CULPEPER -- When death-row inmate Ricky Javon Gray goes on trial in September in a Culpeper County slaying, jurors will not hear testimony from a key witness for the prosecution.

Yesterday, Culpeper Circuit Judge John R. Cullen ruled against prosecutors' motion to introduce the testimony of Timothy Thomas, an inmate in Cumberland County.

During a preliminary hearing last month, Thomas testified that Gray's girlfriend, Ashley Baskerville, implicated Gray in the killing of Reva resident Sheryl Warner on Dec. 18, 2005.

Gray, 30, is on death row for murdering Bryan and Kathryn Harvey and their two young daughters in Richmond on Jan. 1, 2006.

In his ruling, Cullen said the commonwealth had not established Thomas' statements as reliable. Cullen said a key factor in determining unreliability was that Thomas insists Baskerville confided in him a month before the crime occurred.

During last month's hearing, Thomas said Baskerville told him that Gray and his nephew, Ray Joseph Dandridge, killed Warner at her home along U.S. 29.

According to Gray, they gained entry by claiming car trouble and asking to use the phone. Warner, a 37-year-old mother of three, was found in her burning basement, hanged by an electrical cord and shot in the head.

Gray and Dandridge, his accomplice in the Harvey murders, also killed Baskerville, 21. Five days after the Harvey killings, police found her body, along with those of her mother, Mary Baskerville Tucker, 47, and Tucker's husband, Percyell Tucker, 55, in their home in the 3400 block of East Broad Rock Road in South Richmond.