The Murder of Mia Zapata

The Killing of the Lead Singer of the Punk Rock Band The Gits Goes Cold For a Decade Before Justice is Served

Mia performing (photo source)

"Mia Zapata was an extraordinary human being.  She was a beloved friend, a gifted songwriter, musician, visual artist and performer. . . .  We prefer to remember her friendship, talent, humor, and the incredible art and music she left to the world." - Andy Kessler, Matt Dresdner, and Steve Moriarty of The Gits 

In the 1990s, Seattle was Ground Zero for the grunge genre of rock.  Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney and Candlebox were all leading the music movement from underground to prominence, but none was as big or as influential as Nirvana, who (the band and lead singer, Kurt Cobain) perfectly captured the sound, essence and angst of a generation.  Diverse and trendy, Seattle was the perfect city to spawn these bands, as well as many others who were verging on mainstream success.

The Gits was one of those bands.  Formed in 1986 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, they took their name from a Monty Python skit and soon became known for the fiery performances of Andy Kessler on guitar, Matt Dresdner on bass, Steve Moriarty on drums and Mia Zapata singing. 

Brought up in Kentucky, Mia, the third child and second daughter in her family, was a born performer and from her youth, she seemed to know that she was destined for a musical future.  She began singing at an early age, often astounding listeners with her throaty voice, reminiscent of Janis Joplin, one of Mia's idols.  By the time she was nine, she had taught herself how to play the piano and the guitar.  As a teen, she kept a notebook into which she wrote poetry that eventually became song lyrics.    

Although her family was considered well off, Mia cared little for material things and focused instead on creative expression. Antioch, therefore, was a perfect college for her and one that not only enabled her to express herself but allowed her to find a musical community that she quickly affiliated herself with.  

Two years after the Gits formed, they recorded and self-released an unofficial debut album.  The following year, in 1989, they moved to Seattle to join the growing underground rock movement.  

The band moved into an abandoned house in the Capitol Hill district they dubbed "The Rathouse," where they would live and rehearse.  When she wasn't performing, Mia washed dishes at a local bar in order to make ends meet, until the Gits made it big.  The band played many venues in the Seattle area and quickly gained a devout fan following, particularly with the punk rock community.  Mia's magnetic personality and energy pushed her to the forefront of the Gits.    

The Gits embarked on a successful international tour in 1990, without support of a record label.  Two years later, in 1992, they released their first official album independently.  

It seemed that 1993 might finally bring the Gits the mainstream success they craved.  By that summer, they were recording their second album and were being seriously courted by various mainstream labels.  

The Gits (photo source)

July of 1993

On July 4, the band returned to Seattle from a successful tour of the West Coast.  Steve Moriarity would later recall that Mia had not wanted to go back to Seattle, that she feared something bad was going to happen there.  It seemed an innocuous comment at the time and one that Dresdner associated with Robert Jenkins, Mia's former boyfriend who had recently broken up with her.  Their stay wouldn't be long before they would again leave for another tour, this one scheduled to start in New York.  

On Tuesday, July 6, Mia rose around 11 a.m. and had lunch with her father, Richard, who drove in from Yakima, where he had relocated with his second wife.  Father and daughter routinely had these types of get-togethers once or twice a month when Mia was in Seattle.  Richard did not like or approve of Mia's career choice or her lifestyle.  He worried about her safety in a city like Seattle, where she lived and moved among a sometimes drug-riddled scene and was often out late at night.  These get-togethers allowed him to both keep his bond with Mia tight and to check up on her.   

Following lunch at a local Indian restaurant, Mia and Richard visited Tower Records and the Seattle Art Museum before Richard dropped Mia off back at her apartment around 3 p.m., promising to call her in a few days.  At that time, only one of her roommates was home.   Richard later remembered that Mia had looked satisfied, content and at ease with herself.  

Mia walked the dog and did some laundry after Richard departed before heading to Capitol Hill, for the Pancreas Production Studio, around 6:30, where she rehearsed with Hells Smells, the band that her ex, Robert Jenkins, was a member of and where she often sang back-up vocals.  She and Jenkins had, at one time, discussed marriage and while he had apparently moved on and had begun dating someone else, Mia was said to still be hurting over the break-up and was stung by the fact that he was dating.

(photo source)

She rehearsed for a good two hours before walking over to the Comet Tavern, a block away at E. Pike and 10th Avenue.  The Comet was a local watering hole and well known as a Gits hangout, so Mia was comfortable there and with the people who frequented it.  That evening, friends and fellow musicians from the band Seven Year Bitch were drinking and remembering their former guitarist, Stefanie Sargent, who had died 13 months earlier after a night of heavy drinking and shooting up heroin.  There was some dispute as to whether Mia had been drinking on and off all day or had begun drinking once she arrived at the Comet but by the time she left that night, she was extremely intoxicated.    

Mia was no stranger to drugs, having been known to smoke pot and even to have dabbled in the harder stuff but her vice of choice was alcohol.  Her drinking had gotten so bad at one point that the other members of the Gits had threatened to kick her out of the band unless she eased up.  She had complied during the tour, not just controlling her consumption but foregoing alcohol completely.   Whether it was returning to the familiar stomping grounds of Seattle and her interactions with Robert Jenkins or remembering Stefanie Sargent or the cusp that the Gits were on, headed for success, Mia fell off the wagon on July 6.   Her friends at the Comet later recalled that she seemed agitated after the rehearsal session with Jenkins and barely let her glass get empty before having another drink.  At one point she even left the Comet briefly to walk to a nearby pizza joint, where she purchased alcohol to drink before returning to the tavern.  

While at the Comet, Mia reportedly made a phone call from the bar's payphone but it's unknown who she called.  She did not mention it to her friends, and no one came forward to say that they had spoken to her or received a call from her.  In all likelihood, she was trying to track down Jenkins.  

