A Modern Bluebeard

When I was a child I remember hearing the Germanic tale of 'Bluebeard' a wealthy and powerful nobleman, who marries woman after woman, afterwards killing each bride after collecting their dowries.

Bluebeard ~ The Serial Wife Killer

 

In the original versions of the tale, the motive for these killings isn't exactly as clear cut in those early folk versions. But when I heard the story as a kid, it was clearly for the money, and other cultures also have stories on the same theme e.g. the French story entitled The White Dove.

However the modern day Bluebeard archetype invariably has a motive .... and its always the insurance money. I was reminded of this fact while watching a true crime TV show, which dwelt on the case of the would be Bluebeard killer David Richard Davis.

David Richard Davis - Wife Killer

He wooed and married 25 yr old Shannon Mohr in a lightening eight week love campaign in the summer of 1979, after posing as a 35-year-old millionaire, who was an orphan (and who owned farms all over the country), and who had recently lost his fiancée in a car wreck. In fact he really laid it on very thick, by giving a back story that he had also been a Vietnam veteran who had been injured in the Vietnam war, a football player for the University of Michigan (who had played in the Rose Bowl), and then graduated with a psychology degree. Basically proving that the bigger the lie, the less likely people are to question it.

Shannon Mohr

Just two days after returning from their honeymoon, Davis took out $220,000 in insurance on the new Mrs Davis. She must have had some suspicion that he had lied to some degree, because they moved to Davis's small 100-acre farm in Hillsdale County, Michigan, where he grew corn and soya beans and made little income (he had to do contract work for others). 

To make ends meet, she was then forced to find a nursing job at the nearby Flower Hospital in Sylvania, and her salary was the only real income in the 'millionaire' Davis household. What he told her to explain the missing wealth, or why she had to work was never divulged, but its believed that she was probably too embarrassed to admit to her parents that he had lied to her about his wealth.

On July 23, 1980, just 10 months after their marriage, Davis turned up at a neighbours and claimed that while on a horse ride, Shannon's horse had bolted and she had fallen off and hit her head on a random rock. The neighbour rushed to the field with Davis, and found Shannon alive, but unconscious, near a rock (the only one in the field, and that shouldn't have even been there, as it was a cleared field) that was stained with blood.

After a frantic drive by the neighbour to the hospital, she was sadly pronounced dead on arrival. Davis tried to have her cremated immediately, but her Catholic parents objected and insisted that she be buried back home in Toledo, and Davis gave in. To add insult to their injury, he told them that he couldn’t afford to pay for a funeral for Shannon, since his money was tied up in farm properties, and that he had no insurance on his wife ... all lies of course. Even more shocking was that 'orphan' Davis's mother and step-father turned up at the funeral. Shannon's grieving parents later found that his real father was also still alive.

Almost immediately after the funeral, Davis went on a trip to Florida with a female companion, and asked his neighbour, Dick Britton, to forward his mail as he was waiting for copies of Shannon’s death certificate for insurance purposes. Despite his odd behaviour, and proven lies, the local police and authorities accepted the death as accidental and closed the file.

But her parents knew that something was very wrong and started petitioning to get the police to reopen investigations, and Mr Britton, the neighbour who had attended the 'accident' scene also approached the police with his own doubts about events ... he had never quite forgotten the fact that there was only one, out of place rock, and it was exactly where Shannon had fallen. The authorities, now under pressure, exhumed and autopsied Shannon in August 1980. A severe gash on her head was discovered, along with various bruises on her face, hand, and arm, but again they didn't reopen the case.

However, Billy Bowles, a Detroit Free Press reporter had heard of the case, and did some digging in to it, and immediately uncovered the web of lies and deceit that Mr David Richard Davis had woven to get Shannon to marry him. He (obviously) wasn't a millionaire (a fact Shannon must have become aware of when she had to start working), and he had only ever owned the small holding that they had moved to. Also, everything else was a lie, as he had never played college football (in the Rose Bowl or anywhere else), hadn’t graduated college, and had never served in Vietnam, and of course, as Shannon's family had already discovered, he wasn't an orphan.

