Twisted Listers Presents TCC #6 Polly Klaas

This week we take a look at one of the most infamous, horrifying cases in California history: the abduction and murder of Polly Klaas. This story takes place in 1993, when 12 year old Polly is stolen out of her own bedroom during a sleep over with two friends, while her mother and sister slept in the other room. The boldness of the abduction, along with the inability to find a single suspect for more than two months, made this case one of the most terrifying and captivating of its time. The entire nation stood by, waiting for answers, and finally, just before the new year, they got what they were waiting for when a man was finally tied to her disappearance. 

Once Polly's killer was caught, her story was used to pass multiple new laws, including California's highly debated Three Strikes and You're Out law, which was sold to frightened voters as a way to protect our children, but ended up imprisoning thousands of non violent criminals, while others continued to walk free. While Polly's father Marc was a big proponent of these laws, her two sisters, Jess and Annie, are not, and we'll talk about why, as well as how they are choosing to honor their sister's legacy in a very different way. 

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Sources: 
https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-petaluma-ca/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/polly-klaas-murder-30-years-investigators-remember-dogged/story?id=103276602
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/22/polly-klaas-sisters-criminal-justice-mass-incarceration
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1286985.html
https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/richard-allen-davis-kidnapping-murder-polly-klaas-sleepover

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best
indie podcasts. Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm
your host, Cindy, and I'm glad you're here. Welcome back

(00:31):
to True Crime California. This is our next episode, episode six.
Sorry I'm a couple of days late on it. You
know how it goes with the holidays. But we're here.
We're ready to get into a new case, and it's
a horrifying one, if I do say so. This week
I am covering the kidnapping and murder of poly Class. Now,

(00:52):
this is a really famous case in California. I just
thought it would be a good one to do because
apparently I like to torture myself and talk about children
being murdered. So hope you guys are with me. Let's
ring in the new year with some some fucked up shit,
shall we. So I'm just gonna get right into it here.
This story starts October first, nineteen ninety three, when twelve

(01:14):
year old poly Class decided to have a sleepover with
two of her friends. I think she played with them
in band. I know she played clarinet. I believe they
did as well. So these are her two friends Kate
and Jillian. Now. At the time, Paulie lived in Petaluma, California,
which is adjacent to the Bay Area. She lived in
a three bedroom house with her mother and younger sister, Annie,

(01:35):
who is six years old now. Petaluma, like I said,
it's like Bay Area, but it's Sonoma County, which Sonoma
is famous for their wines, so is Napa. There's a
lot of wine wars up in the central northern California area.
And basically this is like about forty miles north of
San Francisco. A lot of people actually live in Petaluma

(01:55):
even now and just commute to the city for work.
So that's what are Pollie's living at the time this
story takes place. She was born January third, nineteen eighty one,
in Fairfax, California, which is yet another city. It's another
it's in another county, but it's actually closer to San Francisco,
so kind of up there, the county is all sort

(02:17):
of run into each other. Like when I'm driving through
California on my way to Oregon, I'll go through like
multiple counties like very in quick succession because of the
way that they're sort of split up. So Fairfax is
sort of almost in between Petaluma and San Francisco, so
keeping local to like the city, you know, and and

(02:38):
her father actually I believe, commuted to San Francisco from
Fairfax when she was born. Speaking of her father, her
mother and father had split up when Polly was pretty young,
but they were very good at co parenting. I believe
she was only two years old when they split up,
so by the time she was twelve, you know, they'd
got into a rhythm. Her mother, Eve Nickel, had already

(03:01):
remarried once and was unfortunately in the middle of her
second divorce when this story takes place. Polly's father, Mark Class,
ran a Hurtz truck rental company, and I believe he
did pretty well for himself. He and Polly were super,
super close. They spoke every single day, They saw each
other every weekend, you know, even though she lived with
her mother, the two of them spent a lot of

(03:22):
time together. And you know, while Mark was maybe doing
pretty well, I think Polly's mom was doing the best
that she could. I think it was a much more
modest lifestyle that she, you know, could provide for Polly.
But it certainly wasn't bad By any means. You know,
she's essentially a single mother of two young girls at
this point, at least two young girls. And I say

(03:43):
at least too because I'll later talk about Polly's sisters.
But often when the story is told, there's only mention
of one sister, and I believe this is because the
other sister was the same age as Pollie and was
the daughter of her at that point nearly former stepfather
and his former wife. So I don't know that there's
any blood relation between the second sister, but they were

(04:06):
raised together. Pollie's mom was married to this man for
ten years of Polly's life and ten years of this
other girl's life, so it was like they were very
much raised together, even if there wasn't like a blood relation.
So when you know, when Annie, her younger sister, and
Jess talk about Polly, they both refer to her as
their sister because that's what she is. So blood relation

(04:29):
or not, Polly had two sisters, and often there's only
the talk of the one Annie, because that's who they
were living with. But I'm going to talk about these
sisters later, so I wanted to add some context. So Pollie,
you know, she's a popular girl, super outgoing, pretty lot
of personality, very very nice, very happy, just a normal

(04:50):
twelve year old girl growing up in Petaluma in the
early nineties. And I want to mention just really quickly
that I remember this story clearly because I was two
years younger than her, almost exactly two years younger than her. Sure, sure,
she's born January third, I was born January twenty ninth.
She's nineteen eighty one. I was nineteen eighty three. So

(05:13):
I remember this these stories. I was also living in Davis,
which is, you know, fifty miles well maybe like one
hundred miles away from San Francisco, just directly east at
the time this took place. So this was a really
really big story, and I remember it really really well,
which is another reason I wanted to cover it because
I again the reason I chose to do California stories

(05:35):
is because they interest me. They're personal to me because
it's where I grew up, it's where I live. So anyway,
getting more into the story, so you know, she's growing
up in the nineties, normal girl, popular, happy, and like
I said, she and her mom and little sister live
in this house in Petaluma. It's not in the greatest area.
It's Pedaluma generally is not like a bad city, but

