; Utah State Archives and Records Service, Series 80388, Reel 7, Number 6700

Another possible reason that Lilly’s family was against her marriage to Elmer Gray is his mental health status. At the time of his incarceration in Utah, Gray believed he had been “kidnap(p)ed by 5 Democrat officials.” He appealed to the board of pardons every year while serving his sentence, asking for “an end to this farce.” This was despite the fact that he had pled guilty to his latest burglary charge. This letter of appeal to the board of pardons, dated March 15, 1947, gives some insight into his state of mind at the time. In his letter, Gray claims to have never been in court in Utah, and that he was never sentenced by a judge. Instead, he believed he was kidnapped, that he didn’t commit any crime, and that the kidnappers were making sure he couldn’t talk to any of his friends.

It seems that Elmer Gray could have been delusional. Could these delusions have led to his request for the odd inscription on Lilly’s headstone? Lilly Gray’s official cause of death, according to her death certificate, was “pulmonary embolus, renal insufficiency, and nephrotic syndrome.” She died in a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to this article, some symptoms of the conditions that took Lilly’s life are extreme swelling and seizures. As the author of the article suggests, in Elmer’s delusional mind-set, he could have believed those symptoms to be the work of the devil.

Elmer was also physically and neurologically suffering near the end of his life. He died a few years after Lilly, from a stroke that is believed to have been caused by Parkinson’s disease. Symptoms that may be experienced in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s include memory problems, behavioral changes, and trouble sleeping. If Elmer was experiencing memory problems and behavioral changes, it could have led him to believe that something nefarious killed his beloved Lilly.

Despite these logical explanations for the mysterious inscription on Lilly’s headstone, some people still believe there are paranormal reasons for the words. You can find articles about her final resting place on various websites that feature the paranormal. However, in this memorial for Lilly E. Gray from findagrave.com, which was written by Carl W. McBrayer, he remarks that it is time to let Lilly rest in peace. He says: “we must remove the paranormal and other spooky and devilish speculations that have been attached to her name by those who were searching for answers but were obviously searching in all the wrong places.”

What do you think? Is the inscription on the headstone the product of a sick, troubled man? Did he really believe something terrible and dark happened to Lilly? We can draw our own conclusions, but this is one mystery that may never be solved.

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Sources:

  1. Strack, Gina, Utah State Archives, https://archivesnews.utah.gov/2017/10/31/lilly-e-gray/, accessed March 17, 2022
  2. Words on Stone, Wordpress article, https://wordsonstone.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/victim-of-the-beast/?fbclid=IwAR3xChL5TicZvEgXukL0e06_SS4EN6enygoV0C5LC93gN3uJqeNlw73J5PY, accessed March 17, 2022
  3. McBrayer, Carl W., memorial, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10550322/lilly-edith-gray, accessed March 22, 2022
  4. Cleveland Clinic, medical article, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/8525-parkinsons-disease-an-overview, accessed March 22, 2022

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Tina Y

I am a wife and busy stay-at-home Mom to 4 teenagers and a pre-teen. I enjoy researching and writing about unsolved crime with the help of my husband.