But, it was what else he hadn't mentioned, that really raised eyebrows ... Davis had never thought to tell Shannon that he had been married once before, and had two daughters, as well as a court order, filed against him ever contacting his ex-wife, because of the physical abuse allegations she had made.

In fact Mr Davis had only made ends meet before marrying Shannon, by making a number of highly suspicious insurance and workman's compensation claims (fires and an 'accident') .... and although he hadn't ever finished college, he had taken advanced courses in pharmacology at the University of Michigan. So Mr Bowles approached the police with his suspicions that Shannon may have been drugged before having been hit with the rock. This time, with the threat of a press article looming, the state finally reopened Shannon’s case.

By now, Davis had sold up his farm, cashed in some smaller insurance polices that he had also taken out on Shannon, and was awaiting the autopsy report to claim his larger insurance prize. He had bought a boat and was in the Bahamas with a new girlfriend.

A third autopsy took place, and a Swedish lab found high concentrations of succinylcholine in Shannon’s body. This is a drug, primarily used in horse operations, that paralyses every muscle in the body, but the heart, and makes it impossible to breathe without use of a ventilator, so it kills by suffocation while the victim is conscious. The investigators worked out that Davis had killed her with two injections of the drug, before hitting her with the rock to make it look like a riding accident.

In October of 1981, the Michigan grand jury returned with a first-degree murder warrant. Authorities moved in to arrest Dave Davis on Christmas of 1981 in Port au Prince, Haiti, but he had already fled, leaving behind his sail-boat .... he simply disappeared for eight years, until a TV show 'Unsolved Mysteries', featured Mr Davis's disappearance on November 29, 1987. Two people recognised Davis (who had apparently used the name Rip Bell ... yes really!), but they didn't know his current whereabouts .... but when the show was repeated for the first time in 1988, a female viewer claimed he was now going by the name of David Myer Bell, and was living in American Samoa.

On January 6, 1989 he was arrested by the FBI at Tafuna International Airport in Pago Pago where he was a pilot (he had earned his FAA certification while on the run), for Pacific Island Airways and was married to a 23 year old Samoan wife, whilst living in a tin-roofed shack in Tafuna. He had also let himself go physically to such an extent, that by the time of his trial, many witnesses failed to identify him in the courtroom.

So where is the bluebeard link apart from the life insurance claim? 

Well at his trial, it was proved that Davis had been wife-shopping before meeting Shannon, asking a series of women to marry him only weeks after introductions. A Kay Kendall said that she had been briefly engaged to Davis, and that he had told her he was a CIA agent, but she got suspicious and soon backed out of their engagement. Another woman, Barbara Matthews had also apparently been a candidate for marriage/murder, and she had also believed that Davis worked for the government.

Immediately after Shannon's death, he had told Jeanne Hohlman, a woman he had been seeing before getting married, that he was a CIA agent, and had been assigned to protect Shannon, and that as his“mission” was now over, they could resume their dating relationship. While Cheryl Nicholaidis testified that following Shannon’s funeral, Davis had told her “you’re the most beautiful woman in my life now.” ... and it was pretty obvious that he was apparently planning another marriage and murder for money. But he was apparently spooked off this plan, when Shannon's body was exhumed for the first time. This had caused him to flee the USA.

At trial he was found guilty of Shannon's murder in very short order, and the Judge, Harvey Moes, said that Shannon’s terrifying death by suffocation was “more despicable than a contract murder,” and sentenced Davis to life without parole. Davis appealed in 2001 with claims that the Swedish lab tests were 'junk science', but he lost the appeal, and on November 9, 2014, David Richard Davis, developed a neuromuscular disease, and died in a prison healthcare facility at the age of 70. 

The bulk of the insurance payout that he had killed for, originally some $300,000, that he hadn't been able to get access to, went to her parents.