Mia left the Comet around 1 a.m., reportedly saying that she was going to try and locate Jenkins.  She retraced her steps from earlier, walking east on Pike for about a block, back to the Pancreas Production Studios.  Finding the studio empty and no trace of Jenkins, she went to the third floor of the adjoining Winston Apartments, where a friend of hers, "T.V.," lived.  T.V. was also a member of Jenkins' band and remembered that Mia was not only very drunk but angry because she couldn't locate Jenkins and wanted to talk to him about their relationship.  

Mia spent about an hour at T.V.'s apartment before deciding to leave.  T.V. tried to convince Mia to stay and sleep it off but Mia rejected the offer and set out, once again on foot.  Depending on the source, Mia was either going in search of Jenkins, was going to walk to a nearby gas station where she could catch a cab home or walk to a cab company to get a cab there.  (She had no driver's license and would often take cabs around the city.)  When she left T.V.'s apartment, Mia was wearing a black Gits hooded sweatshirt, cut-off jeans, black boots and carried a Walkman.    

For nearly an hour and a half, Mia's whereabouts were unknown.

  

At 3:20 a.m., just over two miles southeast from the Winston Apartments, a prostitute made the terrible find of a body.  Located on 24th Avenue between South Yesler and South Washington, the body was discovered in the street, next to the curb and close to a nearby field.  The sex worker immediately notified authorities.  The Seattle Fire Department arrived on the scene at 3:30 a.m. and found a young female lying on the pavement, her ankles crossed, and her arms spread in a Christ-like pose.  The sweatshirt she wore was pulled up underneath her arms with the hood tied tightly around her face and knotted under her throat.  Her underwear and torn bra were found stuffed in the pocket of her jeans.  The paramedics noted abrasions on the exposed parts of her body, including alongside her nipples.   She had no pulse and did not appear to be breathing but the paramedics did not believe she had been lying there long and attempted resuscitation, which proved unsuccessful.  She was pronounced dead and sent to the morgue as a Jane Doe, to await the medical examiner, Seattle's 33rd murder victim of 1993.    

While the fire department and paramedics had no idea who the woman was, the medical examiner had no doubt.  A fan of the underground music scene, he had attended many of The Gits' concerts and immediately recognized the body of Mia Zapata on his table.  

He determined that Mia had been strangled with a ligature and believed it to be the drawstring of her sweatshirt.  Although the strangulation had been what had killed her, she had endured a horrific beating to her abdominal area which had not only lacerated her liver but, in the medical examiner's opinion, would have resulted in her death had she not been strangled.  

Mia also had injuries to her vaginal and anal area consistent with rape, although no semen was detected.  The M.E. thought the abrasions along her nipples were caused by teeth and had taken swabs from the area.  The swabs, once analyzed, detected the presence of saliva.   As DNA testing was still in its infancy, the M.E. had the foresight to preserve the swabs for future use.   

Investigators worked hard to withhold the fact that Mia had been raped - something that did not sit well with her friends, or women in the Seattle area.  The investigators also withheld the details of Mia's torn bra, which was missing a cup, in the event a suspect was ever identified.   They wanted details that only her killer could provide.  

They felt that Mia had been walking along with her headset on, listening to music, and was ambushed.

The Investigation

The area where Mia had been discovered was well known as an area used by sex workers to conduct their business and at first, it was considered that Mia might have been a victim of the-then still unidentified Green River Killer.  However, since Mia was not a sex worker nor someone who lived on the street, as many of the Green River Killer's victims were, that idea was discounted.  

The area was thoroughly searched by detectives and nothing was uncovered that was connected to Mia.  Everything appeared to indicate that she had been killed elsewhere and where she was found was a dump site.  

Robert Jenkins, as Mia's ex, was the logical prime suspect, a theory that was firmed up by some of her friends' beliefs that Jenkins had to have been involved.  The day after Mia was killed, one of her friends had stopped by the rehearsal studio Mia had visited in her unsuccessful quest to find Jenkins and discovered a Gits demo tape and Mia's personal microphone.  The friend claimed that Mia rarely left her microphone out of her sight.  

Jenkins, however, had a solid alibi and the police felt he had no real reason to harm Mia.  They found no evidence that a crime had taken place in the studio and assumed that Mia had left the tape and mic there after searching for Jenkins or had even returned after leaving T.V.'s apartment and had simply forgotten to take them with her. 

Police received a tip from a man who reported hearing a terrifying scream in the early morning hours of July 7.  It had bothered him so much that he had gone outside to see what was going on but had discovered nothing in the darkness.  He was three miles from where Mia's body was found.   

Another tip came in from a woman who stated that there had been a group of people outside the back of the Pancreas Production Studios on Pike Street doing cocaine.  Her statement could not be verified and the people she alleged to have seen were never located.  

As Mia did not have a driver's license and would make liberal use of the cabs around Seattle, police worked on a theory that had a cab driver as their perpetrator.  Her friends said that Mia would never have gotten into the vehicle of someone she didn't know, but she would have gotten into a cab.  She knew a great many of the cab drivers around the city and would have had no reason to fear getting into their vehicles. Police were aware that cabbies would not only be familiar with the less traveled, or even deserted, areas of town but their vehicles could be moving crime locations with which to assault and kill.    

Detectives checked with the local cabbies, as well as the cab companies, and none of them reported picking Mia up in the early morning of July 7 or even seeing her.  

The investigation turned to Mia's friends, bandmates and the Seattle music scene.  Detectives wondered if an obsessed fan or a jealous musician could have set out to harm her.  Although Mia had traveled in circles with some questionable people and was known to be extremely outspoken, no one had an unkind word to say about her, seeing her almost as the glue that held their community together.  

In August, the same month that she would have turned 28, a group of Mia's friends, frustrated that the police seemed to be making little headway, hired a private investigator.  The money to pay the P.I. came from a few concerts the surviving Gits put on, with Joan Jett stepping into Mia's shoes, as well as donations from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, Hootie and the Blowfish and Jett and her band, the Blackhearts.  The funds would last more than two years after which Leigh Hearon, the P.I., would continue to work Mia's case on her own time and on her own dime.  

