commentary by Patrick H. Moore
A Texas man, Franklin Davis, has been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a vivacious 16-year-old high school student named Shania Gray. This is an unusual story, quite different from a typical rape-murder case in which a psychopath or borderline psychopath rapes a victim and almost immediately murders them either because the perpetrator is criminally insane or merely to keep the victim from talking.
In an online article, Jennifer Emily of the Dallas News describes how Davis got to know his victim:
On Friday, Davis told jurors that he saw Shania when he visited his kids at the Mesquite apartment where she baby-sat them. Davis, who was separated from their mother, said he formed “a bond” with Shania.
“She has a nice personality. She makes you laugh,” he said. “I started to care for Shania … like a sister.”
The girl “flirted with me,” he said. “I already knew she had a crush on me.”
At his trial, Davis denied flirting with Shania, but stated with respect to his personality: “I’m a charmer.” In an odd aside, as if this would explain his inappropriate attraction to under-aged girls, Davis said that growing up in St. Louis, he saw a lot of violence and doesn’t like to be around men as a result.
Earlier in the trial, the prosecutors introduced text messages between Shania and Davis where he wrote “just want u but can’t fully have u.” Davis testified that he was telling Shania she was too young for them to be involved.
At some point in their relationship, Davis came on to Shania and seduced or forced himself upon her in the first of four illicit sexual encounters. Shania may have confessed or reported these encounters to her mother, Sherry James. In any event, James discovered the highly appropriate misalliance and informed the Mesquite, Texas police (Mesquite is a suburb of Dallas) that Davis had sexually assaulted her daughter while she was baby-sitting his children. The police affidavit states that Davis, who went by the nickname “Wish,” exposed himself to Shania and had sex with her on four separate occasions in 2011.
Although Davis ultimately confessed to murdering Shania, throughout the trial, he continued to deny that he had ever raped her.
Davis testified that after the sexual assault charges, he had trouble finding a job. He would get interviews but no one would hire him after doing a background check. This, he said, led to problems at home with his wife, who is not the mother of the children Shania baby-sat.
“I felt like she looked at me like I wasn’t a man,” Davis said about his wife.
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In what appears to be a sign of his essentially selfish nature, when Davis found himself unemployable as a result of the rape charges, he blamed Shania for his fate even though he was the one who crossed over the line into illegal sexuality. According to an affidavit, Davis then set up a fake social media profile and a prepaid phone in order to lure Shania into his murderous web. Posing as someone else, he began communicating with the adolescent and ultimately convinced her to to meet him at her school.
In his testimony, Davis described how — despite Shania’s shock at seeing him rather than the boy she had expected — he managed to lure her into his car. He then drove her to the trail head at Champion Trail near Valley View Lane and Interstate 635.
Davis explained that Shania spotted a .38 caliber pistol in his possession and asked if he was going to hurt her. He said no — he only wanted to talk about the case. When they arrived at the the trail head, Davis led Shania down the trail to the Trinity River. Although it is mere speculation, it seems probable that by this point, Shania must have known she was not coming back up that trail. Once they got to the river, he shot her twice and she reportedly fell into the Trinity River, clinging to life. Davis states that he then strangled her with his foot.
According to an affidavit obtained by NBC, Shania’s mother, Sherry James, reported her missing Friday when she never returned home from school. The police asked residents of the Dallas suburb of Carrollton to help search for her and Shania’s body was found on Saturday by a cyclist along the Trinity River.
Carrollton police indicated that they never issued an Amber Alert for Gray’s disappearance Friday because there wasn’t any evidence to indicate she was in danger. Once they realized she wasn’t a runaway, they requested assistance from the media in locating her, and within minutes of their request, her body was discovered along the river.
At that point, law enforcement put the pieces together and located and arrested Davis.
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A very tragic story. A naive girl is taken advantage of by a callous, perhaps psychotic, man who later abducts and kills her, claiming that he murdered her because she had ruined his life. In reality, however, I believe Davis thought that with her out of the way, she would be unable to testify against him at the rape trial, which could have put the prosecutors in the difficult position of having little choice other than to offer him a “sweetheart deal”.
Texas, of course, loves the death penalty and Franklin Davis will now join the other denizens on its Death Row at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit at TL in unincorporated Polk County.