HOULTON – State police said Thursday that the man who shot and killed his wife and her sister in a domestic dispute on Wednesday in Patten, before shooting himself, had been arrested in 1993 in Virginia for stalking his ex-wife.

A close relative from Virginia on Thursday night also described Gray as a violent man who repeatedly threatened the lives of his family and had been arrested before in that state for domestic violence.

Christina Gray, 24, and her sister, Vicki Morgan, 19, were sitting in their father’s pickup truck at a Patten convenience store shortly after 9 a.m. when Gray’s husband, Harold E. Gray, 68, shot at his wife with a 12-gauge shotgun. Gray then shot himself in the head.

Gray reportedly followed his wife to the store in his car.

Christina and Harold Gray died at the scene. Morgan was rushed by ambulance to Houlton Regional Hospital and then airlifted to Eastern Maine Medical Center where she died at about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday, nearly 12 hours after the 9:15 a.m. shooting.

A friend of Christina Gray’s said Thursday that Harold Gray was abusive and controlling after he married Christina Morgan in December 1996, and he had threatened to kill her when she left him last November.

“It was never good” after they were married, said Amber Melvin, a former Patten resident who now lives in Bangor. She met Christina while they attended Katahdin High School together in Sherman Station.

“He treated her like a 2-year-old,” said Melvin, who last saw Christina on Christmas Eve. “He always questioned what she did.”

The couple had dated while Christina was in high school. She graduated in June 1996 and was married six months later. Melvin said she had never talked to her friend about what had attracted her to the man who was three times her age.

“He was a mysterious man,” said Melvin. “Nobody knew much about him.”

The couple lived in an old farmhouse in Crystal until it burned in 1999, and later moved to a mobile home in Patten.

Melvin said many people frowned on the couple because of their age difference, and because of that, they mostly kept to themselves.

Part of the reason also was because Gray was very controlling of his wife, Melvin said.

“She couldn’t go anywhere,” said Melvin. “He always wanted to know where she was, and if she was five minutes late, she got grounded.

“She tried her hardest to make him happy,” she continued, adding that sometimes the couple was happy, “but for the most part it never worked out.”

Melvin said Gray often screamed and yelled at his wife, but when she would threaten to leave, he would change his demeanor and promise to change.

That never happened, however, and in November 2000, she left Gray and moved back home with her parents in Sherman.

“She was scared then,” said Melvin, adding that after Christina left, Gray threatened to kill her.

State police arrested Gray last November after he threatened his wife. At the urging of police, she took out a temporary protection order in Millinocket District Court against Gray, which became permanent on Dec. 11. The couple, who had no children, also reportedly was about to divorce.

Gray was born and raised in Clarke County, Va., but had been coming to the Patten area to hunt for nearly 30 years, a son told Maine state police detectives late Wednesday. Gray also has a daughter living in West Virginia.

The son, who lives in Virginia, told authorities in Maine that his father had worked for a telephone company laying underground cable, before he became injured on the job.

According to Detective Sgt. Dennis Appleton of the Maine State Police, in December 1993, Gray was arrested in Virginia for stalking his first wife. He said the couple was going through a divorce at the time, but he did not know whether it had become final at the time of Gray’s arrest.

Gray was found guilty on the misdemeanor stalking charge in February 1994 in Frederick County, Va., but the specifics of his sentence were not known Thursday.

He moved to Maine shortly thereafter, at which time he met and began dating Christina.

The Virginia relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Gray, a Korean War veteran, had three children with his first wife. They are now 45, 44 and 40.

The family had lived with constant fear from Gray’s abuse, according to the relative. The man repeatedly threatened the family with their lives. Gray owned three or four guns while in Virginia and threatened the family with them.

“No one knows how it feels to be afraid to lay down in your own house and go to sleep,” the relative said, adding that he doesn’t want other people to live in such fear. If this kind of violence could be prevented “it would be a relief to me,” the relative said.

“I feel sorry for those two young ladies and their family.”

The relative said that Gray had been with several other younger women in Virginia, and had lived with one which resulted in “the same problem with domestic violence.”

Gray may have been arrested more than once in that state for domestic violence, according to the relative.

Asked why Gray may have been attracted to considerably younger women, the relative said it could have been sexual and Gray also “may have been afraid to be alone because of his age.”

The relative suggested that if states shared information about such men it could prevent many domestic violence incidents.

“The U.S. needs to do more toward men like him. Any man who hits a woman is a coward. … The police in Maine if they had known [about Gray], they could possibly have prevented these two young girls’ deaths.”

If Gray had any personal assets, they should be used to help other domestic violence victims, said the relative.

“Federal laws need to go into effect to help states prevent this kind of thing,” said the relative.

Appleton said Thursday that detectives in Maine are still gathering information about the couple, and Gray. He said it will be sometime next week before they will be able to meet with the Morgan family.