In 1994, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts released their album "Pure and Simple" with the moving track "Go Home," which was dedicated to Mia.  Jett joined The Gits in 1995 for live shows, using the moniker "Evil Stig," which was "Gits Live" spelled backwards.  

In 1996, the benefit album "Home Alive: The Art of Self-Defense" was released, featuring Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, among others, with the proceeds to benefit Home Alive, a self-defense program for women was that founded and funded, in part, by members of Seven Year Bitch, Joan Jett and singer Kathleen Hannah following Mia's murder.  

"I want more than anything for them to be able to find out what happened so there could be some resolution for everybody, because everyone's been working real hard trying to find the person who did this."  - Joan Jett

Time marched on.  Mia's death had affected the tightknit community she had been part of.  Some left Seattle, never to return.  Kurt Cobain's suicide nine months after Mia's murder only seemed to solidify the opinion that the grunge rock scene was an unhealthy, dangerous one.  

Fliers that Mia's friends had put up requesting information on her case remained at the Comet Tavern and were still up and about Seattle years after her murder.  Even in death, Mia Zapata remainder a powerful force in Seattle.  

Jesus Mezquia (photo source)

A Killer Is Identified

In 2001, Seattle police reopened Mia's case.  DNA evidence had come a long way since July of 1993 and the decision was made to pull the small saliva sample out of deep freeze and submit it for testing to try and obtain a DNA sample. 

The Washington State Crime Lab was able to pull two profiles, Mia's and an unknown male.  

That same year, although Washington State would have had no idea how it would impact them, Florida passed a new law that expanded their DNA database to include felons who had been convicted of burglary and robbery.  

In June of 2002, the DNA profile of the unknown male was entered into the FBI database.  No matches or hits were made at that time, but Detectives Richard Gagnon and Gregg Mixsell, the cold case detectives assigned to Mia's case, hoped that with the profile now in the system, they would eventually get a hit.  

They wouldn't have to wait long.  

In December, Gagnon and Mixsell were notified there had been a match.    The hit came not from the Seattle area but Miami, Florida and a 48-year-old fisherman by the name of Jesus Mezquia.  Mezquia was a Cuban native who had come to the United States in the Mariel boatlift of 1980 and his criminal record in the States had started almost as soon as he set foot in the country.  Over the years he had accumulated acts of kidnapping, false imprisonment, indecent exposure, aggravated battery (both of a spouse and of a pregnant woman), assault to commit rape, and robbery across multiple states.  His most recent conviction had been for possession of burglary tools, and he completed probation for that conviction in December.  As a condition of his probation, Mezquia provided two cheek swabs that would be entered into the DNA database, resulting in the match that lab techs said was one in 1.5 trillion.  

On January 10, 2003, Gagnon and Mixsell arrested Jesus Mezquia in Miami.  Mezquia denied knowing Mia or having any kind of sexual contact with her.  

Detectives found that since Mezquia had come to the United States, he had lived in Florida and California - and also Washington, where he had relocated in 1992 to be with a girlfriend who moved to the area.  The couple first lived in the Beacon Hill neighborhood with the girlfriend's mother before moving into an apartment in the Leschi area, not far from the Comet Tavern - and the area where Mia's body had been discarded.  Their relationship had been tempestuous and abusive, as had all of Mezquia's past and future relationships with women.  The girlfriend had told neighbors of Mezquia's abusive treatment of her and wanting to distance herself from him.  She and Mezquia had broken up in the summer of 1993 but continued to live together.  She had been out of town on the night of July 6-7, 1993, the night Mia was murdered.  Eventually, she got a car for Mezquia and he moved to southern California for a time before returning to Florida. 

Incredulously, five weeks after Mia was murdered, a young woman walking along 10th Avenue near Union Street, only a block from the Comet Tavern, noticed a car following her.  She assumed the driver wanted to offer her a ride - until she realized the driver was masturbating.  She wrote down the license plate number and quickly made her escape.  When Seattle police checked the license number, they found it was for Jesus Mezquia.  Law enforcement never made a connection between Mezquia's indecent exposure and Mia Zapata.  

(photo source)

"After 11 years of waiting for this moment, it is hard to believe some semblance of justice may be achieved."  - Steve Moriarty, former Gits drummer

Mezquia was extradited to Seattle three months after his arrest and arraigned.  Opening arguments in his trial began on Monday, March 15, 2004.  Following the month-long trial in which Mezquia did not testify in his own defense, the jury found him guilty of first-degree felony murder.  Based on the aggravating circumstances of deliberate cruelty and finding the injuries Mia suffered "extreme," Judge Sharon Armstrong sentenced Mezquia to 37 years. 

In 2005, Mezquia filed an appeal against his sentence, arguing in part that he should have been allowed to present other suspects, including Mia's former boyfriend, Robert Jenkins and a cab driver by the name of Scott MacFarlane, as part of his defense.  He also argued that DNA evidence obtained from Florida should not have been admitted in a Washington case.  

In Mezquia's brief, he sought to present evidence that Jenkins had actually committed the murder, citing that Mia had been searching for Jenkins the night of her death, Jenkins had called Mia's apartment the following morning and when told by one of her roommates that she was in the shower, responded that it probably wasn't Mia.  Mezquia also claimed that a friend of Mia's had said that Jenkins had sometimes gone "crazy" in the past and had attacked Mia.   

The appeals court denied his request on Jenkins, stating that there was no physical evidence connecting Jenkins to the scene (a DNA test had excluded him) and Mezquia had not offered evidence that clearly pointed to Jenkins. 

Mezquia additionally argued that Scott MacFarlane committed the murder.  A cab driver, MacFarlane claimed to have had a relationship with Mia and was driving a cab in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle on the night she was killed.  A year after her death, MacFarlane apparently made some odd and incriminating statements about her murder. 

