16 Facts About Alberta Gay

Alberta Gay Williams Cooper was born on New Year's Day 1913 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

Alberta Gay had three sisters, Pearl, Tolie and Zeola, and a brother, Aster, but she endured a troubled childhood while growing up in North Carolina: her father once shot at her mother during an argument.

Alberta Gay told David Ritz that she felt she really did not have a father, and her family did not put her in a school until she was eight years old.

However, Jeanne Alberta Gay said Michael Cooper had planned to move to Detroit before the alleged confrontation between father and son.

Since her husband barely worked jobs, Alberta Gay worked as a domestic worker, cleaning houses in the Maryland and Virginia areas to provide income for her family.

Alberta Gay often found herself caught up in the middle of her husband's level of brutal "disciplining" of their children.

Alberta Gay used to say he didn't think he was really his child.

Alberta Gay liked to wear my panties, my shoes, my gowns, even my nylon hose.

Alberta Gay said that her husband wasn't ready for children because he didn't understand how to treat them and prior to her death, she told David Ritz that she had thought of leaving her husband many times before he shot Marvin, but had been unable to do so due to a lack of courage.

Alberta Gay took in people and fed neighbors, even when we were still dirt poor.

Alberta Gay was resentful that he was not the breadwinner due to earning very little as a pastor.

In October 1982, Alberta Gay was rushed to a hospital in Los Angeles after falling critically ill to a near-fatal kidney infection that required surgery.

Alberta Gay eventually convinced her son to leave his father's room.

Alberta Gay had already run out of the room following the first shot and pleaded for her husband to not shoot her next.

Alberta Gay was the only other person present at the murder of her son committed by his father.

Alberta Gay struggled with bone cancer for the remainder of her life and was taken care of by her daughter Jeanne at her Burbank home.