(05:58):
you know, it has its spots like anywhere else. I
would say, Like I looked it up and like it's
kind of in the middle of like the national average
for crime. So it's not particularly safe. It's not particularly dangerous.
It's sort of just a city. Right this place now,
I looked it up. It's four twenty seven East Fourth Street.
It's worth over a million dollars, Like, welcome to California

(06:18):
real estate. Right, But at the time, it was not
the best area. And in fact, it was almost exactly
between two parks that were pretty well known for having
like a large amount of drug users and other sort
of like shady people around. So it wasn't a great
area to be kind of stuck between. So one park,
Walnut Park, had a Greyhound bus stop next to it,

(06:40):
and I don't know if you all know, but the
greyhound stations are like super sketchy, just traditionally any city
where the Greyhound station is, like it's not going to
be a great area. And that being said, you know,
like I said, Petaluma isn't known for being super scary,
but you know, there's better areas and worse areas, and
they're in this sort of in between the area, right.

(07:00):
So anyway, it's October first, nineteen ninety three. She's having
her friends sleep over and Jillian shows up around seven pm.
Now the time hasn't changed yet, so around seven it's
still light out, so the girls go to get popsicles
at the local convenience store and they walk by one
of the other or the other park I should say,
which is called Wickersham Park. It's not super late, but

(07:21):
it's getting dark. Starts to get a little sketchy, so
the girls hurry back to Polly's house. Her friend Kate
then shows up sometime just after eight pm, and the
three go to her room to do makeup, hang out.
They're you know, talking about their Halloween costumes. One of
them does Polly's make up to make her look dead,
which I fucking hate that detail. It's just fucked up.

(07:42):
Her mom is obviously home, Eva's home, and around ten
o'clock she says, you know, don't stay up too late,
have fun, but keep it down. Me and Annie are
going to bed in the next room. Now that it
was a three bedroom, but her little sister was only
six years old, so it would often sleep with her mother.
So the two of them are going to bed in
the room literally next door to Polly's. The girls keep
playing for a short while, then they decide to go

(08:04):
get like pillows and blankets or sleeping bags and go
to sleep on the floor in Polly's room. So Polly's like,
I'll get him. She opens the door of her bedroom
to go get the sleeping stuff and there is a
grizzled man standing in the hallway facing her, holding a
knife and a duffel bag. The man says to her,

(08:29):
don't scream or I'll slit your throat, then forces Polly
back into her room with Kate and Jillian. He then
tells the girls not to look at him and to
lay on their stomachs on the floor. He said, I
won't hurt you. I'm only here for money. Paully says,
please don't hurt my mom or sister there in the
next room. And apparently this kind of freaked him out

(08:51):
because I don't know that he knew the other people
were home, and this knowledge may have contributed him getting
more panicked as time went on, because the girls later said,
you know, he started out kind of calm and then
got like more and more frantic, more and more like
hurry up kind of deal, you know. And I should
also note that at first the girls thought this was
a prank because apparently Polly was like a big prankster,

(09:14):
so like to this point, I guess at twelve years old,
pulling pranks like this would be kind of crazy. But
they were almost like laughing at this situation. But after
they were like tied with random silk and cords that
he cut from Polly's Nintendo, like, they started to realize, like,
this isn't a joke. Also, Polly was terrified. She began crying.
She said, you know, I'll take you to the money,
like just please don't hurt my family. So the man

(09:37):
puts pillowcases over the girl's heads. He's you know, tells
him lay on their stomachs, and he gags all three
of them with this like weird silky fabric that he
brought with him. And that's a point to note later
he brought fabric with him. He then said to the girls,
I'm gonna take Polly. He asked him, you know who
lives here, and Polly was like, it's me. That's another
thing to note. He asked which girl lived in the house.

(10:00):
She said I did I do. So he takes her
with and he says, you know, she's going to show
me where the valuables are. I'm not going to hurt her.
I'm not going to touch her. Count to one thousand
and I will. She'll be back by then, like I'll
bring her back within a thousand counts. He makes a
note to say he's not going to hurt her, which
to me is suspicious because it's one of those things

(10:21):
like you know when somebody will say something and it's like, well,
why do you say that? Like I wasn't even thinking that,
but now I am. But I also, I mean obviously
in this context, like they might think he's going to
hurt her. But it's just interesting how adamant he was
that he wasn't going to hurt her. So he and
Polly leave the room, and the girls count for a while,
and they wait for just a couple of minutes, and
then they are able to untie each other and they

(10:43):
go and get Polly's mom, Eve. Eve searches the house
really quickly and then immediately calls police. Now this time
it's about eleven pm. The man broke in just after
ten thirty, so it's been a you know, pretty quick turnaround.
He was only in the house for about ten minutes
and police immediately take action. So like, the turnaround time
for this is not long. It's like less than a

(11:05):
half an hour from the time she was taken until
the time police were actually looking for her, which is great.
The response time is wonderful. And they put out an
APB and all points bulletin for police to know to
be on the lookout for this man. Now the girl's
got to look at him, so they have like a
description of at least what he looks like. They don't
know if he's on foot, if he's in a car,

(11:26):
but they know what he looks like. So the APB
goes out it has this information. However, here's the part
where the cops fuck it all up, which I swear
is the centerpiece of like every true crime story. Apparently,
when they set out the APB, they didn't want the
media to know about the kidnapping, so they marked it
as not for the media, and for whatever reason, this

(11:47):
meant that it only went out on certain police channels
and not all police channels, which, as you can imagine,
poses a huge risk for a multitude of reasons. So
not every police unit, not every you know, it would
be like the local police know, but like the CHP
don't know, for instance, And I think that's actually how
it happened here, Like the local police get the APB,

(12:09):
but the state police do not, which is a fucking problem. Right.
So the police, you know, they're searching day and night,
they pronounce, immediately call the FBI, which is a very
smart thing to do. And the FBI takes action immediately,
which is great, And of course they then alert the media.
So it's like a difference of like twelve hours before

(12:29):
the media is alerted anyway, which is why it's such
a bummer that they didn't just put it out from
the beginning. The FBI immediately bring in a sketch artist
to get a sketch together of this man. And I
have to tell you the man gets caught, just in
case anybody doesn't know the story. He does get caught.
I don't feel like it's ruining it to tell you.

