Even Freud Would Be Baffled: Man Murders Mother… and Then…

BRADENTON, FLORIDA – One year ago Tuesday, detectives with the Bradenton Police Department were faced with the scene of a double slaying that they were quick to call “strange.”

Authorities say Clifford Davis, then 19, killed his 43-year-old mother, Stephanie Ann Davis, and his 77-year-old grandfather, Joel C. Hill, in the Wares Creek apartment Clifford shared with his mother.

Medical tests showed that after killing his mother, Davis had sex with her corpse.

The bodies were discovered the morning of Dec. 5, 2005.

Nancy Hill, Joel Hill’s wife and Stephanie Davis’ mother, went to the apartment after she became concerned when she hadn’t heard from her husband.

After entering the apartment with a key, she saw her husband, his ankles bound by tape, lying on the floor. That’s when she called 911.

Clifford Davis was found at a friend’s home and arrested later that day.

Detectives believe Hill and Stephanie Davis were killed Dec. 4. Stephanie Davis reportedly talked to a close friend at 5:30 p.m. the day before.

The family killings rocked a community still in shock after Richard E. Henderson Jr., then 20, confessed to killing his mother, father, grandmother and younger brother Nov. 24, Thanksgiving day, near Myakka City. Their bodies were found three days later.

Prosecutors announced shortly after the crimes that they would seek the death penalty for both Davis and Henderson.

Both have received a Positron Emission Tomography brain scans. The process is a popular technique in neuroscience research, which shows levels of brain activity using a color-coded brain map.

Davis’ scan found abnormalities and brain-pocketed damage. A professional will review the areas of damage and determine what kind of effects it might have on a person, Davis said last week in an interview with the Bradenton Herald.

Troubled past

As a teenager in Texas, Davis was under the care of a psychiatrist after he attempted suicide, which he said was connected to a love interest.

At the age of 14, Davis made what authorities called “terrorist threats,” while at Clear Lake High School near Houston.

“I popped off at the mouth that ‘I didn’t need this place and should just blow it up,’ ” he told the Bradenton Herald from the Manatee County jail. “They took it seriously, being shortly after the Columbine incident.”

He was placed on probation, which he violated during a heated argument with his father.

“I got so mad I slammed my bedroom door off the hinges,” Davis said.

Davis said his relationship with his father, who is 68, was “sketchy at best.”

“There was a very large generation breach,” he said.

While growing up, Davis didn’t spend much time with his mother, with the exception of holidays.

“She moved around a lot, doing various things,” he said.

When he moved to Bradenton, where both his maternal grandparents and mother lived, he was 17.

His mother worked a lot, which blocked the development of a close relationship, he said.

There were also times she partied a lot, leaving him to play the responsible role, according to Davis.

“She tried to be my friend instead of my mom,” he said. “She wanted to party and get drunk instead of being responsible.”

Although he lived with his grandparents, Nancy and Joel Hill, for some time, he didn’t get to establish much of a relationship with them either, he said.

“The two of them got along very well,” he said. “We had our differences. They were a lot like my father, being around the same ages. They expected different things and were built into a different way of thinking. We had a couple arguments, but I knew it was for a reason and I was living with them so I needed to take that into consideration.”

‘Extremely bored’

Davis is incarcerated at the Manatee County jail without bond, facing two counts of first-degree murder and one count of abuse on a dead human body. In addition, he faces one count of robbery, one count of robbery with a deadly weapon and one count of grand theft with a firearm.

The death-penalty trial isn’t expected begin before March, with a status conference scheduled for February. The conference will determine whether Judge Janette Dunnigan is ready to preside over the case. Dunnigan is slated to undergo death penalty training, a common practice for circuit court judges sitting on capital murder cases.

Records show that after police say he strangled his mother to death, Clifford Davis went shopping at DeSoto Square mall just before noon Dec. 4, purchasing a pendant, knife and studded bracelet at Spencer’s. Officials say they believe during that time period Davis also bought a knife at Simplicity, another shop at the mall.

Sometime between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m., Davis showed up at the apartment of Kalynn Kindred and Janell St. Louis in the 600 block of 60th Avenue Terrace West. Kindred said she hadn’t seen Davis in months, but he gave the women and Kindred’s infant son the items he had purchased at Spencer’s.

He also told the girls he would be returning with a truck to get them and he would take them shopping because he was leaving for Texas, where he used to live and his father still resides, Kindred said.

From 2:43 p.m. to 3:23 p.m., Davis attempted to call more than 10 escort services.

“I had nothing better to do,” he said in the interview with the Bradenton Herald. “I was extremely bored.”

