Marvin Gay Sr.

Following this, Gay was given a six-year suspended sentence and five years of probation for the shooting. He was also prohibited from owning any firearms or drinking alcohol for the remainder of his life. During this time, Alberta Gay had filed for divorce after 49 years of marriage. Gay eventually returned briefly to the Gramercy Place residence, but health issues forced him to move to a nursing home, first in Inglewood around 1986, and in the final years of his life, to a nursing home in Culver City, California, where he died of pneumonia on October 10, 1998, nine days after his 84th birthday.

On March 31, 1984, Gay Sr. was angry because he could not locate a missing insurance policy document and he accused Alberta of misplacing the letter. Marvin awoke from his sleep and commanded his father to leave Alberta alone; however, neither father nor son physically attacked each other that night.

Around 12:30 pm (PST) on April 1, 1984, Gay Sr. began arguing with Alberta again over the missing insurance letter. After he was heard yelling from downstairs, his son, dressed in his maroon robe, shouted downstairs that if he wanted to talk to his mother, he should do it in person. When Gay Sr. initially refused, Marvin warned him not to enter his room, according to interviews from Alberta, the only witness to the shooting. When he did enter, his son angrily shoved his father into the hallway, then hit him. The fight continued in Marvin's bedroom, where Marvin reportedly struck his father and kicked and punched him severely. Alberta successfully separated the men and convinced Marvin to leave the room.

After results of Marvin's autopsy showed that he had traces of cocaine and PCP in his system taken days before his death but not active in his system, and pictures were shown of Gay taken after he was brought into custody, revealing injuries from his final fight with his son, Judge Gordon Ringer agreed to let Gay enter a plea bargain. Gay pleaded no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter on September 20, 1984.

In October 1983, after months in Washington, D.C., Marvin returned to the West Adams home located at Gramercy Place. Gay Sr. often told his children "I brought you into this world, I can take you out." On Christmas Day, 1983, Marvin gave his father an unregistered .38 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol to protect him from intruders and murderers after the younger Gaye, heavily addicted to cocaine, felt someone was really plotting to kill him. The elder Gay kept the gun because he felt "protected".

By the early 1980s, Gay's marriage to Alberta had deteriorated and, according to his wife in 1984, the couple had not shared the same bed in nearly ten years and, as a result, they were now sleeping in separate bedrooms.

Gay administered most of his harshest punishments on Marvin Jr. According to Marvin's sister, Jeanne, from the age of seven well into his teenage years, Marvin's life consisted of "brutal whippings" since Gay Sr. would strike him for any shortcoming, including putting his hairbrush in the wrong place or coming home from school a minute late. Marvin would state later, "living with Father was like living with a king, an all-cruel, changeable, cruel and all-powerful king". He further stated to David Ritz, "if it wasn't for Mother, who was always there to console me and praise me for my singing, I think I would have been one of those child suicides you read about in the papers." Alberta Gay later stated that her husband hated Marvin, as she told David Ritz in 1979:

In 1974, dressed in a female wig and clothing, Gay appeared on his son's Midnight Special episode. In 1973, Marvin Jr. bought his parents a neo-Tudor house in the West Adams district of Los Angeles after moving them to California. By this time, Gay, a longtime alcoholic, had proven to be too difficult to continue his ministry and his marriage to Alberta would grow more contentious with his drinking.

After Marvin had found musical stardom at Motown, he purchased a house on the corner of Fifteenth and Varnum in a black middle-class section of Washington, D.C. and moved his parents out of the projects and into the new house, where the couple would reside until the early 1970s. Alberta finally stopped working so that she could enjoy the security of owning a house, and the new residence was spacious, with large outside porches, but Marvin did not visit often due to his strained relationship with his father.

By 1968, however, Marvin extended an olive branch, giving his father a Cadillac as a present, but he said his father's response was not affecting. Four years later, Marvin reunited with his parents in Washington, D.C., after the city honored Gaye with a day in his honor called Marvin Gaye Day, a day, Marvin later said, on which he felt he had made his father "proud".

According to Alberta, Gay began to drink heavily in the 1950s, only furthering the friction in his relationship with Marvin and "he never did develop any love for the boy." As a teenager, Marvin Jr. attempted to leave home for good following one big fight by enlisting in the US Air Force; a move which the younger Gay later admitted was a bad idea, as he found himself under superiors who had similar authoritarian leanings as his father.

However, by the late 1940s, Gay had left the House of God to join another sect called the House of the Living God, but soon returned to the House of God to head its Board of Apostles in the early 1950s. Gay left the House of God altogether in the mid-1950s after not being named Chief Apostle of the church and according to his son, "that's when my father lost his healing powers".

Two years after marrying, they had their first child, a daughter they named Jeanne. On April 2, 1939, their first son, Marvin Jr., was born. Son Frankie (born Frances) and daughter Zeola followed shortly afterwards. In 1970, Gay fathered a son named Antwaun Carey with another woman as a result of one of his extramarital affairs.

While in Washington, Gay met his future wife, Alberta Cooper, whom he would marry on July 2, 1935. The couple bought a small house in south eastern Washington D.C. at 1617 First Street, which was only a few blocks away from the Anacostia River. The street would be nicknamed "Simple City" for its being "half-city, half-country". Alberta already had a son named Michael, but Gay sent Michael to live with his sister-in-law, Pearl.

Marvin Pentz Gay Sr. (October 1, 1914 – October 10, 1998) was an American Pentecostal minister. He was the father of American recording artists Marvin Gaye and Frankie Gaye and gained notoriety after shooting and killing his son Marvin on April 1, 1984, following an argument at their home.

Gay was born the first of 13 children to George and Mamie Gay on October 1, 1914 on a farm along Catnip Hill Pike in Jessamine County, Kentucky and was raised in Lexington. He had a troubled childhood, where his physically abusive father would often beat his mother, Marvin, and his five siblings.