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In the suburbs of D.C. a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered.
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Nine, one, one, which emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.
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For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts, step into the 2020 True Crime Vault where you'll hear our most gripping stories.
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The last thing we said on our phone call was she said, I love you daddy. And I said, I love you too, baby. And those were the last words I spoke.
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Around 10:30, Polly opened the door and that's when there was a man standing in the hall and he was holding a kn. You're convinced he was stalking her?
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Absolutely.
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He said, who lives here? Polly said, I do. And then he took Polly.
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Bring her back, don't hurt her, just bring her back.
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But did a crucial decision back then make all the difference? New revelations and an all new look at the story that terrified the country. I hate this part of it.
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He came over to my car, he I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
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I was sightseeing at midnight.
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At midnight I would say he was
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panic stricken and I smelled fear.
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I literally grabbed him and pulled him close and said, mark, you need to be strong for your daughter. This was my test right here, right now. It was like a boogeyman came in and stole her out of that house. For two weeks. The town of Petaluma, virtually everyone who lives or works here, has been consumed by the kidnapping of 12 year old Polly Klass.
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The Polly Klass case really changed everything.
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The case has generated enormous local and national publicity.
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I think it's so important that we just find her as soon as possible. Polly's case was huge because of how it happened, because of where it happened.
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This is a small town coming to grips with the idea that the problems of the world have come to the front door. We should tell a story not only about the case itself, about the crime itself, but the impact.
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Polly's legacy is that, you know, she changed how the FBI investigates crime. 12 year old Polly Hannah Klass was in her own bedroom having a slumber party.
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Snatched at knifepoint from her bedroom.
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Polly's kidnapping was a real wake up call for a lot of parents that were so lulled into safety. The suspect tied and gagged the girls
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while Polly's mother slept in another.
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How could this have happened when her mother was right there? How could this have Happened. It's your worst nightmare.
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It shocked the country. It happened here in Petaluma.
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What was it like right before the kidnapping happened?
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Just like this. A neighborhood community. People walking their kids and their dogs without any concern. It was just a typical American neighborhood, wholesome and robust.
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So let's start by setting the scene a little bit. Tell me a little bit about Petaluma.
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Well, Petaluma is rather a small rural community that is so all American. It's morning again in America was featured in one of Ronald Reagan's campaign ads. At that time. It was a very rural town, about 50,000 people. It was kind of an all American town, you know, American Graffiti had been filmed in Petaluma. I'll call you later. Peggy sue got Married was filmed in Petaluma.
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Really small town, Americana.
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Absolutely. Absolutely.
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Nestled between wine country and San Francisco.
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Exactly. Yeah. 30 miles north of the Golden Gate bridge. But it's an entirely different world. Known for its eggs, known for its agriculture, known for its cattle farms.
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I am Annette Nelson, and Polly was my best friend. We all felt safe in Petaluma. Everyone seemed to leave the doors unlocked before cell phones. So we all just kind of left notes for our parents. It must feel surreal that it's been 30 years.
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It feels very surreal. I have no idea where any of that time went. I really don't. I can't explain it.
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I'm sure in many ways it feels like yesterday.
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Well, it does. I mean, just having, you know, these recurring thoughts that I'm having brings it even closer than yesterday.
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It all began in 1981, when Paulie was born to Mark Klaas and Eve Nichol.
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Well, that was the greatest day of my life. The day that Pauli was born gave me new meaning in my life. It taught me unconditional love.
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The day you became a dad.
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The day I became a dad. And I was really good at that.
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She was daddy's little girl.
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She was totally daddy's little girl. There's no question about that.
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As parents, Mark and Eve were a great team. But as a married couple, not so much. Their marriage was faltering. And by 1984, when Polly was just three, they decided to go their separate
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ways, where my marriage was really a total disaster with Eve. Our divorce was quite successful. Polly, she lived with my ex wife up in Petaluma.
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She adored her dad and saw him at least once a week. Her mother remarried and had a little girl named Annie. They shared a room in a very small Victorian cottage in Petaluma. And you co parented quite Well, I
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believe we did, yes.
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I chose that area because I thought it was the most ideal place. ABC News first spoke with Eve Nichol back in 1993.
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Eve, tell me about Polly.