(12:51):
And the rendering is like spot on. The picture of
this man looks like a fucking photograph. It's insane. And
to get this from two twelve year old girls. Is
so impressive to me. Sketch artists are incredible. Like to
be able to just visualize what somebody is telling you
when the information can be so vague and make it
so accurate is unbelievable. Like it's just amazing. Those people

(13:14):
are so good at their jobs. So anyway, as many
as fifty Pedaluma police and seventy five FBI agents began
interviewing people in the area. They found a ton of
witnesses to this kidnapping. Now this is in the subsequent
days after she goes missing. There is no sign of Polly.
There is no sign of this man. They have no
idea where she is, but they are working their asses

(13:36):
off to figure it out. Now, some of the witnesses
that they find are including and this is wild Polly's neighbors. Now,
these are not nextdoor neighbors. These are people that live
in the back house behind Polly's house, so like the
same yard, Like they have to walk past her house
to get to theirs. Now, I don't know, Like in

(13:58):
the Midwest, basements are normal. In California, backhouses are normal.
I've lived in. The only other state I've ever lived
in is Oregon, back houses are not normal there, so
I don't know if this is a normal thing in
other states. But essentially, in California, a lot of people
will like convert their garage or take up part of
their lot to put a smaller house in the backyard,

(14:19):
and it can be called a granny unit, an adu,
something like that, but essentially it's a smaller house behind
the main house where tenants live. Now, whoever owned Polly's
mom's house was renting to Polly's mother Eve and was
also renting to these people in the backhouse. But essentially
they share a yard. It's like a small area that

(14:40):
is shared. And these neighbors saw the man saw the abductor. Now,
one of these neighbors had a friend over that night
to watch a movie, and that friend went out to
smoke a cigarette on the porch. At some point while
he was out there, he saw a man with thick,
wiry hair slipped back on his head walking around in
the yard and act actually walking up towards the bathroom

(15:01):
for the back house, because the bathroom was not attached
to the house, which is another thing that I've seen
in California. Like, my friend lived in a converted garage
and it didn't have a bathroom, so she would use
the bathroom in the main house. But she had her
own kitchen, she had everything else was her own, so
she only had to share a bathroom. And so I
think it was kind of that kind of thing where

(15:21):
where this three bedroom, three bath house, one of the
bathrooms was given to the granny unit. So this person
sees this man going into the bathroom that belongs to
this bath house, uh, and doesn't say anything about it,
which is so weird to me. But it could have
been a friend of Eaves. Right, They're like, this man

(15:43):
might be in the front house, like hanging out, you
know whatever, So they don't say anything, which is such
a bummer because it's a missed opportunity, and this case
is so many missed opportunities. We have the eyewitness of
this person who doesn't say anything, we have the APB
who doesn't go out and going to see how that
affects the case anyway, such a bummer. Now, about thirty

(16:05):
minutes prior to this, a little girl was getting out
of her uncle's car to go home after he took
her to see a movie. She noticed a disheveled looking
man with a duffel bag walking towards her uncle's car.
She said to her uncle, I want to wait to
get out until this man walks by, because again, she
lives in this area. She's afraid of all the people
in the parks, and she, you know, she knows better,

(16:27):
so she's like, can I just wait a minute. Now?
This man does walk past, and not only does he
look past or walk past, but he actually looks into
their car to see who they are. And as he's
doing this, he puts his own hand up to cover
his face so that they can't see him. So he
can see them, but they can't see him, so he's
trying to cover himself so people don't see him. Now,

(16:49):
this is another important thing. We have him asking who's
in the house, we have him coming with cloth, and
we have him hiding his face from people, which to
me means that this man knew what he was looking
to do. But I'm getting ahead of myself, but I
just want to keep calling this out. So anyway, these
witnesses all kind of helped put the sketch together, and

(17:10):
they also create something of a timeline and gave cops
to go more or more to go on sadly, this
doesn't really amount to much. Well maybe a little bit later,
but not at the time. And meanwhile, the media is
going wild with this. This is national news. Like I said,
you know, I lived in California, so it made sense
that I would know it. But this was one of
those cases. It was like John Bennet, everybody knows it.

(17:33):
Poly Class is like a household name for anybody around
my age. Anybody around my age. You say poly class
and they're like a terrible case, terrible story. So anyway,
the media is going nuts and Winona Writer Okay, So
Winona Writer was born and raised in Petaluma, and so

(17:53):
she offered two hundred thousand dollars for any information leading
to or for the safe return of Paul. That's what
it was, not information. She said, if somebody returns her safely,
I will personally give them two hundred thousand dollars out
of my own money. That's how dedicated she was to
finding this person and how close it was to her right. However,

(18:15):
even with this reward, nobody came forward with anything concrete,
despite the police an FBI getting over I think it
was like three thousand tips over the span of only
eight weeks. So there's a lot of tips that come in,
but nothing really concrete, nothing that police can really go on.
They have a really good sketch of this guy, they

(18:36):
have a timeline, but he seems to have just disappeared
into thin air. And now it's been sixty something days
and they are just as far as they were on
night one. Luckily, finally, on November twenty seventh, nineteen ninety three,
Dana Jaffy called police with some very disturbing information. Now,

