On a winter day in Northern California, the lives of a married couple were cut tragically short, marking the violent beginning of a multi-state killing spree. Floyd Omar Harvey, a 61-year-old White man, and his wife, Reba Elizabeth Harvey, who was around 60 years old, were killed on January 6, 1967. Their deaths, which occurred in Shasta County, are the first known homicides attributed to the serial killer Gary Don Franklin. While their case remains shrouded in the quiet passage of time, their deaths represent the start of a violent chain of events that would stretch across the country, from the Pacific coast to the Alaskan wilderness and the American South.
Very little information has been preserved in public records about the specific circumstances of how the Harveys were killed. Details about the exact location of the crime scene, a possible motive, or the sequence of events leading to their deaths are not readily available. Investigators in the years that followed would connect the double homicide to Franklin, a man born in Arkansas in 1946, but the evidence and investigative steps that first led them to this conclusion are not well-documented in surviving accounts. What is certain is that on that January day, the Harveys met with fatal violence, and their murders became the first chapter in a dark and bloody story.
Two years after the Harveys were killed, the violence surfaced again, this time thousands of miles away in Kodiak, Alaska. On January 21, 1969, a young mother and her two small children were found murdered. The victims were 22-year-old Kathleen "Kathy" Gregoroff and her daughters, Melissa, age 3, and Genai, just 10 months old. All three had been shot, and their deaths were later linked to Gary Don Franklin. The brutality of the crime, taking a mother and her two babies, highlighted the devastating nature of the killer who had begun his spree in Shasta County.
The final known crime in Franklin's series occurred in January 1970 in Louisiana. There, he murdered a 36-year-old man named Robert T. Dunn. Following this murder, Franklin was apprehended by law enforcement. It was after his arrest in Louisiana that he reportedly confessed to the other killings in California and Alaska. This confession was the crucial link that officially tied the disparate crimes together, revealing a pattern of violence that had crossed state lines and left a trail of grieving families in its wake.
Gary Don Franklin was convicted for the murder in Louisiana and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. The series of shootings he was responsible for included an elderly couple, a young family, and another man. He remained imprisoned until his death in 1995 at the age of 49. While his capture brought an end to his violent path, it left many unanswered questions, particularly concerning his earliest victims, Floyd and Reba Harvey.
The case of Floyd and Reba Harvey is a somber reminder of how the passage of time can obscure the details of a tragedy, leaving behind only the most basic, painful facts. Without contemporary news articles or accessible public records detailing their lives, they are remembered primarily as the first victims in a terrible sequence of murders. Their deaths in the winter of 1967 in Shasta County were the quiet, horrific prelude to a series of crimes that would bring pain and loss to families in three different states. The investigation into their deaths is considered closed, with their killer identified and held responsible, but the full story of who they were and how their lives ended remains a sparsely written page in the annals of true crime.
