On 7 April 1779, in the company of close friend and fellow singer Caterina Galli, Ray left her home to attend a performance of Isaac Bickerstaffe's comic opera "Love in a Village". She had been approached by Hackman earlier that evening, but when she declined to tell him where she was going he followed her to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, where he murdered her. Hackman believed that she had taken another lover, William Hanger, Baron Coleraine, whom Hackman witnessed her meeting at Covent Garden. Whether she and Coleraine were involved in an affair has never been clearly established. Sandwich was devastated by her death. Hackman attempted to shoot himself following the murder, but only wounded himself, and was arrested. Two days after her 14 April burial, Hackman was sentenced to hang, and the sentence was carried out on 19 April in front of a large crowd in Tyburn, London.