The trial court had agreed that there had been sufficient evidence to introduce MacFarlane.  However, during the initial trial, after the prosecution had rested its case, a woman by the name of Valentina Dececco came foward to allege that Mezquia assaulted her six months after Mia's homicide.  She did not report the incident at the time it happened but when she saw Mezquia's photograph in the newspaper after he was charged, she called the police.  According to Dececco, in January of 1994 around 4:30 a.m., she was leaving her downtown Seattle apartment for a morning jog when Mezquia approached her.  He knocked her to her knees and Dececco felt "pain at her throat."  She managed to rise to her feet and ran away.  Just a short time later, upon returning to her apartment building, she saw Mezquia standing at one corner of her building, staring at her and masturbating.  

The prosecution had notified the trial court that it intended to introduce this evidence in rebuttal, but it would only come in if the defense raised the issue of identity.  If the defense chose to present its "other suspect" evidence related to MacFarlane, the prosecution would be able to call Dececco in rebuttal.  The defense chose not to introduce the MacFarlane evidence and Dececco never testified in court. 

Mezquia argued to the appeals court that the trial court erred in ruling that evidence of the prior assault on Dececco was admissible.  The appeals court disagreed, stating that there had been no offer of proof of what MacFarlane's testimony would have been nor was there any evidence that the state would have indeed chosen to present Dececco's testimony. 

With regard to Mezquia's argument of the Florida DNA sample, the appeals court denied the motion to suppress that evidence, citing that a cheek swab is a "minimally invasive search," the DNA was obtained lawfully and there was no inappropriate cooperation between Washington and Florida.

Mezquia's final appeals argument was that his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial was violated when the trial court imposed an "exceptional sentence" without submission to the jury.  On this point, the appeals court sided with Mezquia, finding that the jury did not determine whether the prosecution proved the factual basis for the exceptional sentence beyond a reasonable doubt. 

While Mezquia's conviction was affirmed, his sentence was reversed, and the case was remanded for sentencing. 

Jesus Mezquia convicted again, in front of Mia's portrait
(photo source)

 

On January 29, 2009, after inexplicably waiving his right to a jury trial, Judge Sharon Armstrong once against sentenced Jesus Mezquia for raping and murdering Mia Zapata, this time for 36 years.  

(photo source)

Mia's Legacy

Prosecutors believed that in the early morning hours of July 7, 1993, with his girlfriend out of town and the relationship on its last legs, the violent and simmering Mezquia went on the prowl for a victim.  With no evidence that he and Mia had ever met before, it is believed that Mezquia drove by the Winston Apartments/Pancreas Production Studios as Mia was leaving on foot around 2 a.m. and followed her until he could attack her, possibly very much like Valentina Dececco was attacked.  With her headphones on, she would not have heard him approaching and would not have been aware of his presence until it was too late.  In her intoxicated state, she had no real chance against the six-foot-four, 235-pound Mezquia.  Prosecutors theorized that Mezquia beat Mia and placed her in the back seat of his car or beat her after putting her in the car.  The sexual assault happened either in his car or his apartment.  He then strangled her with the cord of her hooded sweatshirt, dumped her body in an area well-known for its sex and drug trafficking, and went home. 

Jesus Mezquia maintained his innocence in the rape and murder of Mia from the time he was arrested until he died in a Washington prison on January 21, 2021.  He went to his grave having never spoken about the attack on Mia nor taking any responsibility for his actions, despite what the DNA evidence revealed.    

Home Again, the self-defense program started in Mia's memory, still runs today.  
 

"Her legacy should be beautiful, strong punk-rock music coming from a woman's perspective, because that's who she was."  - Joan Jett

(photo source)

Sources:

CNN (March 9, 2004)  Ten Years On, Trial Begins for Man Accused of Punk Icon's Murder.  

Front Page Detectives (August 13, 2021).  The Brutal Slaying of a Rock Star on the Rise.

Grunge (March 11, 2021).  The Tragic Murder of Punk Rock Singer Mia Zapata. 

Musicoholics (2021)  That One Fateful Night: What Happened to Mia Zapata? 

Rolling Stone (May 23, 2021).  Mia Zapata's Killer Has Died. 

The Seattle Times (August 23, 1998). Who Murdered Mia Zapata? 

The Seattle Times (January 30, 2009).  Singer's Killer Sentenced to 36 Years in Prison Again.     

State v. Mezquia, Court of Appeals, Washington Division 1, No. 54246-0-1. 

The Stranger (January 16, 2003).  Finally, DNA Evidence Leads to Arrest of Mia Zapata's Suspected Killer.

Unsolved Mysteries (2021).  Mia Zapata. 

  

Two Officers Down in El Segundo: The Cold Case Murders of Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis

 

Fingerprints and a Signature Crack a 45 Year Old Case 

It was Sunday night, July 21, 1957 in Hawthorne, California.  Bob Dewar was 17 years old and had attended a summer party with three friends earlier in the evening.  It was before midnight when the quartet, consisting of two boys and two girls, decided to make a stop at the local Lover's Lane on Van Ness Avenue.  After parking, Bob rolled the window of the 1949 Ford down - and that's when the barrel of a gun poked through.  A voice told him "This is a robbery."  Bob initially thought someone was pulling a prank on them but it was all too real.   All four handed over watches, jewelry and cash.

Armed with a flashlight, the robber had also brought surgical tape which he used to cover the teenagers' eyes, before forcing them to undress and then binding them.  One of the girls, only 15 years old, was raped by the man after he moved from the driver's side of the car to the passenger side.

Bob later remembered that the man asked them to get out of the car and then said, "I think I'm going to kill you.  I want you to march out into the field."  The girls were crying and Bob figured it was the end of the line for all of them - when they heard the car door close and the Ford take off.  The four were left, bound and taped, naked and helpless but alive.  Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis would not be so lucky.

The Crimes

El Segundo in the 1950s was a quiet, safe and well-to-do suburb of Los Angeles.  The night shift usually consisted of traffic stops of impatient or intoxicated people.  Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis were working the graveyard shift, sitting in their patrol car at the intersection of Sepulveda and Rosecrans.  Phillips was 28 years old, a veteran who served in the Air Force during the Korean War and was known to be an excellent marksman.  He had been with the department for nearly three years.  He was married and had three children.  Curtis was 25 years old, a rookie who had just graduated from the academy in Riverside and had been in uniform only two months.  He was married and had two children.

