Bio

Frank Dale McCray was born on January 30, 1959, in the United States. Before the 1987 murder case, McCray already had a violent criminal history. He was convicted of rape in 1980, showing an earlier pattern of sexual violence. In 1992, he committed another sexual assault and kidnapping offense and was convicted in 1993.

That later conviction required his DNA to be entered into CODIS, the national offender database. Years afterward, that DNA record was matched to evidence preserved from the unsolved 1987 killing of Chestene “Tina” Cummins, allowing investigators to identify him as the suspect. McCray later became known as one of Arizona’s notable cold case convictions because modern DNA testing solved a murder that had gone unsolved for many years.

Murder Story

On May 21, 1987, Chestene “Tina” Ramsey Cummins, 23, was alone in her Maricopa County, Arizona apartment preparing for a trip when Frank Dale McCray entered the residence. Investigators believed he was in the area committing burglaries at the time.

Inside the apartment, Cummins was sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled with a cord. Her boyfriend later returned home and found her body in the bedroom. Evidence showed she had fought back during the attack.

Police could not identify the killer in 1987, but important evidence was preserved. In 2000, detectives reopened the case and used DNA testing on stored evidence. The results matched McCray through CODIS, where his DNA had been entered after a later sexual assault conviction.

McCray went to trial in 2005 and was found guilty of first-degree murder on November 14, 2005. He was sentenced to death on November 29, 2005. In 2008, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence.