The Killing of Polly Klaas

Less than two months after being let out of prison, on Sept. 24, 1976, Davis perpetrated his first provable violent crime against a woman.  He spotted Frances Mays, a 26-year-old secretary, heading toward a parking lot.  It was about 6:00 p.m. and not yet dark. Davis would later tell a court appointed psychiatrist that he heard a female voice talking inside his brain and "wondering what it was like to be raped."  He claimed that when he saw Mays, he was certain that it was her voice — and he was going to help her find out exactly what it was like to be raped.

As Mays was about to open her car door, she sensed someone behind her.  She turned around and saw a furious Rick Davis, menacing her with a knife.  

"Get inside," he gruffly ordered.  She did and he told her to move over to the passenger side.  Then he took the car keys.

He started driving.  

She started crying.

"Shut up!" an outraged Davis shouted and slugged her.

Did he want her wallet? Mays inquired.

He did and slipped it into a pocket.

"I just got outa prison," the man, whose name she did not know, said.  "Someone is following me and I gotta get away."

After pulling off the road and into a deserted area, Davis unzipped his fly and took out his penis. "I'm going to count to three," he said.  "You know what I want you to do."

In panic, Frances Mays grabbed for the knife.  She hit the blade and cut her hand.  Screaming and bleeding, she opened the car door and ran.  Luckily, she managed to flag down a car — that of Jim Wentz, a California Highway Patrol officer on his way to work.

Wentz took his gun out and pointed it at Davis.  Then the officer placed the parolee under arrest.

Held in jail, Davis asserted that he was continually badgered by the voice of Frances Mays.  He was transferred to the Napa State Hospital for a mental evaluation.  On Dec. 16, 1976, he escaped from the hospital.

That very night, Davis broke into the home of 32-year-old Marjorie Arlington.  She was soundly asleep.  He slammed her in the head with a fireplace poker.  She woke up screaming and bloody and he left the house.  He would later tell a psychiatrist that a voice told him the woman wanted to be bashed in the head.  He was merely obliging a woman in her own self-destructive desires, Davis again claimed.

The next day he broke into the Napa County Animal Shelter.  He stole some drugs plus a shotgun and ammunition.

Early on the morning of Dec. 20, Davis saw Marie Ellis going to her car.  As she got behind the steering wheel, Davis put the stolen shotgun to her neck through the open car window.  "You've got to drive me to Santa Rosa," he told her.  He paused to pull some tape out of his pocket to tie her up and, in so doing, took the gun away from her neck.

She floored the accelerator and escaped.

The next day found Davis 70 miles south of Napa in his old stomping grounds of La Honda.  He broke into a home (the owners were not present) and stole clothing and expensive jewelry.

Somebody saw him and called police.  They rushed to the scene and discovered Davis attempting to hide in the grass beside a fence.  He was curled into a ball and held the stolen shotgun.

As they took the habitual criminal in, he told them, "Everybody does it [presumably referring to stealing], some just don't get caught."

Davis was tried before, then sentenced by, Judge Alan Harvey of the San Mateo Superior Court.  The judge asked Davis if he had any regrets about his crime: "You don't — it doesn't bother you at all?"

"No," the beefy, round-faced, and much-tattooed defendant replied.  "If it did, I wouldn't have done it."

As Frank Spiering wrote in Who Killed Polly? "Judge Harvey sentenced Davis to one-to-25 years for kidnapping Frances Mays in Hayward, two years to life for the two assaults in Napa, and six months-to-ten years for receiving stolen property."

The unrepentant career criminal was paroled on March 4, 1982, after serving only six years.