It was somewhere between 1:15 a.m. and 1:20 a.m. on Monday, July 22, 1957 when the two officers, with Curtis at the wheel, noticed the 1949 Ford pull up to the intersection and stop at the red light before then proceeding through it.  Neither Phillips nor Curtis knew about the robbery, assault and rape that had taken place in the hour before when they decided to pull the car over.

Phillips had gotten out of the patrol car and pulled his citation book out, as another patrol car with Officers James Gilbert (Milton Curtis' partner until two weeks previous) and Charlie Porter drove by.  Seeing Phillips writing in his citation book and Curtis behind the wheel and phoning it in, it appeared to be a routine traffic stop with no need for any kind of backup and so Gilbert and Porter drove on.  They had no idea that other than their killer, they would be the last people to see Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis alive.

The call that Curtis made, requesting that the plates on the Ford be run came through around 1:28 or 1:29 a.m.  Only seconds later came a call over the radio from Officer Phillips requesting an ambulance and saying that he and his partner had been shot.  Porter and Gilbert raced back to the scene, where they found Phillips, mortally wounded on the ground beside the patrol car, with three gunshots in his back.  His service revolver lay next to him, emptied of bullets.  His citation book was on the hood of the police car, with only the date filled in.  Phillips died before he could get to the hospital.  Curtis, still in the driver's seat of the patrol car, was dead from three gunshot wounds: one to the upper right chest, one to the right side, and one to his right forearm.  Both men had been shot with .22 caliber short rounds.  The killer was gone.

A woman by the name of Margaret Osburn had been heading home from work on westbound Rosecrans Avenue and had stopped for the signal.  She noted the patrol car that Phillips and Curtis were sitting in and also noted a Ford pull up in the left lane next to her, briefly stop for the light and then run it.  She saw the officers take off in pursuit of the Ford and once the light had changed, she proceeded through the intersection, continuing on Rosecrans.  She saw the police car, with the Ford, pulled off the road at Rosecrans and Palm.  She recalled seeing the driver standing outside the car and one of the officers shining a flashlight into his face.  Osburn said the driver was taller than the officer, with "husky" shoulders.  She estimated him to be around 25 years old, with either curly blonde or light brown hair and wearing a red plaid shirt with the tailed pulled out of, rather than tucked into, his pants.  

Nineteen-year-old Alan King had also been traveling on Rosecrans that night and had seen the patrol car, with its lights and siren on, coming up behind him.  He had pulled off to the side and watched the car speed by him.  Having just finished his shift at a local gas station, he continued on to his home on Poinsettia, around the corner from where Phillips and Curtis pulled the Ford over at Rosecrans and Palm.  King later claimed to have seen from the back porch of his house Phillips and Curtis forcibly remove the driver from the vehicle, where there was a brief "struggle," before the driver quieted down and Curtis returned to the patrol vehicle and talked into the radio mic.  King then went inside, running back outside when he heard gunshots.  He saw the driver get into the Ford and "speed down Rosecrans." 

The police car of the fallen officers, with Officer Phillips' citation book on the hood
(photo source) 

The Investigation

An immediate BOLO went out for the Ford, starting what would be the greatest manhunt in California's history at the time.  The four teenagers from Hawthorne were discovered on the street and they, along with Alan King, Margaret Osburn, and Officers Gilbert and Porter, helped to develop a composite sketch of the killer.  

With hundreds of officers from El Segundo and the neighboring communities scouring the area, the Ford was found fairly quickly, roughly four blocks west of the crime scene.  It had been struck with three gunshots, thanks to Richard Phillips.  A bullet hole was noticeable in the trunk.,  Two bullet holes were easily visible in the back window.  Two rounds were recovered inside the vehicle, leading investigators to hope that the killer had been struck by one of the bullets.  Two latent lifts (fingerprints) were taken from the steering wheel; they were later determined to be left thumb prints.  The skirts belonging to the teenaged girls that had been assaulted several hours earlier were found on the back seat and floorboard.

Once again, the killer was gone.

Milton Curtis with his wife and children (photo source)

The fallen officers were buried on July 26, side by side, at Inglewood Park Cemetery (in April of 1958, Richard Phillips' remains would be moved to Spokane, Washington).  The hunt for their killer went on.   Several promising leads surfaced, as well as a multitude of tips, but led nowhere.  In 1958, the case was featured in True Detective magazine with a plea for public help to solve the murders.  Two years later, in 1960, a man pulling up weeds at his home on 33rd Street in Manhattan Beach discovered a watch and a chrome-plated revolver; the location was a mile from the crime scene.  A second watch was found after a search.  Both watches had been taken from the Hawthorne teens in July of 1957 by the killer that had since obtained the nickname of "The Lover's Lane Bandit."  It was theorized that after he dumped the bullet-riddled car, he had run through the yards off Rosecrans, dropping not only the items he had stolen, but the murder weapon as well. 

Richard Phillips' widow and children (photo source)

Having been on and in the ground for three years, no prints were able to be lifted off the nine-shot Harrington & Richardson .22 revolver.  Ballistics tests could only say that the weapon was "consistent" with the bullets that had killed Officers Phillips and Curtis; the poor condition of the gun made it impossible to be more conclusive than that.  The gun was able to be traced to a Sears store in Shreveport, Louisiana and had been purchased for $29.95 on June 18, 1957 by a man using the name of G.D. Wilson and a Miami address (the address turned out to be fictional).  Assuming the man was not from Shreveport, investigators began searching nearby motels and hit pay dirt at a YMCA, where a George D. Wilson of Miami had checked in on June 16, 1957.  Detectives would not know it then but the accompanying signature would eventually help to break the case four decades later.