Soon after the attempts, records show Davis called Dependable Taxi at 3:23 p.m. and requested a ride. Davis was taken to a corner near his grandparents’ mobile home in Fair Lane Acres, off of Fifth Street West and 49th Avenue West.

Startling discovery

Earlier reports stated Davis lured his grandfather to the Wares Creek residence, at which time he tried to choke him, but was unsuccessful due to Joel Hill’s pacemaker. Davis then used a knife to stab him once in the chest and the left eye. Officials said he then cut his grandfather’s throat, according to Bradenton Herald archives.

Davis was seen from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. that night outside of the Wares Creek home by a woman who lived in another apartment on the same property.

At 9 p.m. Davis returned to Kindred and St. Louis’ apartment, this time with his grandfather’s 2000 Dodge truck, two guns and ammunition, authorities said.

Before a trip to Wal-Mart and Publix, the three stopped at the Wares Creek apartment between 10 and 11:30 p.m., and Davis went in to retrieve something, officials said. Kindred and St. Louis stayed in the vehicle and said Davis only cracked the door when he went in.

An employee of a cleaning company and a neighbor verified seeing the vehicle during that time period.

The next stop was Wal-Mart on Cortez Road, where Kindred said Davis wrote a check for $246 for the women’s groceries. Next they went back to the women’s apartment to bandage a cut on Davis’ finger. The three then went to the Wal-Mart on State Road 70.

At this point Davis hinted he wanted to call an escort service and needed cash, officials said. They traveled to the Bayshore Gardens Plaza Publix to use the ATM at 1:21 a.m. Dec. 5, but were unsuccessful. They then revisited the Wal-Mart on State Road 70 where they tried to buy $900 worth of items, but the store wouldn’t accept Davis’ identification card, officials said. But Kindred did make a $2 to $3 purchase prior to that attempt at 3:24 a.m. with Stephanie Davis’ credit card and was successful, according to records. The group then returned to the women’s apartment.

Within the next few hour the trio went to sleep.

Just after 9 a.m., Nancy Hill, who declined to speak with The Bradenton Herald, entered her daughter’s residence with a key and found her husband dead and his truck missing.

Clifford Davis was missing, too.

Potential victims

Davis reportedly returned to DeSoto Square mall at noon and purchased all-black clothing from Hot Topic, a place he often went to get tattoos.

One of his tattoos, is a “rood,” which Davis said is an ancient cross symbolizing a change in life, tied to an older video game, “Vagrant Story,” he used to play.

The tattoo, which stretches from the nape of his neck to his shoulder blades, symbolizes a change of direction to Davis.

“I had moved away from my father, was going to be an adult soon and had many options available to me,” he said. “The pathways could lead to anywhere.”

He also has a tattoo on each of his inner wrists – one of an ankh, an Egyptian cross that represents both physical and eternal life, and the other is a tribal symbol.

Using cell phone records and an interview with the taxi driver, police located Davis at Kindred and St. Louis’ apartment between 3 and 3:30 p.m. Dec. 5.

Davis told the two detectives who found him in the apartment kitchen that if they would have found him even a minute later, “he would have had the gun loaded and that he would have got on the floor in the living room and shot us when we walked by because he knew we would be looking for him because we knew that he was tall,” a detective wrote in a report.

Later in the week, detectives searched for three people whom Davis said he wanted “to harm and act out his fantasies,” according to records.

One of the people had started a tattoo on Davis, but stopped after Davis began flirting with his girlfriend.

The other people were believed to have been the girlfriend and a former roommate of the couple.

Missed opportunities

Authorities say Davis confessed to killing his mother and grandfather.

But he declined to discuss the slayings during the interview with The Bradenton Herald.

He did, however, say that he wished he could have gone to his mother’s and grandfather’s funerals.

“I would have liked to at least paid tribute,” he said.

Looking back over the past year, there are certain things Davis said he misses.

“I don’t have anyone in my life. No parent to ask advice. A birthday party doesn’t happen in here. It sucks. The loss of life is never great. It doesn’t do anything for anyone, even in war.”

Members of his remaining family have tried to visit him, but Davis declined.

“I needed to deal with some issues and didn’t want them to see me in this state,” he said.

Before being incarcerated, Davis was spending a lot of time exercising in hopes of joining the Army.

“I had taken all the aptitude tests to see what kind of jobs I was able to do,” he said. “All I had to do was get in shape.”

Prior to his interest in the Army, Davis attended Keiser College for six months, taking computer programming courses. He worked short stints at Wal-Mart, The Longboat Key Club and Pirates Cove.

A member of Davis’ public defense team, Steven Schafer, and lead prosecutor Art Brown declined to comment.

Courtesy Bradenton Herald