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She is a incredibly sweet and sensitive and charming kid, a lovely kid. Polly was the girl who reminded everyone of someone they loved, whether it was a daughter or a friend or a niece. Polly was new at Cherry Valley in sixth grade and she was in my class and we met on the first day of school and just instantly had a lot of fun together. Polly was on the cusp between child and adolescent. She was 12 going on 13. She loved to play the clarinet and she loved to read. And most of all, she loved acting. She's very musical. She loves to play her piano and her clarinet. She's really blossoming in terms of her friends.
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If you look at pictures of her, you'll see she just sort of shines through the celluloid.
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So on that morning, it was the first Friday in October and Polly was really excited because her mother had said she could have a friend's sleepover. The plan for October 1st was, was hatched at lunchtime that day. We're all gonna ask our parents and we're gonna have so much fun. And then I wasn't able to go that night. I was getting over a cold.
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In the early evening around six o' clock or so, Polly and I had our daily conversation. We pretty much talked every day. She was very excited about her slumber party. Yeah, she was having some girlfriends over. The last thing we said on our phone call was she said, I love you, Daddy. And I said, I love you too, baby. And those were the last words I spoke.
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The two girls who ended up going to the sleepover were Polly's sixth grade classmates, Kate McLean and Jillian Pelham. When Kate and her mother pulled up in the car, Polly and Jillian were poised on either side of the porch like two stone lions.
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Typical 12 year old girls talking about Halloween. And they were playing games and getting makeup on, just enjoying the evening, you
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know, since it was a sleepover, Annie was gonna sleep in her mom's room so that the big girls could kind of have their own privacy. And they were playing around, they were playing a board game.
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It's a Friday night, not terribly late, you know, 8, 9, 10 o' clock on a warm October evening, a lot of people are out.
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Around 10:30, the girls were sitting or sprawled on the floor playing a board game. Polly stood up to go get the sleeping bags from the family room and she opened the door and that's when there was a man standing in the hall and he was holding a knife. It's impossible to imagine the utter fear and confusion that 12 year old Polly and her friends must have been feeling in those moments. But what happened next would terrify parents across the country and catapult this case into the national spotlight. Not only were the eyes of the volunteers at the center conducting the search for Polyclass riveted on the screen, eyes across the country were focused on the missing child. You just don't think about someone coming into your home. The family is asking anyone with any information about this kidnapping to please contact the Petaluma police agents have no connection to anyone who might want to kidnap Polly. They were really at a loss for where to even start.
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When you look at the boldness of this kidnapping, that's why this one is so rare.
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FBI agents and police spent today looking
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for evidence and canvassing the neighborhood. It was like a boogeyman came in and stole her out of that house.
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Polyclass is having a sleepover with two friends, Kate and Jillian, from her sixth grade class.
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That happens millions of times in this country on a Friday and Saturday night. It's like apple pie and baseball.
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Around 10:30 that night, her mother, Eve Nichol, is asleep with Polly's younger half sister Annie in another room. Shortly after I fell asleep, an intruder came into the house, appeared at the door to their room as Polly opened it to take the sleeping bags into the front room. He had a large knife. Initially, Kate and Jillian thought, is this a prank? He said he would hurt them if they made a sound. They didn't. He said, don't look at me, lie down on the floor. And so they lay down, face down on the floor like little dolls. One by one, he bound them and gagged them. He used strips of white cloth and over them he tied what they could feel to be electrical cord.
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He said he was only there for the money, but it obviously had nothing to do with money.
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He said, who lives here? Polly said, I do. And then he took Polly. He told Kate and Jillian to count to 1000 and said that by the time that they had gotten to 1,000, Polly would be back.
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They never got to a thousand.
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Gillian was a gymnast and she was flexible and she was able to get her feet through her arms so that her arms were in front of her. And then she used her teeth to untie herself. And then she untied Kate. And then they wake up your ex wife.
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The bedrooms were separated by a Jack and Jill bathroom, one that connect Both rooms.
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The girl said, polly's gone. Who took her? The man. What man? So that's when Eve called 91 1.
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91 1, Paloma.
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Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, back into our hospital. You can tell when you hear it that she's very confused. She had a migraine, and she had gone to bed and taken a sleeping pill. And so she is surfacing through sleep to wakefulness and realizing this horrific reality that her daughter is gone. It was hard to say the words, but I said, my daughter has been taken where you're at. Yeah. Which. How old is your daughter? At some point, Kate got on the phone and she told them exactly what happened. I thought it was a joke. She had a note, and she had a nice walk. Big knife, big person. Is he right now? Yeah. And he has a dark beard. I don't know, 30 or 40. 30. Okay. Have you ever seen this man before? The first people on the scene were detectives from the Petaluma police department. They were there minutes later. They came in and immediately started attending to the scene.
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It was important that we make the girls feel safe. It was important that we preserve evidence, and it was important that we try to get as much information as we could until we could get it out. We walked through the bedroom scene and saw clothes that were laying on the floor and items of clothing that had been used as bindings for the girls. We had Nintendo cores that were cut. We did photographs, collected and processed the scene for fingerprints, but there really weren't
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any signs of burglary or ransacking the house.
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There was no forced entry to the front doors, the back doors, or any of the windows.
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Eve's purse was still on the kitchen table. Her money was in it. Everything was still there except Polly.
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It was like a boogeyman came in and stole her out of that house.
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Meanwhile, outside officers start fanning out on the streets to ask if anyone in the neighborhood saw anything suspicious.
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There was a small apartment behind where Paulie lived, and some folks there had said that they had seen somebody walking around. We had gone to get a pizza on a couple of videos, came home. We're watching the videos. Nothing out of the ordinary. Their front door is wide open, and it's only a few feet from the back porch. And they see at 10:30, this guy come down the driveway and go up in the back porch and go in to the back of the house. I didn't think twice about it. Sometimes Eve had friends over or there was family.
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Others report seeing an unfamiliar man dressed in dark clothing on Pawley street, possibly driving a small gray or black vehicle. And at 12:14am Little over an hour after Eve called 91 1, the Petaluma Police Department issues an alert with some of the details they've learned. It went out over what's called an all points bulletin, an APB or a BOLO to let other agencies know, hey, be on the lookout for this kind of car, this kind of character and whatever.
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When the APB went out, it said not for press release, so it was not broadcast over certain radio channels.
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They didn't want the media to get wind of this kidnapping. It wasn't an error per se and it wasn't anyone's fault. But like that was a pivotal thing. They decided if this is a kidnapping, the FBI needs to be involved immediately.
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Bringing in the FBI was essential at the time. In 1993, my title was a senior resident agent in the FBI office in Santa Rosa. I was named the case agent on the night of the kidnapping. When I got a call from Eddie Fryer from the FBI, he asked me, what do you need? And I said, I need 100 agents right now. And he said, I'll have you 50 by the morning. And true to his word, he did. When I look back on the night of the kidnapping and I met Sergeant Val Bello, I think we all dedicated ourselves. We were going to do what's going to take to solve this case.
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But even to an FBI team that has worked every kind of kidnapping case, this one does feel different when you
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look at the boldness of this kidnapping. A parent is home. Three girls are having a slumber party. The lights are on. It's 10:30 at night.
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There was no playbook for this. It just didn't happen like this. It defies logic. Remember, this is 1993, so it's before so many of those other headline grabbing cases like JonBenet Ramsey or Elizabeth Smart or, or Baby Sabrina. When you do everything you can as a parent to protect your children, and I'm a very devoted parent and always have been, you just don't think about someone coming into your home. On the night that Polly went missing, Eve lit a candle and put it in the window of her home and she would light it every night. I think Eve wanted to feel hope that her daughter would return and that was her way to shine a light, literally. And hope that Polly would come back far beyond that light. The very same night Polly disappears, a single mom and her daughter have a frightening confrontation on a secluded country road. When I pulled up and he came
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over to house my the hair on the back of my neck, stood up. He was disheveled. He had sticks and twigs in his hair. And he reeked, just reeked. I smelled fear.
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Polly Klaas vanished from her home in Petaluma, California, on October 1, 1993, for the 30th anniversary of her disappearance. Kim Cross sat down and told the story of the investigation from the inside for her book In Light of all Darkness. I am the daughter in law of Eddie Fryer, the FBI case agent in charge of the polyclass investigation. We do not gather as a family and not talk about Polly. It's like part of our family DNA. So is that what inspired the book? I realized that I could get access because of my relationship to people who would not talk to another journalist. Detectives and FBI agents basically pulled their banker's boxes out of their garages and attic and just said, here you go. And one of the police reports details an incident that happened the very night Polly disappeared. About an hour after Polly was reported missing, a couple of deputies responded to a trespassing call on Pythian Road. This was a woman's driveway in wine country. And the driveway is really, really steep and curved.