(18:59):
first I want to say that when Eve first spoke
with police, she said nothing was taken from the home,
which is interesting because he said he wanted to rob it,
but he didn't take anything. However, after a time, it
was discovered that a single pair of knitted red tights
were taken from Polly's drawer, which is so fucking creepy
and horrifying. Now, while out hiking on her land between

(19:20):
Sonoma and San Rafel, Dana Jaffey stumbled upon some items
that made her think that she had found a crime scene.
These items included an adult sized dark sweatshirt turned inside out,
a knotted piece of white silky cloth shaped like a hood,
and a pair of child sized red knitted tights which

(19:43):
were knotted at the knee. They also found a condom
and a condom wrapper, which is just fucking beyond Now.
Police come the next day. I don't know why they
didn't come the same day, but on November twenty eighth,
they arrive, They find these items and pretty much immediately
tie them to Paully. Now, of course, they searched the
area very carefully, as they figured, you know, they might

(20:05):
find her body if she was in fact dead, which
I hate to say, but I think at this point
everybody was expecting that, especially after finding these items. However,
they did not find her body, but they did get
information that blew the case wide open finally, and this
is the ultimate story of a missed opportunity. If I've

(20:25):
ever heard one, this is it. But I also, and
again I'm getting ahead of myself, I don't know that
it matters, and I'll explain. So. When talking to Dana,
the property owner, she told them, you know, this is
the second time I've called you guys in about two months,
she said. On October first, the night of October first,
I had police on my property because I found a

(20:47):
man trespassing here. Now, Dana had been at work. She
was a chef, and so she'd been at work, and
she had a woman babysitting her twelve year old daughter,
which I love that she had someone looking after her
twelve year old daughter. I think that is very smart.
They live alone in a secluded area. People think, you know,
twelve years old, you can take care of yourself. No

(21:08):
you can't, No, you can't. Poly Class was twelve years old.
So I love that she had a babysitter. So Dana
drives up her long, you know, secluded driveway to her home,
has a brief conversation with the babysitter in the babysitter
then drives down that same driveway. Now, by the time
the babysitter drives down that driveway, she pulls up on

(21:29):
a man whose car is stuck in a ditch on
the side of that road. She kind of rolls her
window down and she's like, hey, this is private property,
Like what are you doing here? And the man, who
is disheveled, has black, wiry hair that's going gray, slipped back,
he's sweaty, he's covered in leaves. He seems completely wild,

(21:51):
you know, he's just freaking out. He essentially attacks her
and it's like get out of your car and help
me move my car, and is like really scaring her.
So this babysitter speeds away as fast as she could
away from the house. She goes to a payphone and
she calls Dana, because there weren't cell phones back then,
so she tells Dana, Hey, there's some weird fucking dude
like the bottom of your driveway, like his car seems

(22:13):
to be stuck. Whatever. Dana, instead of calling the police,
gets a baseball bat and drives down there, which like, Okay,
I get it, I might do that too. Don't do
that if this ever happens to you, Just call the cops.
She sees the man stuck on the side of the road.
He's asking for help. She drives back up. She calls police,
and police come down and they meet with this man. Now,

(22:35):
everybody who saw him that night commented on how he
was like profusely sweating, he was dirty, he had leaves
in his hair. He smelled so super strongly of alcohol,
which really really bothers me. That that point bothers me
because he's driving a car and he smells like alcohol.
I mean, that's all you need. Detain him something right.
So police arrive, they ask him what happened. He said, oh,

(22:57):
I was outsight seeing and ended up stuck. And it's like,
why are you sightseeing in the middle of the night,
It's like eleven thirty twelve in the morning, Why are
you on private property? But police are kind of like, okay,
you know whatever. They get his name, and his name
is Richard Allen Davis. Now they run his car and
they realize it's not in his name, and it actually

(23:18):
is in his brother in law's name. He says, oh,
I recently bought it from him. We haven't done the
paperwork yet, and they're like, all right, there's another like
kinky thing. That's another like red flag. Police ask if
he has a record, and he says no, so they go, okay, cool.
They run his name for warrants and nothing comes back.
So even though this guy smells like alcohol, has a

(23:39):
car not in his name, is on private property, stuck
in a ditch, they run his name for warrants, and
because he doesn't have any, they decide to let him go.
This is despite all of these things I'm talking about,
and the fact that he had beer like unopened in
the front seat of his car. And the cops are like,
what's up with that alcohol? He grabs a beer crack

(24:00):
sit open and starts chugging it in front of him,
in front of the cops, and they don't arrest him.
They just say, pour that out, knock it off, what
are you doing? And they help him out of the
ditch and they let him go. So again, obviously we're
dealing with yet another missed opportunity, which is just it's

(24:25):
so horrible when you think about this and what could
have been and what could have happened, and how many
chances there were and how they were all missed. But
I don't necessarily think that had they arrested him in
this moment that it would have changed the outcome. It
just the parents wouldn't have had to wait for so
long to know what happened. And we'll talk more about
the specifics. I think now might be a good time

(24:51):
to talk about Richard Allen Davis. Let's just talk about
this man. Richard was born in June second, nineteen fifty
four to Robert and Evelyn Davis, two violent alcoholics who
regularly assaulted Richard and his three siblings. It was so
bad that by the time Richard was three years old,
his mother had already held his hand over an open

(25:12):
flame as punishment for misbehaving, and in fact, over time
this became such a constant punishment that Richard wouldn't even
react when his hand would start to blister from the flames.
So this is a very, very tough childhood. His parents
divorced when he was eleven, and he actually was sent
to live with his father, with all but one sibling

(25:33):
joining him. Now, his dad was as bad as his mom,
regularly beating the children whenever he was around, and often
leaving them with family or even like random people while
he was working or doing whatever, mostly drinking. By the
time he was twelve, Richard was already a criminal, with
a record for burglary and forgery, and this type of

(25:54):
behavior continued until he was seventeen, when a judge gave
him a choice go to jail or join the army.
He chose the army, but was discharged after only thirteen months.
By this time, he was eighteen and had a group
of friends sort of, and he went to a party
hosted by one of them, a girl named Marlene Voris.