The Shreveport connection also confirmed the investigators' suspicions that their killer was not from California.  The Hawthorne teens had mentioned that he had an accent, possibly southern, and that he had been almost polite in the midst of the assault.   

The police worked hard to track down every George D. Wilson in the United States but ultimately realized the name was a fake.  The case went cold once again.  Although the case moved on to the back burner as the years ticked by, Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis were not forgotten.

A Break in the Case

In September of 2002, the El Segundo Police Department received a phone call from a female claiming to have information on the case.   She said that her uncle had bragged that he was responsible for killing the two cops in El Segundo.  With a new suspect, the fingerprints lifted back in 1957 were sent to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime lab, along with information on the suspect.  Specialists Dale Falcon and Don Keir found that the new suspect was not a match to the 1957 fingerprints - but they decided to use modern science in an attempt to solve the case.  Following the terror attacks of 9/11, the FBI had created a nationwide database of fingerprints containing convicted criminals from every state in the country.  Falcon and Keir cleaned up the original fingerprints, digitized them and loaded them into the system.  And just like that, they got a match.

A young Gerald Mason (photo source) 

Gerald Fiton Mason had been born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1934 into a family with four other sons.  He served time in the Army in the early 1950s before being honorably discharged.  In 1954, he had spent a semester at the University of South Carolina, where he studied business.  He had his first brush with the law in April of 1956 when he was arrested for burglary and larceny.  Sentenced to three years incarceration, it was suspended to one and Mason served eight months.  

In 1960, Mason married his wife Betty and the couple went on to have two daughters and grandchildren.  He had owned and operated several service stations in the Columbia area before retiring in the 1990s.  

Investigators were stunned that the match was not to a career criminal.  In fact, his record did not have a violent offense on it.  Further searches revealed that Mason had not gotten so much as a parking ticket after April of 1956.  

The old YMCA records were pulled out and the handwriting for George F. Wilson was examined by forensic expert Paul Edholme who found the Wilson sample "identical" to samples of Gerald Mason's handwriting.  Armed with the fingerprint match and Edholme's assertion that he was "99.9% certain" that Mason and Wilson were one in the same, California detectives felt assured they had their man.  

Arrest and Conviction

Mason had been put under surveillance in December of 2002 as detectives waited to make their move.  On his last day of freedom (although he wouldn't have known that), Tuesday, January 28, 2003, he played golf.  On Wednesday, January 29, around 7 a.m., he was arrested at his home.  The large number of officers present for his arrest reportedly shocked Mason and he inquired where they were from.  Told they were from the El Segundo Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, Mason replied, "You're homicide detectives?  I think I need a lawyer."   He was then informed he was being arrested for the murder of two police officers in 1957, to which Mason said, "My god, you're here for that?  That happened so long ago.  I can't believe you're bothering me with that."    

Booking Mason into the local jail while awaiting a request for extradition, a decades-long question was at long last answered.  Officer Richard Phillips, after being shot three times in the back, lying on the ground and dying, had managed to pull his service revolver out and fire six shots at the Ford as it sped away.  Three of those shots hit its target.  Finding only two rounds in the car, investigators hoped against hope that Phillips had managed to wound his killer.  Detectives in 2003 noted a bullet-shaped scar on Mason's back, one he eventually admitted came from a bullet fired by Phillips.  Richard Phillips had marked him for life and nearly 46 years later, the scar remained there to prove it.   

Mason in court (photo source) 

Following a judicial hearing in South Carolina, Mason agreed to return to Los Angeles to answer for his crimes.  Officer Howard Speaks, who had lifted the fingerprint from the Ford that eventually was linked to Mason, attended the hearing, remarking, "I've been waiting for this date a long time, but the wait was worth it."   Officer Charlie Porter, who along with his partner James Gilbert, had seen not only Mason but Phillips and Curtis in their last moments alive, said "You can run, but you cannot hide.  Kill an officer and we'll get you, no matter how long it takes." 

Under a plea deal, rape, robbery and kidnapping charges were dropped against the 69-year-old Mason, who pleaded guilty to murdering Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis.  According to his attorney, he did so to spare "the victims" the pain of testifying.  He had told detectives that he had been intoxicated on the night of July 21-22, 1957 and had stumbled across the teenagers in Hawthorne by chance and didn't remember why exactly he had assaulted them and raped one of the girls.  When the police officers had pulled him over in El Segundo, just east of Hawthorne, for running the red light, he figured they would soon find out he was in a stolen car and what he had done.  So "If I don't get them, they're gonna get me."  According to Mason, when "the officer turned away from me, I shot both officers, got back in the car and drove away."  (That officer was likely Phillips, who had put his citation book on the hood of his vehicle to write the ticket.)  

Also in the courtroom were children of Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis.  Mason asked them for forgiveness for the killings, saying "Please believe I am still looking for ways to express my remorse for the horror I have caused."    Carolyn Phillips, Richard Phillips' daughter, told him "Your cowardly act shattered our lives forever . . . there is no way to describe the emptiness and anguish we have felt all our lives without Dad . . . we cannot and will not forgive you."  

Keith Curtis, Milton Curtis' son, said, "Gerald Mason, your family may be shocked but my family has been devastated."    

On March 24, 2003, a tearful Gerald Mason was sentenced to life in prison, a sentence he was allowed to serve in South Carolina so that he could be close to his family.  "At no other time in my life have I intentionally harmed anyone," he said.  "I don't know why I did this."   One of his daughters stated that even though she couldn't possibly describe the range of emotions their family had gone through as a result of his crimes, she couldn't have asked for a better father.  

Mason was turned down for parole in 2009, with a recommendation of the maximum 15-year wait before the next parole hearing.  He died on January 22, 2017, nine days before his 84th birthday.  He had served 14 years for his crimes.  

The final resting places of Officers Curtis and Phillips

Sources:

CBS (March 25, 2003). 1957 Cop Killer Asks Forgiveness.

CBS News (March 15, 2005).  The Ghosts of El Segundo.  

Criminally Intrigued (July 29, 2017).  El Segundo Cop Killing Cold Case.