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That particular evening, it was a full moon, I remember, and it was cold.
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Dana Jaffee was a single mother who worked as a chef at one of Sonoma's celebrated restaurants. And she had just come home from working at the restaurant and she had a 12 year old little girl and her babysitter had left. And on the way out of the driveway, she encountered a stranger. And he was in a white Pinto and it was stuck in a ditch on the driveway.
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A very fearsome, scary character. Somebody who looked like Charles Manson, as the babysitter described it. And she kind of slowly pulls up and this guy comes around and to her driver's side.
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She had her door locked, but she sort of cracked her window. And he came over and stuck his fingers in the crack of the window and was saying, get out of the car, you need to help me.
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I think she'd cracked it this far and she just rolled it right back up and took off. It frightened her.
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So she drove out and called you.
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The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I was aware that we were in a vulnerable situation.
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And you felt vulnerable. Well, no one had any business being
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up there at midnight. My daughter joked and picked up the baseball bat and the mace. And I said, sure, why not? And we were both dressed and out of the house in probably under two minutes. I mean, I really pushed her get dressed now. We need to get out now.
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Got in the car because I knew
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I could lock my doors. And we headed down the road to see what he was doing. And by the time I got here to the gate and saw his car and saw that he wasn't in it, I became really concerned. And she goes down and calls the sheriff's office, Hey, I got a trespasser on my property late at night. Doesn't belong there.
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Two deputies showed up from the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, and they followed her up the hill to the gate inside which this car was abandoned. And the stranger, the trespasser, was sort of standing by his car, car casually, as if he was expecting them to show up. At this point, it's been more than 45 minutes since Dana's babysitter first encountered him.
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He came over to my car. He sees, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
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I was sightseeing at midnight, at midnight. And he was disheveled.
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And he reeked, just reeked.
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I would say he was panic stricken. And he.
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I smelled. I just told him. I said, well, these gentlemen behind you are going to take care of this. So I went ahead up to the house. Two deputies start trying to figure out who he is, what's he doing there. And they're asking basic questions. They get his driver's license, it checks out.
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They pat him down, and they notice his pants are wet.
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He's kind of sweating. You know, it's a cold night. You know, it's a cool October evening. They noticed he got debris in his hair, and his clothes are all kind of messed up a little bit.
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He said that he had been crawling around on the ground trying to free his car by putting brush under the tires. They didn't see any brush under the tires. Just things weren't adding up. When the babysitter came down, she saw him wearing a sweatshirt, and she noticed that it was inside out. And when the deputies saw him, he was wearing a striped polo.
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They search his car. He's got a duffel bag there. And they do a field sobriety test. They had no way of checking whether or not he had a record. The only thing he could do is to see if he had a warrant out. That's all they could check, and he didn't. At that point in time, there were issues with broadcasting criminal history information over the radio, so they just ran him for wants and warrants, which would be typical. It's a Friday night. They're getting other calls backing up on the radio. You know other hot calls and what they have right now, as far as they know, is a trespasser.
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At some point when they could not unfree the car, they drove up to Dana's house and asked for a rope or a chain.
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They asked me if I wanted to press charges and I said, you know, I was thinking about it. And they said, well, it'll mean that he has to come back from for his car, you know. And it's like, no, no, just get
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him out of here.
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I want him out of here. When they pulled him out, they came back up at the house to drop off the chain and they said they
- [24:28]
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had followed him down to Highway 12
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and watched him turn off. And I thanked them for their service and we went to bed talking about, wow, that was weird.
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This moment, this night will haunt everyone for years to come.
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They were completely unaware that a child had been kidnapped.
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When the two deputies were with this trespasser, that APB went out. It was not broadcast over their radio and so they did not know. So you have to ask yourself, if they had known, would it have made a difference?
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24 hours later, we had a call into mark class.
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It was a girl's voice and she said, it's Polly. And we were just like, oh, my
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God, we found her. There you go, man. It's going to be over in an hour.
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Hey, campers, it's Jan from Toyota. This summer we're headed to Camp Toyota and the fun starts now. We're kicking things off by kicking up mud. Jump in, campers.
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We're going off roading in a 4Runner.
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Next we're heading to the hot springs in Arav 4. And finally, park your tundras and Tacomas around the campfire because we're roasting marshmallows. Their summer starts here.