(26:17):
By the end of the party, Marlene was dead. Now
in the house police found seven suicide notes, which to
me feels a little much, but they determined that she'd
killed herself, which is interesting because all of her friends
and especially those who were at the party, believed that
Richard had killed her. Now, he was never charged, and
there's not a lot of information about this, so it's

(26:38):
hard to draw conclusion on our own, but it's definitely
worth mentioning, especially as he later told a psychologist or
sorry a psychiatrist that he would hear her voice in
his head after her death, saying that she wanted to die,
So that to me feels a little telling. After this,
he ended up in and out of jail for many years,

(27:00):
about four years time, just you know, violent crimes, robbery, intimidation,
really shitty stuff. And in nineteen seventy six, at only
twenty two years old, he kidnapped twenty six year old
Francis Mays, who he attempted to sexually assault while she
was in his car. Now, Francis was bold, and she

(27:21):
jumped out of the vehicle at great personal risk while
it was moving, flagged down a car, which happened to
be a cop car. So that's pretty lucky because he
definitely wasn't on, like, you know, a well traveled road,
so the fact that the next car driving by was
a cop was very, very lucky for Francis. Richard was
arrested that night and he was sent to a mental hospital,

(27:43):
from which he escaped and went on a four day
crime spree. Now, this spree included breaking into the home
of a woman and beating her on the head with
a fire poker, breaking into an animal shelter, and stealing
a shotgun, which I guess if it's animal control it
would make sense they would have it in there, but
also kind of weird. He also attempted to kidnap another
woman named Hazel Frost, who also escaped by diving out

(28:06):
of his car. And also I read somewhere that she
shot at him with a gun as he was like
getting away, which is incredible. I read she was like
a bartender. I don't know if that's true, but I
like that part of the story so I wanted to
add it. And finally, he broke into the home of
yet another woman and then waited for her outside of
her house for her to come home so that he

(28:27):
could attack her. I'm not sure how he's found out
That night but the cops got there and arrested him
while he hid in the bushes, So absolutely fucking terrifying.
That's some like BTK shit, you know, like lying in wait,
like who knows what he was going to do this woman. Now,
for these crimes, he was sentenced to one to twenty
five years. This is one of those things. He's like

(28:50):
a very seventies sentence, like somewhere between one and twenty
five years. We saw that with Bill Bonnen he had
a sentence that was I think one to fifteen so
fucking crazy. And Richard here was paroled five years later.
They just straight up let him out after all the
shit I just told you about. He then got a

(29:11):
girlfriend somehow and went on yet another crime spree, including
robbing a woman of six thousand dollars after breaking into
her home and I guess not kidnapping her, but holding
her hostage. So we're seeing a little bit more of
a pattern emerging here. He ended up getting arrested and
was giving given sixteen years, of which he served eight
before being released just five months before Paully's abduction and

(29:36):
subsequent murder. So that's a little bit about this motherfucker,
Like he just he just fucking sucks. Now, back at
Dana's on November twenty eighth, police start to put things
together and they figure out who the man was that night.
They also noted the date October first, so their wheels
are turning. They also then actually look at his criminal record,

(29:58):
which they should have fucking done that night, looking for warrants.
And now they're worried because this seemed to be their guy,
and damn if they didn't let him go that night, right,
So they're realizing, oh, we fucked up. They go to
find Richard and luckily he had a warrant out for
his arrest as he was picked up for drunk driving
on October nineteenth, only eighteen days after Polly was taken. Now, somehow,

(30:20):
at this time he still wasn't in prison for this,
but he did have a warrant and that was enough
to bring him in. I had mentioned Richard's sister or
maybe just brother in law, where he bought his car
while he was also staying with her at this time,
and so police just went and picked him up at
her place in Yukiyah, which is like northern California. They

(30:42):
took him in for the warrant, where the FBI then
confronted him about Polly's disappearance. He of course immediately denied
any involvement, but police had also they noticed that he
shaved off his beard to like change the way he looked,
which is always a little suspicious. Now, during the search
of Polly's home after she went missing, police did find
a palm print on the wall near her door. This

(31:05):
wasn't a smoking gun by any means, but it was
enough that if matched to Richard, it could lead to
him being charged, which was great because they had it.
Two days after he was arrested, police confronted him with
the palm print, along with proof that it did in
fact match his hand. A very shaken Richard decided to
call one of the detectives with whom he had something

(31:26):
of a rapport, and told him, quote, I fucked up
big time. He then admitted to killing Polly and agreed
to take the police to her body. Before they went
to get her body, police interviewed Richard for hours, and
during this time he gave them a lot of information,
but I don't know how much of it I believe. Now.

(31:47):
This is kind of going back to what I was
talking about, the timeline. The missed opportunities where they let
him go that night. I'm going to tell you what
he said, and then you'll kind of understand why I
say missed opportunity. But then I'm going to talk about
what I really think happened. So he said that the
night of October first, he'd gone to Petaluma to find
his mother, which is weird. He couldn't find her. But

(32:11):
when he wasn't able to find her, he went to
a park and drank beer and smoked a joint that
could have had PCP on it. Now, I think this
is the very first thing he said to absolve himself
of some of the guilt, you know, kind of take
him away from the behavior. He is a victim. PCP
makes people act in crazy ways, so would already you know,
quote unquote excuse his behavior. He also said that after

(32:34):
smoking the joint, this is gonna shock anybody who knows
anything about true crime. He doesn't remember too much of
the night. Of course, he said he remembers going into
a house to rob it. Remember he says that, to
rob it, and hearing voices in one of the rooms.
He was standing outside the room when a girl came out.
This is obviously Polly. Richard said he remembers tying the

