Aramoana Massacre - Perpetrator

Perpetrator

The perpetrator of the massacre was 33-year-old David Malcolm Gray (20 November 1956 – 14 November 1990), an unemployed resident of Aramoana. Gray was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, and was raised in Port Chalmers. His father, David Francis, worked in a manufacturing company and his mother, Mary Elizabeth, was a machinist. He had two siblings, sister Joan and brother Barry.

Gray attended Port Chalmers Primary School, and later enrolled at the Otago Boys' High School from 1971 to 1973, where he was a mid-stream student. A former classmate stated Gray was quiet and unassuming, and that "there was nothing frightening about him then". Those who knew Gray remembered him as having been a loner since primary school. He had worked occasionally as a farmhand but had been unemployed for a few years before 1990.

Both Gray's parents predeceased him — his father in 1978, and his mother in 1985. His sister said the death of their mother deeply affected David, and prompted him to move from Port Chalmers to the Gray family holiday home in Aramoana.

Gray was a regular customer at Galaxy Books and Records in Lower Stuart Street, Dunedin. Bill Brosnan, the store owner, knew him for seven years and said he was a fan of military books and Soldier of Fortune magazine. In January 1990, Gray threatened an assistant of the bookshop with what appeared to be a shotgun in a cardboard box, and Brosnan served him with a trespass notice in February.

His sister said he was an animal lover; locals said this was a source of conflict with his next-door neighbour Garry Holden, whose pets kept dying.