The Misery Machine - The Kidnapping & Murder of Polly Klaas

Starting point is 00:00:00 On October 1st, 1993, 12-year-old Polly class and two of her friends, Kate McLean, and Jillian Pelham, were having a sleepover party at her mother, Eve Nichols home in Petaluma, California. Like many young girls, sleepover parties were what you looked forward to at the end of the school week, and this Friday night was no exception. It was the early 90s, and that meant TGIF, with shows like Full House, Family Matters, and step-by-step were playing on the TV. pre-teen girls would play games such as Mald Madness and Dream Phone or pen and paper fortune-telling games such as MASH, which was supposed to predict your future home, car, and spouse.

Starting point is 00:00:36 I don't really have that experience personally. Well, these were my experiences at sleepover parties as a young girl and a pre-teen girl, and there's some of my fondest memories growing up. However, Polly and I also shared a love for another game, which was Where in the World is Carmen

Starting point is 00:00:52 San Diego, which was a game, if you don't know, where you would chase a cast burglars around the globe through clues and knowledge of geography. This particular night, the girls would be experimenting with makeup and playing the game perfect match, which was a game where girls would try to guess how their friends will answer totally personal questions. But this wasn't any normal Friday night, nor would it be the ideal setting from a zenial girl's memory. Around 10.30 that evening, a man by the name of Richard Allen Davis, who had been drinking heavily, entered the bedroom where the sleepover was taking place, wheeling a knife that he

Starting point is 00:01:26 obtained from the kitchen. Although it should be noted that Eve Nicol has contested that no knives were missing from the kitchen. It has been speculated that Davis may have entered the premises through a back door that may have been left unlocked. He advised the girls that he meant them no harm and that he only wanted money. Davis tied both of Polly's friends up with cloth and cord, including some of which were cut from video game controllers. He then proceeded to gag them, pull pillowcases over their heads, and told them to count to 1,000, after which he left the residence with Polly. Should also be noted that Polly was giving up locations where there was money in the house and he didn't go for any of it. In all points bulletin with a suspect's

Starting point is 00:02:06 information was broadcast within a half hour of Polly's kidnapping. The broadcasts, however, only went over Sonoma County Sheriff's Channel 1. After Polly's kidnapping, this was thankfully changed. The radio system was upgraded and such bulletins are now broadcast on all police channels through a centralized 911 dispatch system. Polly's friends Kate McLean and Jillian Pelham, who were at the slumber party, were aided by police sketch artist Gene Boylan in making a composite of her abductor.

Starting point is 00:02:34 Within hours of the kidnapping in a rural area of Santa Rosa, about 20 miles north of Petaluma, a babysitter on her way home noticed a suspicious vehicle stuck in a ditch on her employer's private driveway. She phoned the property owner, Dana Jaffe, who decided to leave with her daughter. As she drove down the law, long driveway to Pithean Road, the owner passed Richard Allen Davis. She called 911 when she got to a

Starting point is 00:02:58 service station and two deputies were dispatched on the call. The deputies did not know of the kidnapping or the suspect's description due to Sonoma Valley units being on Channel 3. The deputies ran Davis's driver's license and license plate number, but they came back with no warrants. The deputies tried to convince Jaffe to perform a citizen's arrest for trespassing. Under California law, a civilian may make an arrest for this type of misdemeanor. However, Jaffe refused. Instead, the deputies called for a tow truck to get Davis out of the ditch. They searched it thoroughly before the arrival of the tow truck and did not find evidence of anyone else in the car. The only possible violation was an open container of beer, but Davis was not driving at the time of the deputy's contact and mere

Starting point is 00:03:42 possession of an open container was not illegal in the state of California. It is in Maine. Before Davis was allowed to leave, he was instructed to pour out the beer and the deputies filled out a field interrogation card with his information and filed it. On October 19th, a man by the name of James Arthur Hurd was arrested after posing as Polly's kidnapper in order to cash in on her reward money, which was $10,000 at the time. There were also many false leads and hoaxes, one such incident including a girl calling police pretending to be Polly, which resulted in the police raiding her family home. Throughout the fall and into the winter season, about 4,000 people helped search for Polly.

Starting point is 00:04:22 Actress Winona Ryder, who had been raised in Petaluma, offered a $200,000 reward for Class's safe return during the search. National television programs such as 2020 and America's Most Wanted covered her kidnapping, and Polly Class became a household name nationwide, and a cautionary tale of stranger danger that parents would use as an excuse to not allow their preteen daughters to attend sleepovers and basically pervaded the 90s in the early 2000s. Yeah, this was something that definitely was talked about quite a bit in my home growing up.

Starting point is 00:04:53 Mine as well. So on November 28, 1993, Dana Jaffe was inspecting her property after loggers had partially cleared the land of trees. She discovered items that made her think that they might have matched those used in the kidnapping. She called the Sheriff's Department to report her discovery and deputies and crime scene investigators were dispatched. One of the items found a torn pair of ballet leggings was matched by the the FBI crime laboratory to the other part of the leggings that were taken as evidence on the night of the kidnapping. A review of calls in the area of the day of the kidnapping turned up the incident with Davis, who had only been identified because both deputies had filled out and filed the field

Starting point is 00:05:29 interrogation card. Once the identity of Davis was revealed, his palm printed the scene of the kidnapping was also traced to him. Authorities have been unable to match a partial print found on Polly's bunk bed due to the poor quality of the print that was left. The Sonoma County Sheriff's Department in cooperation with a Petaluma Police and the FBI, launched a search of the property on Pythian Road during a heavy rainstorm, which is kind of strange. You'd think that a lot of materials would be gone in heavy rain. I assume that they did this under time pressure.

Starting point is 00:05:59 Yeah. The first two days of the search were kept as low-key as possible since Davis was under surveillance at a Native American settlement near Ukiah, California. They had it listed in a lot of sources as an Indian rancheria. I don't know if that's an actual term or an outdated term. Just thought I'd mention. When nothing was found during the initial search and the surveillance of Davis also proved fruitless, the decision was made to arrest him from Polly's kidnapping.

Starting point is 00:06:22 When Davis was being interrogated by Petaluma Police and the FBI, a massive search was launched on Friday, December 3rd. The Sonoma County Sheriff's Department was assisted by over 500 search team members from 24 agencies coming as far away as Kern County, California, and Washu County, Nevada. The search remained today as one of the largest ever conducted. California. I should mention based on my research, this is not the first time that Davis was arrested. So I was watching this one documentary and Davis was arrested for parole violation. I'm not exactly sure how he was violating parole, but he was driving down the highway and a deputy pulled him over,

Starting point is 00:07:04 arrested him for parole violation. While they had him in custody, since he fit the description of Polly's kidnapper, they brought her friends in to pick him out of a lineup. And they did pick him out of a lineup and they said they were very confident it was him so they approached him and asked him questions about it and he would not talk and so because he would not talk they released him he was not held in custody because of the girls pointing him out like apparently that wasn't enough i don't know if there's some loophole in the law that makes that not enough to detain somebody indefinitely over that or if this documentary was just making that up for good TV because you know that investigation discovery and all these other places like to make up

Starting point is 00:07:49 facts to keep the case interesting when you're watching it on TV. But if that is true, I want to put that out there before we go any further. So the search continued through Saturday, December 4th. The search effort produced other items of evidence, but did not produce any sort of human remains. The search was planned to continue on Sunday, December 5th, but on the evening at December 4th, Davis confessed to kidnapping and murdering Polly and led investigators to her body. He had buried her in a shallow grave just off of Highway 101, about a mile south of the city limits of Cloverdale, California. Polly's makeshift grave site was 30 miles from the initial search site. Although Davis admitted to strangling Polly to death, he refused to give investigators a timeline of the events from October 1st.

Starting point is 00:08:33 It is believed, but not proven, that Davis killed Polly before the arrival of deputies and hit her body in the thick brush on the hillside above where his car was stuck. He then waited for an undetermined period of time after being escorted back to Highway 12, about a mile and a half from where the car was stuck, and then he drove back up to retrieve her body. According to deputies, Davis was out of breath, sweating profusely, despite being a cool autumn evening, and had twigs and leaves in his hair. It is also believed that he had chosen her gravesite in advance since it would not have been discovered by a casual observer. So Davis had a drive from the Native American settlement and Yukaya once a week to meet with his parole officer, and he would have seen any police activity in the area. Davis had previous convictions

Starting point is 00:09:17 for burglary, assault, and kidnapping. He had been sentenced to 16 years in prison, but had managed to get out on parole in a fraction of that time. Davis was convicted on June 18, 1996 of first-degree murder and four special circumstances, including robbery, burglary, kidnapping, and a lewd act on a child in Polly Class's death. At his formal sentencing, Davis provoked national, outrage by taunting Polly's family extending both middle fingers at a courtroom camera and later saying that Polly's last words just before he killed her were that her father, Mark Klass, molested Polly. I would also like to state for the record that the main reason I know that I did not attempt any lewd act that night was because of a statement the young girl made to me when walking her up

Starting point is 00:10:06 the embank. Just don't do me like my dad. I have to pay my money. dudes so shit you all right Jacobs do you have any comments you want to make fucker damn boy are you are a fucker

Starting point is 00:10:31 judge Thomas Hastings sentenced Davis to death by lethal injection and remarked quote it is very easy for me to pronounce the sentence given your revolting behavior in this courtroom end quote Richard Allen David Davis now sits on San Quentin's death row awaiting his execution. Polly Class' body was cremated and her ashes were spread over the Pacific Ocean by her friends and family.