(32:58):
girls up, but the next thing he remembered was driving
with Polly in the car, because of course he doesn't
remember the horrific shit he did that night, just like
he didn't remember the myriad other assaults, robberies and other
things he did his whole life. And it would also
make sense if he's so fucked up on this supposed
PCP that he didn't take anything from the house, even

(33:19):
though according to him, the whole point of going was
to rob it, and all he ended up taking was
a little girl and her stockings. So he then said,
you know, he remembered a little bit about being in
the car with Polly, including that she had said her
bindings were too tight and her hands were going numb.
And I want to point out that he didn't say
that he loosened the bindings. He just remembers her asking

(33:39):
him to This guy's a fucking monster. He also said
that she repeatedly asked to go home. He said, you know,
he drove around for a little while until he became
stuck on Pithian Road, which is where Dana lived. He
said that while he was trying to get his car unstuck,
he hid Polly in the trees, leaving her alone. He
also said that he untied her before doing this, So

(34:05):
he left this twelve year old who wanted to get
away from him more than anything, alone and untied, just
on a hillside, surrounded by trees, while he then gets
tries to unstick his car. You know, he's one hundred
feet away from her with cops, and she doesn't come out.

(34:25):
This is the story. This is like the official story.
He said, I just left her on the hillside, you know,
left her sitting in the grass, went and tried to
unstick my car, talked to the cops. He then said
that after the cops helped him unstick his car, he
drove away and came back thirty minutes later, and she

(34:48):
was still there waiting for him. Now, this is so
much bullshit. It's unreal how ridiculous the story is. But
he didn't. He never changed. He was like, no, that's
what happened. That's what happened. She sat and waited for me.
It's like an unrestrained kidnapping victim who's twelve years old,
who can hear police, sat there and let them leave

(35:13):
and then watched or heard you drive away, continued to
wait for you. No fucking way anyway, This is what
he says. So he said he then went back and
got Polly, got her in the car, took her to
a gas station to pee, and that after she went pee,
which also there's no record of this. Nobody ever saw
them at a gas station. There's no proof of this
at all. He said after she went pee, he decided

(35:36):
that he had to kill her because he didn't want
to go back to prison for kidnapping. And it's like,
this is such a pot like the only thing he
did in that house was take the little girl, So
why why would he take her if he was trying
to rob the house, Like it's obvious that his whole plan,
in my opinion, was to take her and probably sexually

(35:58):
assault her and kill her. The fact that he asked
who lives here, the fact that he's walking around the house,
the fact that when other witnesses saw him, he hid
his face, like this man knows what he was doing.
He tried to play this off like, oh, I got high,
randomly tried to rob a house and ended up with
a little girl and didn't know what to do, and
It's like, who on earth is going to believe that?

(36:21):
And there's other things that this man does later on
that let you know what like an immature idiot he is,
and it makes sense that he would think he would
get away with that story. I'm sorry, the story makes
me really angry, so I'm getting like real sassy, but
I just I fucking hate this. So he then said,
you know, I strangled her to death, presumably in his car,
I don't really know. He then made sure to note

(36:44):
that he dragged her by her neck into the bushes somewhere. So, again,
according to his story, if police had arrested him in
that moment when they saw him, Polly would still be alive,
which is absolutely not true in my opinion. Why would
he have been in leaves and sweating profusely if he
had simply walked her into the woods, you know, like

(37:06):
maybe he's trying to get his car out of the ditch,
but you don't get leaves in your hair doing that.
It's just insane to me that this is what he
tried to say. Anyway, I think what happened is that
he took her out onto this private property strangled her
to death there After, either raping her or attempting to
rape her, and we'll get into that. And as he

(37:27):
was leaving, his car was stuck. He's panicking, sweating, freaking
out because he's gonna get caught, and then somehow doesn't
get fucking caught. And I think when he says he
went back to get her, he isn't lying. He drove
away and came back thirty minutes later and got her
body because now he knew he was tied to that scene,
and he couldn't leave her body there because that would

(37:49):
tie him to her murder, and they had his name.
So it's like he's telling this weird partial truth, like
he did go back and get her, but he didn't
go back and get her while she was alive, went
back and got her body. And that's truly what I think.
This is also partially supported by the fact that they
found this man's adult sweatshirt, they found the silky cloth,

(38:14):
they found you know, the condom, they found her stockings.
Why would all of those things just be discarded on
that property in that way if he then took her
somewhere else and strangled her, right, it doesn't make sense anyway.
It's just like ridiculous that this is what this guy

(38:36):
is trying to peddle. So after admitting to strangling to death,
Richard took police to her body, which was fifty miles
from Dana's property, so another thing showing he was just
trying to get her away from the location where he
was found, you know, because he didn't want to get caught.
Although he did admit to murdering Polly, he denied sexually
assaulting her or even attempting to do so, despite there

(38:59):
being a condom nearby. Police told him they found semen
on her body and his response was, at least it
wasn't in her. During this interview, it became abundantly clear
that Richard was very concerned with being accused of raping
Polly because he was afraid of what would happen to
him while in prison, because nobody likes a child rapist

(39:21):
and prison is not safe for them, and I kind
of love that. At no point did he admit to
sexually assaulting Polly, but his past record indicated it was
a strong possibility that he had tried to do so,
And when police told him there was semen, it wasn't
a lie. They just it wasn't for sure, they sort of,
I mean it was kind of a lie. They said,

(39:42):
you know, we think we or they said we found
semen on her. At the time, I believe they maybe
thought that they had, but they certainly hadn't proven it.
But who cares. Like they threw a hail Mary and
he still denied it. When her body was found, it
was partially mummified and partially decomposed, and it also showed
signs of animal activity. I'm not going to get into

