with several doses of methamphetamine,
they shoved her back in the car and drove
manically down the twisting back roads
along the Kansas-Missouri border.B
izarrely and inexplicably, they
decided the child deserved mercy,
and by late afternoon Davis used his
mobile to call 911. In slurred tones,
he told the operator that he was lost
on a dirt road and needed to know his
location so he could drop off a child at a
friend’s house.
The operator passed the phone to
Deputy Vincent Ashworth, who spent
more than 20 minutes talking to Dena
and Davis, with them explaining that
they were in the process of committing
suicide by drug overdose, but wanted to
spare the child’s life.
“Why are you trying to kill yourself?”
asked Ashworth.
“We’ve done a lot of bad things,”
replied Dena, “and we don’t want to be
caught by anybody. We’re gonna end this
before anybody else gets to us.”
Dena kept hollering and yelling at
Davis, who was nodding off over the
wheel: “You need to wake up! You need
to stay on the road!”
Dena finally managed to read the
name on a road sign and police raced to
the spot – just as deputy Ashworth heard
a metallic thud over the phone. Davis
had finally fallen asleep and run thetruck into a ditch.
They found Dena behind the wheel
and Davis trying to push the vehicle out
of the ditch. The little girl was sitting
in the tractor of a farmer who just
happened to be passing and had offered
to help. The couple were so high they
could barely stand. Dena’s face was
blood-smeared from a broken nose and
split lip she’d suffered in the crash. Davis
was unhurt, but his niece had a cut over
her eye.
They were held without bail on
charges of first-degree murder,
assault, kidnapping, rape and sodomy.
Predictably, Dena offered to plead guilty
and testify against Davis in return for the
death penalty being taken off the table.
In December 2006 she was sentenced
to life without parole for murdering
Marsha Spicer, and was also given 239
years in prison on 25 other counts.
She also got another life sentence for
kidnapping Davis’s niece, and life
without parole for murdering Michelle
Ricci.
Davis received a death sentence for the
murders of Marsha Spicer and Michelle
Ricci, plus a further eight life sentences
for other crimes of conspiracy to commit
murder, kidnapping, sodomy, sex abuse
and assault.
At Davis’s trial, prosecutor Tammy
Jackson told jurors that he and Dena
thought they’d made mistakes in their
earlier sexual torture of Michelle Ricci
and wanted to perfect their methods with
Marsha Spicer.
Defence Attorney Tom Jacquinot
urged jurors to spare Davis the death
sentence, as the slayings were unplannedO
ver his lawyers’ objections, Davis
testified, telling the jury he was sorry
for what he had done. He spent over an
hour describing the violent and sexual
acts perpetrated on him by his stepfather
and a neighbour.
In her book How Children Become
Violent, Dr. Kathryn Seifert says Davis’s
childhood is straight from the diagnostic
template for psychopaths and sociopaths.
“The trauma of shooting his father and
the detachment disorder that results from
broken families and long-term juvenile
detention are red flag factors for teens
likely to become violent adults.
“They don’t learn to attach to other
people or develop relationships that teach
them how what they do affects another
person,” she says.
“They get stuck in a me-me-me stage.
That’s normal when you’re two, but
abnormal when you’re twenty-two.
“An alcoholic can’t have a drink or
he’s off getting drunk again. Similarly, a
sex offender who has become obsessed
with violent pornography should not
have access to porn or they’ll repeat the
behaviour.”
Marsha Spicer’s ex-husband Steven
agrees: “As for the people who let Davis
out eight years before his twenty-five-year
sentence was finished...I want them to lie
awake and question what they did.
“Many people may wonder how yet
another registered sex offender, after
years of punishment and therapy, could
relapse so completely. There’s no help or
cure for men like Davis.”
The depravity of his acts recalls
a statement by the infamous BTK
killer Dennis Rader who tried toDena Riley and Richard Davis in recent mug-shotsand Davis had simply become caught up
in his own “horrible fantasies.”
In one of the most harrowing parts
of the trial, jurors viewed 90 minutes
of edited images from more than seven
hours of tape taken from Davis and
Dena’s apartment. Marsha’s family
had to leave the court while the tape
was played, but they could still hear the
screams and cries for help as they sat
outside.explain what makes sexual killers
different from the rest of us: “You
don’t understand these things
because you’re not under the
influence of factor X. It’s the same
thing that made Son of Sam, Jack
the Ripper, the Boston Strangler
and others kill. It seems senseless,
but we can’t help it. There’s no help,
no cure, except death or being put
a w a y.”They were held
without bail on
charges of irst-degree
murder, assault,
kidnapping, rape and
sodomy. Predictably,
Dena offered to plead
guilty and testify
against Davis in return
for the death penalty
being taken off the
tableNext morning, the family group
decided to have lunch at McDonald’s in
nearby Pittsburg. The little girl travelled
with Dena and Davis while her parents
followed behind in another vehicle.
Halfway there, Davis stopped and said
he wanted to go to a different restaurant
and that he and Dena would take the
child with them and drop her off later.
When they failed to show up, the sister
called the police.
For the next five hours, helicopters,
state troopers and federal agents joined
in the frantic race against time to rescue
the child.
High on drugs, Dena and Davis had
a different and more terrible plan. When
the little girl on the back seat started
sobbing for her mommy, they stopped
the car and sexually assaulted her so
brutally that she later needed surgery.
Swallowing more pills chased down