On April 1, 1984, Marvin Gaye, an American musician who gained worldwide fame for his work with Motown Records, was shot and killed on the day before his 45th birthday by his father, Marvin Gay Sr., at their house in the Arlington Heights district of Los Angeles, California. Gaye was shot twice following an altercation with his father after he intervened in an argument between his parents.
He was pronounced dead on arrival at the California Hospital Medical Center. His father later pleaded no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter. Gaye’s death inspired several musical tributes over the years including recollections of the incidents leading to his death. Gaye was given a burial plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery, and was later cremated and his ashes spread around the Pacific Ocean.
Marvin Gaye had a bitter relationship with his father, Marvin Gay Sr., since his childhood. Marvin Sr. was a Christian minister who was a strict disciplinarian and often physically punished his children. He was also a crossdresser, which was widely known in the family’s Washington, D.C., neighborhood and made the younger Marvin a target of bullying. It was because of this, added with rumors of Gaye’s own homosexuality (and in tribute to one of Gaye’s favorite singers, Sam Cooke), that he added an “e” to his last name when he became famous.
Gaye’s father never approved of his son’s career in music, and gradually grew resentful that Gaye was closer to his mother, Alberta, and had become the breadwinner for the family. Despite a brief improvement in their relationship after Gaye found success with his album What’s Going On, father and son never found any lasting peace.
By 1983, after a period as a European tax exile, Gaye had re-entered the public eye with the hit song “Sexual Healing” and its album, Midnight Love. For a time, he had also achieved sobriety during his extensive stay in Belgium. Returning to the U.S., he embarked on his final Sexual Healing Tour in April of that year. Gaye, who had a profound dislike for touring, returned to cocaine abuse to cope with the pressures of the road, and midway through the tour he developed paranoia over an alleged attempt on his life, wearing a bulletproof vest until he was on stage.
When the tour ended in August 1983, Gaye returned to the U.S. to nurse his mother, who was recovering from kidney surgery, and moved into his parents’ residence at 2101 South Gramercy Place, a home which he bought for them in 1973. During his stay, Gaye’s father was absent. That October, his father returned from a business trip in Washington during which he purchased insurance on his family’s previous residence Initially, Gaye’s sisters Jeanne and Zeola lived in the house before Marvin Sr. returned to the property, and left shortly afterwards due to the growing conflict between father and son.
For the next six months, the two men struggled to keep their distance from one another. During one quarrel at the house, the elder Gay called police to have his son leave the property. After staying with one of his sisters, however, Gaye returned to the property stating to a friend of his, “After all, I have just one father. I want to make peace with him.” Jeanne Gay later told David Ritz that her father had told her if Marvin ever touched him, he’d “kill him”.
On Christmas Day 1983, Gaye gave his father a Smith & Wesson .38 Special pistol so that he could protect himself from intruders. Friends and family members contended that the younger Marvin was often suicidal and paranoid, and by now was afraid of leaving his room and spoke of little besides suicide and death. Gaye sometimes wore three overcoats and put his shoes on the wrong feet. Four days before his death, according to his sister Jeanne, Gaye had tried to kill himself by jumping out of a speeding sports car, suffering only minor bruises. Jeanne contended that “there was no doubt Marvin wanted to die” and that he “couldn’t take any more.”