(40:05):
the details. There's one hundred podcasts that say this part,
I'm not going to do it. So it was bad
and they couldn't determine the cause of death, so they
kind of had to go with what Richard said, at
least in that regard. But they did test the items found.
Not a lot turned up to prove sexual assault. The
condom had no semen in it, didn't have fingerprints on it,
and it wasn't found exactly at the crime scene, more

(40:26):
like nearby, which I still think that he attempted to
assault her. I think that was the whole point of
what he did, but they couldn't really prove it. However,
the cloth found on Polly's body was also found in
Richard's car, as were two of Pollie's hairs. Some of
Richard's hair was found in Polly's room, and there were
fibers on Polly's body that matched his car, so all

(40:50):
in all, this is a slam dunk case. They also
said like the silky hood that they found at the
supposed not crimes scene was probably what he used to
strangle her. As for the sexual assault, which was less
of a slam dunk, the prosecution wanted to prove this
so that he would get the death sentence, but it
was a little bit harder. So prosecutors told a story
wherein Richard had scouted Polly's home before abducting her, which

(41:13):
I believe completely feasible, you know, given he'd already been
caught lying in wait previously, so he definitely stakes out
homes of women. They said he had planned to take
her all along, as evidenced by the lack of missing
items in the house, which yes, one hundred percent agree.
And while he said he was only there for money,
you know, no, maney, your valuables were touched only Polly

(41:33):
and her stockings, which is fucking horrifying. And also, like, dude,
you could have if you wanted to sell the story.
You could have at least taken something, but I'm fucking
glad he didn't. The guy's a moron. As for the
sexual assault, prosecutors said that even if he wasn't able
to do so, he had attempted to rape Polly, hence
the condom and the possible semen on her body. And
the reason they couldn't prove it with semen is it

(41:54):
was just too degraded because she had been in the
you know, exposed to the elements for too long, that
there was some sort of fluid on her and when
put under you know, particular light, it did shine, so
they thought it definitely could be Also, you know, he
has this pattern, he has a way of behaving criminally,
why would this be any different now. In the end,

(42:15):
he was found guilty on all charges, including I think
like attempted sexual assault, and given a sentence of death.
Before he was sentenced, he was able to make a
statement this this just like this like boils my blood.
Like the first time I read this, I cheered up
because I just felt horrible for this family. And now

(42:37):
I'm just in a place of like I hate him
so much. So before when he before he was sentenced,
he got to make this statement. He used, oh sorry,
before he was sentenced. When he was found guilty, he
used the opportunity to flip off the news cameras in
the courtroom, as well as wink at them and blow
them a kiss, which is just like cool guy behavior,

(43:00):
like he's so cool, he's so edgy. It's like you're
a fucking child murderer, Like fuck you, I'm so sorry.
I'm getting really heated here anyway, just very immature behavior.
When it came time for him to make a statement,
this dog turd of a human did nothing to show
even a hint of remorse. Instead, he complained that he

(43:23):
was quote tricked into confessing that his Miranda rights weren't
read to him, and that just before killing Polly, this
is the part that boils my blood and makes me
want to like rip all my hair out. He said
that she said to him, quote, just don't do me

(43:43):
like my dad, implying that her father sexually assaulted her.
And I mean, you, guys, I'm against the death penalty,
but sometimes these people make it real hard to keep
that opinion. The judge actually said something similar while and
seeing Richard. He said mister Davis, this is always a
traumatic and emotional decision for a judge. You've made it

(44:06):
very easy today by your conduct. And like I hear
that Paully's father, Mark attempted to attack Richard after he
made the statement, but was held back by guards who
probably felt really terrible having to stop him. I bet
they would have loved to let him go. Meanwhile, Paully's
grandmother sobbed in the background. I mean, this guy, he's
just hell bent on ruining these people's lives, and for

(44:29):
no fucking reason, for no reason, it's so insane to me.
Richard Alan Davis is still on death row to this
day and will likely die there despite multiple appeals, all
of which have been denied. Even though he has not
won any appeals and he hasn't been taken off of
death row, he very likely won't be put to death,

(44:50):
as Gavin Newsom has put a moratorium on the death
penalty in California since I believe twenty nineteen, and the
last prisoner to be executed in California was in two
tho thousand and six, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, which
is why you shouldn't have actors be governors but whatever.
So Mark Class is very upset by this. He really

(45:10):
does not like the moratorium. He is very very much
for like, no, I don't want to say revenge, like
I can't speak for him, but he's very much he
wants this man to be put to death. He wants
to see it, he wants to be there. And I
can't fault him for that. I mean, it's his little
girl and she died a really terrible tragic death, so

(45:31):
I do not fault him. Speaking of Mark, he did
put some of his anger and some of his energy
into good. He set up the poly Class Foundation, which
is formally Class Kids, which helps a lot of It
helps keep kids safe essentially, like broadly, they do things
like fingerprinting kids, you know, setting up databases, providing support

(45:53):
for families of missing children. It's a very like like
wonderful organization. Does also do a lot of work with
legislation to try to help keep kids safe. But a
lot of people see it as being too conservative in
its approach and what it stands for, which I think
is tied to the death penalty. You know, Mark is
very like pro that, and I think the organization sort

(46:15):
of reflects his feelings. Now, as we all know, or
maybe not in California and actually across the nation in
many states. Now there's something called the three strikes and
You're out law. And now this law was passed in
March of nineteen ninety four in large part because of
what happened to Paulie. So politicians saw this cute let's

(46:36):
just say, a middle class white girl get abducted from
her home by a man with a very lengthy criminal record,
and they jumped on the opportunity to turn this into
a political situation. When Paully's younger sister, Annie was only
six years old, she was invited to meet President Bill

