President Joe Biden has commuted the sentence of an elderly Maryland woman once dubbed “the Black Widow” by federal prosecutors, whose 2002 case against her led a jury to convict on charges of mail and wire fraud for “intentionally” causing the deaths of a boyfriend and at least one husband, to collect around $160,000 in combined life insurance payouts. Josephine Gray, now in her late 70s, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in connection with the deaths, which occurred in 1990 and 1996. Biden commuted her sentence in December, along with nearly 1,500 other people, who, like Gray, were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, reports the Baltimore Sun. The White House specified that the 39 people who were pardoned — that is, completely cleared of a crime — were in the “non-violent” category, but it did not specify the same for those who had their sentences commuted or lessened. Noting that Gray is "confined to a wheelchair and can barely stand," Jim Wyda, the federal public defender for the district of Maryland, described the commutation as “just, practical, and merciful."
Prosecutors were less empathetic. “The story of Josephine Gray is one of a very devious and murderous person, collecting insurance proceeds from killing men over the course of decades,” said James Trusty, who prosecuted Gray during his tenure as an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, who said that she is "the last person who deserves a break." In 1974, Gray was suspected in the 1974 murder of her husband, Norman Stribbling, who died of a gunshot wound to the head. The next year, she married William Robert Gray, who was found shot dead in his apartment in 1990 after they’d separated. Josephine Gray later collected $54,000 from his life insurance policies and was found liable in his death by the 2002 jury. The federal jury also found Josephine Gray intentionally caused the death in 1996 of her boyfriend Clarence Goode, whose body was discovered in the trunk of his car in Baltimore with a gunshot wound to the head. She was also “very, very good at intimidating witnesses," Trusty said. “They were always afraid to cross her,” Trusty said. “She was into voodoo, and she was a terrifying figure to a lot of people that kept seeing her, kept knowing she was involved in murders, but didn’t have any way of seeing her swept off the streets and put away.”
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