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Dealer inventory may vary so your participating Toyota dealer for details. Event hands to you first, Toyota.
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Let's go places.
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Star wars is back on the big screen with the Mandalorian and Grogu gangsters. War criminals. I'll take out every bad guy in your deck of cards. Now feel the force on the biggest screen possible. The old protect the young and the young protect the old. This is the way. Buckle up. Always wear your seatbelt. Star the Mandalorian and Grogu, rated PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13
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now playing in theaters. Worst nightmare in Petaluma. A child is missing, snatched from her bed last night.
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We used to joke that if you walked out the front door of the police department and you had a bunch of satellite trucks Sitting out there, you were having a bad day. It became a reality when I showed up that morning at the police department, they were there en masse. It was intense.
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The family is asking anyone with any information about this kidnapping to please contact the Petaluma police yet.
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Shook the town to its core. But it also brought them out in great numbers to bring Paulie home. I care. I got grandkids out of me. I can help. Bill Rhodes owned Pip Printing. And he said, guys, give me a picture. Give me some information on what you want on a flyer. And he said, I got 150 people down there. I'll get you. I'll get some flyers made up and we'll wallpaper Sonoma County.
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People just start showing up and he starts giving them stacks of flyers. And kids and college students and doctors and parents are putting them all over town.
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One of these posters is going to work. We don't know which one. And we pray to God it's not the one sitting in a box waiting for a 29 cent stamp. People wanted to help in any way they can. There were impromptu search parties all over town. We could form a big line and move along like this just so we don't miss any, you know, large areas.
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The news report was that if anybody wants to come and volunteer, because there's going to be searches, you can come to this print shop. I just literally said, honey, we gotta go. And loaded my daughter in the car
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and we drove down there.
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And she happened to have some skills and she knew how to deal with the media. And so she sort of put her own life and her work aside and started typing up press releases. This doesn't happen here. And I think because this doesn't happen here, this is why we're all here. There's someone called America's Most Wanted.
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My name is John Walsh. I was the host of America's Most wanted for 25 years. We would always get the first call because the cops would say, if you come, that big old white hot spotlight of AMWA is going to get right there and people are going to go, this is serious. So we made it real serious. Now we need your help to bring polyclass home.
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Walsh says that over 25 years, his show has helped recover 61 children who'd been abducted by strangers.
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The power of television and the power of a TV show that's popular.
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Wynonna Ryder was from Petaluma.
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She watched America's Most Wanted and she jumped into action
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long before she was the mom on Stranger Things. Winona Ryder was the star of 90s classics like Edward Scissorhands. Somebody said, winona Ryder on line four.
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I was like, okay.
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So I hit line four and I said, hello. And I didn't hear anything for a minute. And then I started hearing crying. And I said, oh, honey, I know it was a really hard. And she just finally was able to speak and said, I'm from Petaluma. You know, she looks like me. What can I do? She came home with no entourage and showed up in jeans and a T shirt.
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I'm an actress. Tell me what I can do. She did every interview she could.
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My greatest wish right now is to meet her in person and to hug her. Winona Ryder even put $200,000 of her own money up for the reward. She was dating Dave Perner, who is the lead singer for Soul Asylum. By coincidence, Soul Asylum had just months before released their video for Runaway Train with a ticket for runaway training. And he decided to make it about missing children. And they had all these kids faces in this music video that was running on mtv. Long way on a one way train. The goal of all this was to keep the media's attention.
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We needed the media to keep the pressure on the cops so the cops would not step away from the case.
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Police were working tirelessly, but they needed help. So the FBI sent in their newest innovation, A quick response strike force of forensic experts known as the evidence response For Tony Maxwell, one of the ERT members came in and he started dusting with fluorescent powder.
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Annie's mother, Eve, brought Annie to me and she says she wants to help you look for her sister. If you read any forensic science handbook, first thing they tell you is never let anybody help you with the crime scene work. But you can't say no to a little girl. You can't say no to a sister. She's going to have to live with this the rest of her life. I says, okay, here's the fingerprint tape. When I need some, you pull some off the reel and you give it to me and we'll lift some fingerprints. The FBI had technology that we didn't have. For example, was the alternate light source. We had never even heard of that. We use an alternate light source and we started dusting with this fluorescent powder, which is 100 times more sensitive than regular fingerprint powder.
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He lifted 48 prints that had been missed.