(46:56):
Clinton and was interviewed on television, and I think she
later kind of indicated that she was sort of like
fed lines in a way. She told him she was
afraid of a man coming in and taking her from
her room. She said that she booby trapped her room
with bells and ropes to keep people out. And she
looked Bill Clinton in the face and asked him, quote,
do you think I'm going to grow up? Or do

(47:17):
you think I'm going to get to grow up? So
this cute scared younger sister of you know, this horrible crime.
You know, victim of a crime was the perfect like
poster child for these laws, this three strikes in your outlaw,
and this was used to put criminals away. And she,

(47:39):
I'm going to tell you right now, she does not
love it. She has come out in her later life.
I mean she's like younger than me, but in her
life I think she's like maybe thirty something at this point,
she has come out and been against the death penalty
and been four prison reform. And we'll talk about why.
So essentially, the three strikes law is meant to be
for It was to be for violent crimes. So you

(48:02):
do three violent felonies by the third one year twenty
five to life right the other the problem, the problem
is when they put this law together, they slipped in
another word there serious or violent crimes. So if you're
convicted of three serious felonies, even if they're nonviolent, you
can be put to put away for life. Now, as

(48:24):
you can imagine, especially it was co signed by Joe Biden,
you can imagine, especially back then, this was used to
disproportionately jail and put in prison in prison people of color,
people you know who, the working poor people who didn't
have money, people who weren't from good areas. I mean,

(48:46):
it was a racist, classiest bill from the start, and
it was absolutely used that way. Now, very unfortunately, versions
of this law, which you know also doubled the sentence
length for second strike, were adopted in twenty three other states,
and in September of nineteen ninety four, Congress passed the

(49:06):
notorious Federal Crime Bill, which is the one that Joe
Biden sponsored, and that has a three strikes sentencing provision.
So it's just nationwide like racism, classism. It's like, oh,
they're violent crimes or just like what we consider serious.
Do you know how many people are in prison for
the rest of their lives for smoking weed. It's unreal

(49:28):
now about this law, Annie said, quote A lot of
people see this history as something that is separate from themselves,
but in our case, we have a really deep connection
to this crisis. It's such an injustice that the sum
of Paully's life was turned into this harm for others.
The story that was told about Paully was used to
pass these incredibly terrible laws, and it always felt like

(49:49):
a distortion of the truth. Now, Annie and her sister
Jess who, like I said, maybe wasn't blood related to Paully,
but definitely grew up as her sister. They contacted the
ACLU in California in twenty nineteen and said, you know,
we want to fight against these laws that were passing
our family's names, like, how can we help repeal it.
What they've done is they've started foundations. You can look

(50:10):
them up online. They started speaking publicly about these laws.
They started talking about how harmful these are to people.
And I want to take this. I'm pretty sure they've
talked about this as well, but I want to take
this a step further and say that we are starting
a very dangerous trend of privatizing prisons in our nation.
Now we are a capitalist nation. If anybody knows anything

(50:32):
about this, that means that if something is privatized, it
is for profit. The only way that a capitalist society
can grow, or a business within a capitalist society can grow,
is by continuing to add to their numbers. So private
prisons want more prisoners. So we are allowing our country

(50:55):
to be taken over by private prisons who have a
in more and more people going to prison every year.
And then we have laws like this that come out
and make it so so easy to imprison people for
the rest of their lives for things that shouldn't maybe
even be illegal, nonviolent drug crimes, things of that nature.

(51:16):
It's absolutely terrifying, and I just want to say that
while I absolutely see where Mark Class is coming from,
I am so proud. I don't know them, but I'm
so proud of Paully's sisters for taking the stand that
they are because they were so hurt by this. They
were so hurt by this murder. They were so scared,

(51:38):
their family was destroyed, but they chose to see through
that and understand the broader implications of our justice system
and how their sister's name was being used to wrong people.
I don't know that anybody, myself included, realized how much
of my personality was going to come out in this case.

(51:59):
But this case, this is really emotional. It's personal to
me because I grew up in the area. At this time,
she's only two years older than me, and I've seen
the way that privatizing prisons, that these three strikes laws
have really harmed the greater community. And we're all members
of this community, you know, all of us, and I
understand that on its face, it seems like a good idea, like, yeah,

(52:20):
Richard Allen Davis shouldn't have been out of prison at
that time. It's horrifying that he was. But what it
comes down to is, instead of continuing to focus on,
you know, putting people in prison who are actually dangers,
like dangers to children, we're using it to put away
like drug users. We're using it to put away people
that really shouldn't be a part of that conversation. And

(52:42):
it's really a bummer. So anyway, that's kind of the case.
It's a really sad, horrible case. You know. I feel
for the family. It's just terrible. But I wanted to
mention Polly's sisters. I wanted to mention this other side
of this story because I feel like so many of

(53:05):
the people that cover this case they kind of end
it on this very like pro conservative prison forward kind
of note. And I don't want to do that because
I think that her sisters would know what she wanted,
and I really appreciate what they're doing with their voices.
And so if anybody's interested in learning more about it,

(53:26):
you can just look up Jess and Annie Nicol and
I see hol they're doing. Really great work. They're still
in California, you know, and they're honoring their sister's life
and legacy in a way that I think is really beautiful.
So that's the story, guys. Thanks everybody for listening. Sorry
I got so like hyped up. The story really gets
to me. I'm glad I did it, although I mean

(53:46):
all these stories are terrible. Let's wash this out of
our brains now and come back next week for another case,
another conversation. Thank you everybody for listening. It's been really
great watching the numbers grow, being in you know, podcast communities,
and having people give me really great feedback. I appreciate
you guys so much. I really you know, it's a

(54:07):
lot of work, but it's so so worth it. I'm
so excited to be doing this. So thanks everybody for listening.
Please like, rate, review, share with your friends and family,
Tell everybody you know to come listen to True Crime California.
And until next week, everybody, stay safe.