Gray Gaynes

"Grayson Gaynes" redirects here.

Grayson "Gray" Gaynes (born June 14, 1987) is an American retired New York City Police Department (NYPD) detective, best known for his controversial involvement in the hunt for the Mad Batter serial killer.

On March 1, 2016, during the course of the Mad Batter investigation, Gaynes was recorded beating a handcuffed suspect on livestream video. The footage went viral, with millions of views by the end of that week.

Despite his dubious public image, Gaynes has been described as highly intelligent and analytical, an "outside the box" thinker with a commitment to finding the truth, no matter how long it takes. Among his coworkers in the NYPD Detective Bureau, he had a reputation for liking "strange" cases—homicides with an apparent element of the paranormal, even if the truth always proved more mundane.

Early life

Little is publicly known of Gaynes' childhood. He was born and raised in New York City, most likely spending the majority of his time in the Manhattan borough. Even less is known of his mother, who was deceased by 2007. Gaynes' father, "Old" Gray Gaynes, was later convicted of various white collar crimes and sentenced to 10 years in prison, of which he served 7.

Gaynes graduated high school in 2004 (having skipped a grade) and undergraduate university in December 2007. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature.

Gaynes married Rose Moynihan on April 5, 2014.

In 2015, Gaynes was attacked in Central Park and later hospitalized as a result of injuries sustained. His wife did not survive the attack.

Career

On July 2, 2008, Gaynes joined the NYPD as a probationary patrolman. During this supervised period of his career, he cooperated with federal authorities in a "sting" against his father, playing an instrumental role in the elder Gray Gaynes' arrest. This proved to be a career-making move, resulting in a "glowing recommendation" from FBI special agent Jackson Pinder that paved the way for Gaynes' rapid advancement within the NYPD. Performance reviews from that time described Gaynes as "keen[-minded] and analytical... capable of decisive action, and cool under pressure."

Gaynes joined the homicide squad of the NYPD Detective Bureau in June 2013 upon his promotion to detective third grade (the initial, lowest detective rank). He partnered with several other detectives on different cases, but usually Mack McMurphy. He quickly developed a reputation for methodical investigation ("overly-methodical," according to some fellow detectives). In January 2015, Gaynes was assigned for the first time to the Mad Batter investigation, the biggest case of his career, when he received an anonymous tip regarding the location of Ann-Marie Toscani's body (one of the Mad Batter's victims). The tipster had asked for Gaynes by name. That investigation stalled months later, in April, when Gaynes' chief suspect "alibied out." Soon thereafter, Gaynes himself went on medical leave following the Central Park attack, which detectives at the time ruled unrelated, a "mugging gone wrong."

After returning from leave, Gaynes worked a number of cases of an unusual nature, developing a further reputation for "liking the strange ones." He was assigned once more to the Mad Batter case after the February 24, 2016 murder of Alyssa Lori, who the press immediately reported as a possible Mad Batter victim.

The re-opened Mad Batter investigation proved to be Gaynes' final case as an NYPD detective. Despite some community backlash (due to the widely-publicized beating, as well as other erratic behavior), Gaynes was allowed to retire from the NYPD and receives full pension benefits.

Notable Cases

• The Mad Batter (January–April 2015, February–March 2016)
• The Barton Chan elevator slaying (May 2015)
• The so-called Hellhound Homicide (August–December 2015)
• Oswald Parker's "spontaneous combustion" (December 2015–January 2016)
• The wrongful death of Alan Null, founding partner of Taurus Torus (February 2016)

Medical conditions

During the Mad Batter trial and resulting media circus, it was revealed that Gaynes suffers from several neurological conditions arising from injuries sustained during the 2015 Central Park attack:

• Achromatopsia (colloquially known as color blindness)
• Hemeralopia (day blindness, the inability to see clearly in bright light)
• Prosopagnosia (face blindness, the inability to recognize what should be familiar faces)

Any one of these conditions makes an individual unfit for service as a police officer, which is why Gaynes later admitted to hiding these disabilities from his superiors for almost a year following the attack.

When the truth came out, Gaynes was forced into early retirement; but despite his subterfuge, he was allowed to receive pension benefits precisely because his injuries were received in the execution of his duties as a police officer. (The Central Park attack came as a direct result of Gaynes' Mad Batter investigation.)

Life after the NYPD

Since retiring, Gaynes has fallen out of the public eye. Multiple sources have suggested he left New York City entirely, and former love interest Vera Vecoli claims Gaynes and his father have been "roadtripping their way west," picking up itinerant work along the way. Appearing briefly on a webisode of the short-lived series Whatever Happened to that Guy?, Vecoli said:

I'm pleased to report that father and son continue working to repair their relationship, but there's a lot of hurt there, a lotta baggage. But please, the best thing you can do for them is give them their space. Gray[son] Gaynes has done a lot for this city, and he's no longer a public servant. He's a private citizen now, and he deserves his privacy, y'know?

Behind the scenes

Graynes Gaynes' NYPD murder investigations are retold in the first six books of the series bearing his name (The Files of Gray Gaynes).

As with many story ideas, the Gray books began as a single short narrative (some of the details actually adapted from a strange dream the author had). Naming the character "Gray" was, of course, intentionally on the nose. As Gray's tale quickly developed into a longer series, author R.L. Akers faced the unexpected question of whether Gray himself should ever acknowledge the aptness of his own name. This might be just a little too meta, however.