- [31:56]
B
We found a partial palm print that appeared to be an adult print. On my log, I wrote the word bingo.
- [32:04]
A
It came from an unknown person. So it was sent to the FBI crime lab to wait for a suspect to compare it to. Investigators did a trap and trace on Mark's phone and there was a call
- [32:18]
B
and a little girl called and she said she was Paulie and she said that she was with the kidnapper. There you go, man. It's going to be over in an hour. We got the trap trace and it came back to a house in Hayward. We quickly called down to our FBI office in Hayward. Get whoever you have sitting at a desk there, get in some cars, here's the address and get over there. They busted through the door, got everybody on the floor. It's like a normal family now. They got a house full of FBI agents with gun drawn. We finally get the story from the young girl she called impersonating Polly, that she was dared by her friends to call. This was a hoax.
- [33:06]
A
As investigators dig in, they soon start to suspect that Polly's sleepover friends may have something to hide.
- [33:14]
B
These are two 12 year old girls who had been through an unbelievable trauma, who were being accused of being complicit in their own crime.
- [33:23]
A
Jogging the same questions over in your mind, trying to trick you into saying something that's not true.
- [33:29]
B
I mean, who does that? We love you, we adore you, and we're very confident that we'll see you again very soon. Mark was very visible before the media. Bring her back. Don't hurt her. Just bring her back. That caused a lot of people to call in and say, I hope you guys are taking a look at Mark Glass, because I watched him on the news last night. I can't even tell you the strength and the outpouring of love that, that I get out of this. For sure he's the one that's involved in his own daughter's disappearance. Mark Claas volunteered to be polygraphed. I have to say that clinched it for me. He wasn't involved. Mark was just having a hard time and was just emotionally done.
- [34:25]
A
Holly Kloss FATHER Mark was near collapse this morning.
- [34:29]
B
I was whimpering. I said, I just can't do this anymore. This is. This is too much for me. I literally grabbed him and pulled him close and said, mark, you need to be strong for your daughter. He said, you see everything all of these people are doing. You see how hard we're working and you're ready to give up. He said, you can't do that. You've always told her you'll be there for her and she needs you now more than she's ever needed you before in her life.
- [35:00]
A
How did that hit you?
- [35:02]
B
I realized that he was right. And this was my test right here, right now.
- [35:09]
A
Investigators have been focusing on Polly's girlfriends, Jillian and Kate, who'd been through that terrifying kidnap ordeal with her that night.
- [35:17]
B
They definitely felt it was possible that Polly and her girlfriends did this as a prank. And there was some discrepancies in the two girls stories. One saw a yellow bandana. One would say, I was laying here. The other one would say, no, it was there. We started to look at those inconsistencies as a possible attempt of deception. And is it possible that the girls know something that they're not telling us?
- [35:44]
A
Now, there are experts who are trained in child and adolescent forensic interviewing, but at the time, that didn't exist. So they just reached into their toolkit and brought out the hammer.
- [35:56]
B
They were accused of orchestrating Paulie's disappearance with this theory that Paulie had run away with a boyfriend and that the girls were complicit in that whole act. I remember they threatened the girls to take them to juvenile hall.
- [36:13]
A
They're just jogging the same questions over in your mind, trying to trick you into saying something that's not true. I mean, it's almost as if someone's saying, you have to lie to me in order for me to leave you alone.
- [36:29]
B
We went back to the house. We had him walk through the whole crime scene. In a way, you're grasping a straw, trying to grab something that can maybe free up some of these memories.
- [36:38]
A
One key detail stood out. That the girls had been bound with Power Corps from Paulie's Nintendo.
- [36:45]
B
What made me feel that this was a real kidnapping was the fact that the Nintendo cords were cut. He's like, kids aren't going to cut their own cords. They're not going to do that for a prank. But there was still some skepticism, and that's when the decision was made to polygraph the girls.
- [37:01]
A
Gillian passed, but Kate's results were inconclusive. The polygrapher noted she was clutching her teddy bear and appeared agitated beforehand, which, of course, could affect the results. There are things that you grew to regret.
- [37:16]
B
Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. When you get a call from our two primary witnesses, their parents, and said, you can't talk to our kids anymore. You know, that's not handling young witness victims very well.
- [37:29]
A
Investigators soon realized that the girls were innocent.
