One man's long road to happiness was ended by gunfire

Joshua Trujillo / Staff
George and Nancy Mairs becamae Ron. DuGay's legal guardians when he was 15. Dugay was slain by two men who invaded his Southwest Side mobile home last August. His killers are still at large.

Ron DuGay's life began in Alaska as the illegitimate child of a soldier and an Athabaskan woman.

It ended 41 years later after he was shot in the head in his Southwest Side mobile home, one of 36 unsolved killings in the Tucson area last year.

"I have an awful lot of days when I wish they would have killed me too," said his wife, Angel DuGay. "I never planned on being without him."

DuGay now lives with her mother in Waco, Texas, while her two sons, ages 22 and 20, remain in Tucson.

In the months before Ron was killed, he and Angel spent quiet afternoons on their patio, smoking cigarettes, looking at the mountains, and enjoying the peace that comes when children leave the nest to start families of their own, said Nancy Mairs, who with her husband, George, adopted Ron at the age of 15.

"I remember Angel telling me at the hospital, 'We were so happy,'" Mairs said.

Happiness didn't come easily for Ron DuGay.

His wayward path from Alaska to a school for emotionally disturbed boys to the Mairs home was chronicled by Nancy Mairs, an award-winning local poet and author, in an essay titled "Ron Her Son" from "Plain Text," a book published by the University of Arizona Press in 1994.

The woman who bore Ron in Fort Yukon, Alaska, could not keep him because the tribe deemed him too white, so Ron was handed to another woman at age 1. When he was 4, the woman divorced her husband and gave Ron to friends, who renamed him Ronald William DuGay. Despite searching through documents and consulting possible relatives, the Mairses are still unsure of the name Ron was given at birth in the fall of 1958.

Harold DuGay's wife later died of a neurological disease, and he remarried a woman who didn't want Ron. Living by this time in Colorado, he was sent to Chazen Institute in Tucson for truancy.

George Mairs spent a year teaching English at Chazen, a boarding school in the Tucson Mountains that closed more than 20 years ago.

George Mairs brought the boys he worked with home on weekends as often as he could to give them some relief from the school.

Ron, whose "passivity was tenacious," spent the bulk of those weekends stretched out on the couch, Nancy Mairs said. George Mairs later began teaching at Salpointe High School, but continued to pick up Ron on weekends.

When Ron was 15, the Mairses invited him to live with them when he was ready to leave Chazen, and months later, he accepted. They became his legal guardians after getting in touch with Harold DuGay, who had moved to California from Colorado without telling Ron.

What followed was anything but a Disney movie. The Mairses had taken in a sullen, troubled, 15-year-old boy who could barely read. He resented 9-year-old Anne and 5-year-old Matthew, the couple's natural children, struggled with the rules and routines of an established family, and spent countless hours lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, Nancy Mairs said.

A psychologist at Chazen had told the couple that Ron was of average intelligence, but that his emotional problems would probably keep him from reaching his potential.

Rather than send Ron to a huge public school, the Mairses enrolled him at Salpointe. Somehow, he was able to graduate, at which time the Mairses entertained two options for him: the priesthood or the military.

"It was obvious he wasn't going to college," Nancy Mairs said. "And he was too interested in girls for the priesthood."

In the Navy, Ron found the structure and stability he needed, flourished, and met a sailor on a tugboat in Norfolk, Va., who would become his wife.

Though they had never met, Ron and Angel lived as children in the same house in Kenai, Alaska, about four days apart. Years later, when her father retired from the Air Force, the family spent a month at the KOA Campground in Tucson, which employed a boy to clean the swimming pool - Ron DuGay.

"When we realized that, it was like, 'Oh my God, we don't have a choice,' " DuGay said. "We have to get married."

Seventeen years later, Ron, Angel, and their two sons moved to Tucson, where Ron's Navy experience in electronics landed him a job supervising surveillance at the newly built Desert Diamond Casino.

"He was very important to the casino and they let him know it," DuGay said. "And it was a big deal to him."

When he wasn't working, Ron spent countless hours at his computer, so much so that Angel once attached a note to it that read: "the other Mrs. DuGay."

"We had about two arguments a year," she said. "We did what we wanted to do, and we had a lot more to do."

Ron DuGay was as quiet as always, but different, Nancy Mairs said.

"He was quiet in a pleasant way," she said. "When he was young, he was quiet in a way that worried you."

Angel DuGay was sleeping on her couch after a thunderstorm about 3:40 a.m. Aug. 24 when two Hispanic men came into their mobile home in the 4500 block of South Mission Road through an unlocked door, police reports state.

She woke to the sound of shouting, then heard two gunshots. The two men left Ron in a pool of blood and drove off in his 1993 white Ford Escort with Arizona plates JTP-274. Two days later, the car was found in the parking lot of the Fry's Food Store at 3640 S. 16th Ave.

Ron DuGay, who had been shot in the head at point-blank range, was breathing but unconscious when paramedics transported him to University Medical Center.

He never regained consciousness and was pulled off life support three days later. Several hours passed before he died, George Mairs said.

"It was like we were giving him permission to die but he just didn't want to go," he said. "He just kept hanging on."

Among the items at the Mairs home left to account for Ron DuGay's life is a note he typed after he joined their family:

To Nancy

To the one who took me in. Who give me food the one who cared for me the one who helped me in my hour of need. Who loved me. Here is to a wonder person. On her day, Mother's day. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Love,

Ron her son

Ron DuGay

* Anyone who may have information on the two men who shot and killed Ron DuGay or the white Ford Escort found in the Fry's Food Store parking lot is asked to call 88-CRIME.