Starting point is 00:11:01 Winona Ryder later went on to star in the film adaptation of Little Women, playing the role of Joe after Polly's death. I actually loved that movie growing up. Writer dedicated her performance to her memory, as it had been her favorite book. In the wake of the murder, Polly's father, Mark Klass, became a child advocate and established the Class Kids Foundation. and has made himself available to parents of kidnapped children. The foundation has helped over 10,000 families find their missing children. Additionally, Mark Class, as well as politicians in California and other U.S. states, proposed and lobbied for the controversial Three Strikes Law,

Starting point is 00:11:37 and California's Three Strikes Act was signed into law on March 8, 1994. Mark Class has also become an outspoken advocate for the death penalty. He said of Polly's murderer, quote, the last thing Polly saw before she died was Richard Allen Davis's eyes. The last thing Richard Allen Davis will see is my eyes, I hope, end quote. And there's actually some concern that Richard Allen Davis will not be executed for the foreseeable future. California governor Gavin Newsom has outright stated that he's halting all executions in the state of California, including Davis. And this has sparked outrage from Mark Class because he's an older.

Starting point is 00:12:18 man and he is openly stated that he's concerned that Davis will outlive him. And what he wants before his death is to see Davis be executed. Five years after Polly's murder, a performing art center was named in her honor in Petaluma, which was closed in 2000 because of lack of funding. As of May 2021, a renovation of the building was expected to be completed by the end of the year so the center could reopen. I'd like to share a quote from one of Polly's childhood friends, Mirby Simon. I remember Polly playing Carmen San Diego when we were in the sixth grade. I also remember Polly taking on the mean girls with confidence. They were so obviously jealous of her unusual kindness and beauty, and understandably so. If someone else was being picked on, Polly would fiercely defend them.

Starting point is 00:13:05 I think about her all the time. Polly, we love you, end quote. It should be noted that this is probably the classic example of strangers abducting children. a stranger abducting a child is very, very rare. I haven't looked at the statistics in a while, but it's something like 90 to 95% of all abductions of children are done by family members. Or someone that's known to the family, and I should note as well,

Starting point is 00:13:34 Davis didn't know the class family at all. The money thing, they think is something he made up on the fly because he was drunk. He really just did this to anybody. He was looking for someone to kidnap and kill. The documentary I watched, He allegedly claimed that he was drunk and high, and he just randomly saw this house and decided to go for it.

Starting point is 00:13:54 And apparently, neighbors saw him just hanging outside the house. He was standing outside of there for a while, and they didn't think it was anything suspicious at all. But yeah, stuff like this definitely haunted children as kids. I remember growing up, and it was before Polly was murdered. There were, you know, cases that happened in the 80s when I was growing up as a smaller kid. There was this legend of the blue van that you saw you had a run away because it was going to take you, and my mom would only allow me to play in the backyard.

Starting point is 00:14:21 The things like this fueled the idea that many people were poisoning Halloween candy or filling them with razor blades despite nothing like that ever really coming up besides hoaxes or things that parents did to their own kids. It created this mentality that they were people driving around spending all their time looking for kids to abduct. that really changed generations going forward of kids who would go out and play all the time to when I was growing up, not really being able to leave my driveway. And I will say as I got a little bit older, I was allowed to do quite a bit. So it's very interesting that nowadays there's a lot more helicopter parenting, which is interesting based on the cases that we've been covering lately. It shows that more than likely it is parents hurting their kids and not strangers. 100%.

Starting point is 00:15:11 I really hope all of you had a great Christmas and continue to have great holidays, a good New Year's. The best Christmas gift you could give us, even if it's belated, is to always make sure you listen to our episodes to the end, especially if on YouTube, like, subscribe, share this with somebody that you think would appreciate it. It's the best way to help us grow. We also have some very wonderful people who are subscribed to us on Patreon, so I will put their names up right now. Also, I want to say welcome to two new patrons, Amy and Rachel. Thank you so much for supporting us. Also, big shout out to Levi, Cammy, and Chaka, our highest-tier

Starting point is 00:15:50 Patreon subscribers. Yes, there's our lovely pictures right now, and if you two want to support us on Patreon, you get access to all of our secret episodes, you get access to our secret Discord Snapchat groups, and you may even get a postcard. Haunted one. Patreon.com slash The Misery Machine. But until next week, we love you. We love you.

Starting point is 00:16:06 Bye. Bye.

The Misery Machine - The Kidnapping & Murder of Polly Klaas

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.