GoUpstate.com (February 10, 2003).  Neighbors Wonder How Friend Could Be in Jail.

The Los Angeles Times (March 25, 2003).  Man Sentenced to Life in Two 1957 Police Murders.

The Los Angeles Times (July 22, 2007).  Death in El Segundo.  

Murderpedia (2021).  Gerald Mason.

The New York Times (January 30, 2003).  After 45 Years, an Arrest in the Killing of 2 Officers.

Wikipedia. (2021).  Gerald Mason.

   

Marrying for Murder: Shannon Mohr and Dave Davis

Shannon Mohr and Dave Davis on their wedding day, September 24, 1979
(photo: au.news.yahoo.com)

Like many a good little Catholic girl, as a child Shannon Mohr thought she wanted to be a nun when she grew up.  A sweet and caring child who was both a daddy’s girl and a mommy’s best friend, she eventually decided that she wanted to marry and have a family.  Nursing suited her caring and compassionate nature and it was a natural fit for her. 

Shannon as a nurse (photo: imdb.com) 

By the summer of 1979, Shannon was 24 years old and while happy with her career choice, she was feeling down over her personal life.  She had recently broken up with a firefighter from her Toledo, Ohio hometown and was not looking forward to attending a friend’s August 4 wedding solo.  Her mother Lucille encouraged her to go, suggesting that perhaps she might meet someone at the wedding.  It was sadly prophetic for Shannon.

At the wedding, she met 35-year-old Dave Davis, a self-described millionaire who told Shannon he was an orphan who had recently lost his fiancée in a car wreck.  He said he owned farms all over the country.  He also claimed to be a Vietnam veteran who had been injured in the war, a football player for the University of Michigan who had played in the Rose Bowl and then graduated with a psychology degree.  Davis was so charismatic, he not only swept Shannon off her feet but charmed her parents, Lucille and Robert, as well.

David Richard Davis 
(photo: findagrave.com)

On September 1, 1979, Shannon turned 25.  Twenty-three days later, she and Dave eloped to Las Vegas, only eight weeks after meeting.  Eight days after the wedding, and two days after returning from their honeymoon, $220,000 in insurance was taken out on the new Mrs. Davis. 

Shannon left Toledo and moved to Dave’s 100-acre farm in Hillsdale County, Michigan, where he grew corn and soybeans.  She was able to find a nursing job at the nearby Flower Hospital in Sylvania.  Shannon’s salary was the only real income in the Davis household; it’s unknown what excuse Dave gave her for the lack of cash flow. 

On July 23, 1980, only 10 months into the marriage, Shannon and Dave took their Tennessee walking horses to visit their neighbor, Dick Britton.  Dave helped Dick repair some machinery and then he and Shannon trotted off for home.  Not long afterward, Dave returned alone, telling Dick that Shannon’s mare had bolted and she had hit her head on a rock.  Rushing back to the scene with Dave, Dick found Shannon lying on the ground on her back, shoes off and with her blouse unbuttoned.  A rock nearby – the only one in the area – was stained with blood.  Rushed to the nearest emergency room, Shannon was pronounced dead on arrival.      

When Lucille and Robert Mohr arrived at the hospital, they found Dave Davis in tears and with scratches on his arm.  Although apparently grief-stricken, he told his wife’s shocked parents that he wanted Shannon’s body cremated.  The Mohrs disagreed, wanting Shannon to buried back home in Toledo and Dave consented. 

The Davis farm in Michigan (photo: forensicfilesnow.com)

He told Lucille and Robert that he couldn’t afford to pay for a funeral for Shannon since his money was tied up in farm properties and he had no insurance on his wife.   

The Mohrs paid for Shannon’s funeral and were shocked when his mother and stepfather showed up for the service.  They would soon learn more about their son-in-law.  Not only was his mother still alive but so was his father. 

Shortly after Shannon’s death, Lucille and Robert were horrified to discover that Dave left for a Florida trip with a woman.  Dave would later claim that he needed to get away and regroup after his wife’s sudden death and the woman was just a friend who had invited herself along.  While he was gone, he asked Dick Britton to forward his mail – he needed copies of Shannon’s death certificate for insurance purposes.

To the local authorities, Shannon’s death looked like an accident and they closed the case. 

The Mohrs, however, weren’t so sure.  They began a letter-writing campaign to ask Michigan’s attorney general to look further into Shannon’s case.  Dick Britton also asked the authorities to take a new look at the evidence against Davis, his neighbor. 

In August of 1980, a month after Shannon died, her body was exhumed and autopsied.  A severe gash on her head was discovered, along with various bruises on her face, hand, and arm. 

Despite this, the case remained closed.

A Detroit Free Press reporter by the name of Billy Bowles entered the picture.  Having heard of the case, he began poking around David Davis.  He found that Davis wasn’t a millionaire; in fact, the only farm property he owned was the one in Hillsdale County, Michigan.  Furthermore, he hadn’t played college football (in the Rose Bowl or anywhere else), hadn’t graduated college and had never served in Vietnam.  Davis had also never told Shannon that he had been married once before and was the father of two daughters.  Dave’s first wife had resided with him on the same farm property that would be Shannon’s final home until she filed for a court protective order, alleging physical abuse. 

Bowles also discovered that Davis had profited from two separate fire incidents on his farm, as well as a workers’ compensation case in which he sustained a suspicious injury while working for a car manufacturer. 

He also found out that Davis had taken advanced courses in pharmacology at the University of Michigan.  Sharing the information with investigators, the investigators began to wonder if Davis could have used some type of drug to cause Shannon’s death.  The state finally reopened Shannon’s case.

Davis, meanwhile, sold his Michigan property and collected several smaller life insurance policies on Shannon’s life that netted him five figures.  Currently living in the Bahamas on a boat with a new girlfriend, he was awaiting the results of a second autopsy on Shannon in order to collect from the larger life insurance policies.