Workload, lack of leads keep cases unsolved

David Sanders / Staff
Lorie Ramsay, mother of Rebecca, said she and family members, including cousin Cory Ramsay, left, have no idea why someone would want to shoot her daughter. So far, investigators have not turned up a suspect in the Oct. 25, 2000, murder.

When Rebecca Ramsay, 16, was fatally shot on her front lawn on Oct. 25, her mother and several neighbors immediately called police to the Midtown home.

Officers swept the area, searching for a description of a truck that was seen about the time the shots rang out.

Police interviewed family members to see if anybody had a grudge against the teen. They talked to friends, classmates and neighbors who might know why she was shot. They combed the front lawn for any signs of the killer and looked for fingerprints on a car she had just bought.

None of that has turned up a suspect, though investigators later learned the truck belonged to someone who lived in the area.

Ramsay's death is one of 36 of last year's 90 countywide homicides that remain unsolved, or 40 percent of the total.

Last year, Tucson police solved 39 of 59 homicides, or 66 percent of the cases they investigated. The Sheriff's Department solved 13 of its 23 cases - a 57 percent clearance rate - and helped Tucson solve four of its cases.

Comparatively, the Tucson Police Department in 1999 investigated 36 homicides, excluding shootings that were accidental or involved officers. They solved 33 of them, or 91 percent. The Sheriff's Department investigated 25 criminal homicides and solved 17 of them, or about 68 percent.

By comparison, law enforcement agencies across Arizona solved about 60 percent of all homicides in 1999. And across the nation, 69 percent were cleared, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.

Investigators offer several reasons for why cases go unsolved.

Sgt. Michael O'Connor, head of the Sheriff's Department homicide unit, said the percentage of cases solved over the last three years has dropped because of the number of cases detectives have had to investigate. They were called to 32 investigations in 1998, 27 in 1999 and 29 last year. (Those totals include cases - such as suicides and accidental shootings - that were determined not to be homicides.)

"That takes a toll. When you have consistently three high years, you don't have a chance to go back and catch your breath," O'Connor said. "You kind of hope for an off, slower year."

Sgt. Randy Force, a Phoenix Police Department spokesman who worked eight years as a homicide detective, said many cases go unsolved because victims become involved in "high risk'' behavior - domestic violence, road rage, gangs or drugs.

"Most of our homicide victims are victims because of some high-risk lifestyle or occupation,'' Force said. "With the criminal element and with organized groups, people are reluctant to talk. That's why our clearance rate fell.''

Force said the Phoenix Police Department's unsolved caseload for homicides is 40 percent. His department investigated 172 killings last year.

Locally, investigators say six of the last year's unsolved homicides are drug related, although they have no suspects and few leads to work with. In 20 of the unsolved cases, a motive has not been determined.

But investigators also say some crimes are easier to solve than others.

The Oro Valley Police Department handled four homicides last year. In one case, Albert Lucchesi called police on Feb. 12 and told them that he killed his wife, Setsuko Lucchesi, and grandson, Michael Lucchesi, 9, and that he was going to kill himself. Although police arrived in minutes, all three were found dead.

Grady Mitchell Towers, 55, was found fatally shot on March 20 at Tohono Chul Park, where he worked as a security guard. A small infraction of the law would give detectives their big break.

On April 9, Jason Paul Doty, 29, was driving near Picture Rocks and Golden Gate roads with his friend Joseph McDowell, 27, in the passenger seat. Doty ran a stop sign, and sheriff's deputies started chasing him. The car flipped, killing McDowell.

Police found prison records belonging to Doty inside the car and recovered a gun they believe he threw in the desert while running away. After a warrant for first-degree murder was issued in connection with the crash, Doty turned himself in at the Pima County Jail on April 24.

Other cases are more challenging.

Rebecca Ramsay

Assistant Tucson Police Chief Robert Lehner, who oversees the department's detective divisions, said two things enable detectives to solve crimes: physical evidence and eyewitnesses.

In the Ramsay case, investigators have no witnesses. Lehner refused to talk about how detectives examined the crime scene or anything they might have found.

"The bottom line is that there are very few leads to work from. There's no known witnesses and very little physical evidence," Lehner said. "The less physical evidence we have and the less people we have at a scene, the more difficult the case is to solve."

In November, detectives obtained a search warrant in connection with the case to take fingerprints, photographs and voice samples of an 18-year-old man. Although police refused to say why they obtained the search warrant, they said the man is not considered a suspect.

Lorie Ramsay, Rebecca's mother, said she and other family members have no idea why somebody would shoot her. Rebecca had no enemies, she said.

"There are no new leads. We need to find this person," Lorie Ramsay said. "There's not a whole lot to go on right now, so how can the investigation go forward?"

And detectives closely guard the evidence and leads they do gather.

O'Connor said his detectives are working on two cases he thinks can be solved, but not until they get a little more information. Those victims are:

* Joshua Richard Eich, 19, who was found shot to death on Dec. 12 in a remote area of the Tucson Mountains near an abandoned shaft known locally as the Iron Door Mine, about a quarter-mile from the nearest home. There's only one road that leads to the area, and O'Connor said several people saw "traffic" the night before Eich was found dead. He said detectives are checking descriptions to locate some of the vehicles and tracing some of the phone calls Eich made before his death.

* Brian Scott Pugh, 22, who was found shot to death near the 7500 block of South Cactus Lane. O'Connor said sheriff's detectives have identified "some people that we would really like to interview, but we just can't locate them." He said the people aren't suspects but had talked to Pugh in the days before he died.

Detectives also say they have to be careful not to be too assertive in their investigations.

"If we're trying to locate some witnesses in the case . . . it would be easy to go to a relative's home. Then that person would know you're looking for them," O'Connor said. "What you want to do is try to find out where they're at without letting them know that you're looking for them."