Lilly E. Gray
Open-knowledge reference entry
Lilly Edith Gray was an American resident of Salt Lake City whose headstone in the city cemetery became a landmark of Utah folklore due to the inscription "Victim of the Beast 666." Though popularly associated with Satanism or paranormal legends, the epitaph is historically recognized as a political statement by her husband, Elmer Louis Gray, who used the term "The Beast" to characterize the United States government and the legal system.
Early life and marriages
Lilly Edith Cook was born in Manvers, Ontario, Canada, on June 4, 1880, to Richard Cook and Mary Margaret Harrison. Her family immigrated to Benzie County, Michigan, around 1880. Lilly had a twin sister, Ethel Sarah Cook, who died in 1917 after being institutionalized for nearly twenty years in the Traverse City State Hospital.
Lilly married her first husband, Richard C. Walsh, in Chicago in 1918. Following his death, she married Frank Zimmerman in 1926. They resided in Chicago, where both were employed by the United States Post Office, until Zimmerman's death in 1943. By 1950, Lilly had relocated to Salt Lake City, where she married her third husband, Elmer Louis Gray, on July 10, 1952, in Elko, Nevada.
Death and epitaph
Lilly Gray died on November 14, 1958, at Salt Lake General Hospital. Her official death certificate (State File No.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lilly E. Gray” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.