- [37:33]
B
If I could say one thing to the girls, I would apologize for the way we treated them initially. And I just hope they know that we were trying to do the right thing for Polly.
- [37:41]
A
In hindsight, we would not do that again.
- [37:44]
B
We should have handled them more tenderly. Everybody handles trauma differently. Just because somebody isn't crying and sad and shaking doesn't mean they weren't traumatized.
- [37:56]
A
Polly's two friends had never been happy with the original sketch, the kidnapper. So police tried something different.
- [38:03]
B
We learned about this forensic sketch artist who had a technique of getting detailed information from victims like this.
- [38:12]
A
Her name was Jeanne Boylan and she was hired by a show on ABC to work with Gillian and Kate. Please welcome Jeanne Boylan.
- [38:19]
B
Hello, Jeannie.
- [38:22]
A
My job was to go in and to see if we could not sort of pull out from memory what an eyewitness may have seen.
- [38:31]
B
What she brought in was just a very calm and reassuring demeanor. They've been through a lot.
- [38:38]
A
They're 12 year olds.
- [38:39]
B
And they had high confidence in her approach, that it wasn't going to traumatize the girls anymore.
- [38:47]
A
More than anything, these girls just needed to speak and they needed to be believed. I spent a total of nine hours on the first day with the two girls. It took a little time because they needed to emote and I happened to be a good listener so I would listen to them. How's the new sketch come? The sketch is waited and ready to be released as of about 2:30 this morning. Within minutes of its release, the new sketch of the man believed to have kidnapped Polly Klass was being printed for distribution.
- [39:13]
B
It's amazing. It's a face, it's a portrait. I mean, we have a definite person that we're looking for now. A sketch is a sketch. She drew a picture. So when we released that second sketch on our flyers, people now could actually see a person.
- [39:28]
A
And the FBI was working to come up with a profile for the kidnapper. Mary Ellen o' Toole believed it was likely an experienced criminal comfortable taking big risks, especially a small house with thin walls with a mother who was asleep in the bedroom adjacent to the victim's bedroom. She also felt that, that this was not an impulsive kidnapping. This was someone that had likely targeted Polly. It's hard to begin to think of anything else other than we're moving down the track of being a sexually motivated crime. And then 10 days in, a promising new lead now may prove her right.
- [40:06]
B
Vallejo PD calls and says, Friday night we had a guy break into a house over here. The house is occupied by a woman and her 12 year old daughter. He had a rape kit with him, bindings, blindfolds, duct tape. And we started focusing on him, you know, mid November as possibly being our suspect. That was Xavier Garcia, career criminal, a sex offender. We spent well over 10,000 investigative hours on him. But we were never able to make the nexus between his crimes in other cities and the city of Petaluma.
- [40:44]
A
But then a walk in the woods changes everything. It was the pivotal moment in this case. Evidence is uncovered. Could this be a clue to finding Polly?
- [40:54]
B
Almost made me sick to my stomach.
- [40:56]
A
Their jagged edges lined up like a puzzle.
- [40:59]
B
I said, you better get down here. This could be.
- [41:09]
A
Holly's case was huge. There's just no question about it. It was huge because of how it happened. It was huge because of where it happened.
- [41:20]
B
A lot of print, a lot of news media. The frenzy was national.
- [41:25]
A
What did you find?
- [41:26]
B
There was a pair of little girls, tights that were red.
- [41:30]
A
How did it dawn on you that these dots connected to Polly? A brand new book now bringing every detail of the poly class case together for the first time.
- [41:44]
B
I kept telling the cops it's a repeat offender. It's a repeat offender with a rap sheet this long. You better get down here. This could be it. The hair on the back of my neck went up. You know where she is now? I just exploded.
- [41:58]
A
Describe that explosion for me.
- [42:00]
B
I had to be held down. Richard Allen Davis should be spinning a spit in hell right now.
- [42:09]
A
I felt like she called to me, yet she led me there.
- [42:16]
B
She alive?
- [42:29]
A
It's a parent's worst nightmare in Petaluma. A middle aged man slipped into this home and abducted 12 year old Polly Klass at knifepoint. If you're the man who has Polly, please just let somebody know that she's okay. Hundreds of volunteers comb the area for clues.
- [42:46]
B
I really miss her.
- [42:47]
A
I'm sorry. So worried. Days and weeks go by and some of it is a blur.
