Background
On October 1, 1993, Klaas invited two friends for a sleepover. Around 10:30 p.m., she opened her bedroom door to fetch sleeping bags, when she saw a man (Richard Allen Davis) with a knife. He tied the girls up, told Klaas's friends to count to 1,000, and then kidnapped Klaas. Over the next two months, about 4,000 people helped search for her. TV shows such as 20/20 and America's Most Wanted covered the kidnapping.
At the time, Davis was a wanted man: the California Highway Patrol had issued an all points bulletin for a violation of parole for a previous crime; any police officer who encountered him would arrest him on that charge. (The bulletin was broadcast on the CHP channel, which only CHP radios could receive. CHP practice changed after the case; such bulletins are now broadcast on all police channels.)
During the search, police officers encountered Davis in a nearby rural area, where his Ford Pinto was stuck in the mud. Unaware of the APB, the local police released him after calling his driver's license number in to their dispatcher (which only traced his driving record, but not his criminal record). It is believed that he promptly drove to an isolated spot, killed Polly, and buried her in a shallow grave.
On November 30, police arrested Davis for violation of parole during routine patrol and the arresting officer recognized him from police sketches. As his palm print had been found in Klaas's bedroom, he was charged with the crime. Four days later, he led police to Polly's body near Cloverdale. Davis said that he strangled her from behind with a piece of cloth. Although there was no method to scientifically validate this statement, as the body had decayed for two months, it was consistent with the evidence.
Read more about this topic: Murder Of Polly Klaas
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