Shannon, during the last year of her life
(photo: au.news.yahoo.com)

It would take a third autopsy before investigators sent their findings out to a Swedish lab who found high concentrations of succinylcholine in Shannon’s body.  Succinylcholine is a medication used to cause short-term paralysis, or a skeletal muscular relaxant, during anesthesia.  It paralyzes every muscle but the heart and makes it impossible to breathe without use of a ventilator.  The drug is often used for medical procedures with horses. 

With this information, investigators determined that Davis gave Shannon two injections of succinylcholine and it was the succinylcholine that caused her death and not the blow to the head. 

The Attorney General’s office took the evidence before a grand jury in October of 1981.  The 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 sailboat.   

(Photo: shannonmohrmovie.blogspot.com)

Eight long years would pass by for Shannon’s parents, who wanted justice for their daughter.  Salvation came in the form of the television show Unsolved Mysteries.  Hosted by Robert Stack, the documentary-style show, complete with reenactments, featured cold cases, unsolved crimes, missing persons, and the paranormal.  The first episode, part of a seven-episode special, premiered on January 20, 1987; on October 5, 1988 it officially became a weekly series.  The program featured Shannon’s case on its November 29, 1987 episode.  One viewer, a Beverly Hills dentist by the name of Cheri Lewis, thought the David Richard Davis on the program resembled a man she had dated.  That man, according to Lewis, claimed his wife Shannon had drowned.  A Hollywood stuntman by the name of Beau Gibson had also caught Unsolved Mysteries and noticed an eerie resemblance between David Richard Davis and a man he knew as Rip Bell.  Bell was not only his “best buddy” but had also given Gibson flying lessons.

However, it would take a second airing of the episode, on December 28, 1988, to get the tip that would lead to the capture of David Davis.  A female viewer claimed she knew her from her visits to American Samoa and gave authorities information on where to find the man who was now going by the name of David Myer Bell. 

Under arrest (photo: mlive.com)

On January 6, 1989, Davis was arrested at Tafuna International Airport in Pago Pago by four FBI agents.  Davis was not only working as a pilot for Pacific Island Airways, he also had a 23-year-old wife whom he had met through his job as a pilot.  When asked if he was David Richard Davis, he admitted he was and surrendered. 

Davis had apparently been living in American Samoa since 1985, after stints in Florida, the Caribbean, Alaska, and Hawaii.  He had posed as a doctor, a nurse, and a harpsichord player but he was indeed an actual pilot, as he had earned his FAA certification while on the run.  He and his Samoan wife had been living in a tin-roofed shack in Tafuna.

Returned to Michigan via Hawaii, Davis’ murder trial began in November of 1989.  The formerly blond, charismatic Dave Davis that Shannon Mohr had met and married was now an overweight, gray-bearded, even slovenly, man.  His appearance had changed so much that by the time of his trial, many witnesses failed to identify him in the courtroom. 

The prosecution presented their case, theorizing that while taking the horses back to their property, Davis suggested that he and Shannon stop to have an intimate moment.  Shannon took off her shoes and began to take off her blouse and it was then that he injected her with one or two shots of the succinylcholine.  Before the drug could fully take effect, Shannon fought back, scratching him the process (he blamed those scratches on tree branches as he was desperately seeking helping for his wife).  He then staged the scene to look like an accident by striking her in the head with a rock. 

Prosecutors also showcased the character of Dave Davis by introducing evidence of his con jobs and scams.  He had been wife shopping before meeting Shannon, asking a series of women to marry him only weeks after introductions.  Kay Kendall took the stand and said that she had been briefly engaged to Davis, whom she believed to be a CIA agent but she soon backed out of their engagement.  Barbara Matthews had been another candidate for murder and had also believed that Davis worked for the government, even after learning of Shannon’s death. 

A girlfriend by the name of Jeanne Hohlman testified that Davis told her he was a CIA agent assigned to protect Shannon; after Shannon’s death, Jeanne was informed that Davis’ “mission” was over and they could resume their dating relationship. 

Cheryl Nicholaidis testified that following Shannon’s funeral, Davis had told her “you’re the most beautiful woman in my life now.”

Shannon’s cousin, Tori Abrams, testified for the prosecution that she recalled seeing drug vials in the freezer of their farm while visiting. 

Davis chose not to take the stand during his trial and the jury took only two and a half hours to find him guilty of first-degree murder.  Judge Harvey Moes, stating that Shannon’s terrifying death by suffocation was “more despicable than a contract murder”, sentenced Davis to life without parole. 

Lucille Mohr publicly said she wished that Michigan still had the death penalty while Robert Mohr believed that Davis being locked up in a cage was “100 times worse.” 

Sent to Marquette Branch Prison, Davis continued to proclaim his innocence.  In 2001, he told the Toledo Blade, “I could never have hurt her,” maintaining, still, that Shannon had fallen from her horse and hit her head. 

Incarcerated for life
(photo: mylifeofcrime.wordpress.com)

That same year of 2001, he filed an appeal with a federal court, citing the controversy over the lab work that revealed the presence of succinylcholine; a number of scientists believed the tests were “junk science.”  Not that their beliefs helped Dave Davis.  Added to the life insurance policies, which he lied about, his life, which he lied about, and the staged murder scene, he expectedly lost the appeal. 

Other than a 1993 made for television movie about the case, called Victim of Love: The Shannon Mohr Story, David Richard Davis faded into prison obscurity.

Lucille and Robert Mohr visit Shannon's gravesite
(photo: findagrave.com)

Lucille Mohr died in 2008; Robert Mohr died in 2012. 

Two years later, on November 9, 2014, David Richard Davis, who somewhat ironically acquired a neuromuscular disease, died in a prison healthcare facility at the age of 70. 

Billy Bowles, the Detroit Free Press reporter, who had started the real investigation into Davis, died the same year Davis did.

As for the insurance money that Shannon Mohr was married for and killed for?  The bulk of the payout, some $300,000, went to her parents.

Shannon's final resting place.  Her parents removed her married name from her grave marker when it was determined Dave killed her. (photo: findagrave.com)