- [42:51]
B
Volunteers and police say they will leave
- [42:54]
A
no stone unturned in the search for polyclass.
- [42:57]
B
We all prayed a lot. You always have hope. We will never stop, we will never close until we have accomplished our mission and we get my little girl back.
- [43:07]
A
Did you take a day off in those few months?
- [43:09]
B
No. No. We put everything into this case. I mean everything. We had worked pretty hard and it was discouraging not to have a solid lead. And then came the fine on the 27th. Dana Jaffe was a woman that lived miles away. Two months after the kidnapping, she discovers a scene on her mountain property. Her girlfriend had come up for a hike and we went for a walk along the trails.
- [43:45]
A
What did you find? I found a man's sweatshirt.
- [43:49]
B
It was turned inside out and laid out with the arms extended. There was a pair of little girl's tights that were red.
- [43:58]
A
And there was a piece of white cloth quite long that had been knotted in several places.
- [44:04]
B
We found a condom that was used.
- [44:07]
A
And at that point, did you think. I thought this is maybe a crime scene.
- [44:12]
B
She called the sheriff's office and I say nothing. Called kids having a party up on the hillside is what typically this stuff is.
- [44:21]
A
Still, police come out to investigate. And then Larry Pelton is sent in to take a look. His attention is quickly drawn to the strips of knotted fabric.
- [44:31]
B
Almost made me sick to my stomach when I saw it. Because I knew immediately that that is exactly the same stuff that I collected from Polly's bedroom that were used on the other girls to tie them up. I get on the phone. Larry says, you better get down here. This could be it. The hair on the back of my neck went up.
- [44:49]
A
The question now is, who left all this here? Dana Jaffe tells an officer that she had an encounter with that intimidating stranger nearby just two months earlier.
- [45:00]
B
I realized that that was where the car had been parked. And I told him, I said, you know what? There was a trespasser on the property. And then he pulled the calls for service for that night. And he found that there was indeed an encounter.
- [45:14]
A
Finally, they have the name of a suspect. Richard Allen Davis.
- [45:19]
B
There were striking similarities in his appearance to the sketch that had been done by Jeanne Boylan.
- [45:26]
A
The characteristics were all there. The coarse hair, the width to the face, the bags around the eyes, the lines on the forehead.
- [45:33]
B
I got the full rap sheet. It had everything you would think an offender would have on his record for somebody, a crime like that. And he'd only been out for about six months from his previous kidnapping charge. Didn't have committed our crime.
- [45:47]
A
In 1994, ABC Sam Donaldson spoke to three of Davis previous victims.
- [45:52]
B
Selena Verich says Davis and a woman companion told her if she didn't withdraw $6,000 from her bank, they would hunt up her father and daughter and kill them.
- [46:01]
A
He hit me in the head with his gun and he hit me in the head about five times. He was laughing and he's smiling. Marge Freeman was beaten by Davis in her bedroom. I woke up with this man standing over me, beating me with a poker. 30 sutures were required to close the lacerations in my scalp. Frances Mays says Davis forced her into a car at knifepoint and tried to rape her. I grabbed the knife by the blade and I hung on and he was trying to take it away from me. I unlocked the door and I ran out. Davis later pled guilty to kidnapping and prosecutors dropped the other charges. What he inflicted on the victims was indicative of someone that really had no empathy or remorse. Basically, the traits of a psychopath. They are pretty sure they have their man, but still, they need forensic proof. So the evidence is rushed to the FBI crime lab in D.C. the shards
- [47:01]
B
of cloth found on Dan Joffe's property matched conclusively the shards of cloth that were found in Paulie's bedroom.
- [47:11]
A
Their jagged edges lined up like a puzzle.
- [47:15]
B
When the fingerprint examiner called me, he goes, I have an identical palm print from her bedroom that was collected by the FBI the night of the kidnapping. To Richard Allen Davis. I tell people I spent 30 years in the Bureau and that was my best day.
- [47:27]
A
But there is no time to waste. Even as investigators work to track down Davis, they quickly moved to search Dana Jaffe's property for Polly. It must have been the full force of federal, state, local law enforcement.
- [47:41]
B
We felt very certain that she was there.
- [47:44]
A
They throw everything they have into a desperate search but come up empty.
- [47:48]
B
No human remains have been found.
- [47:54]
A
I feel like I brought her home. I felt like she called to me, that she led me there. Still, investigators haven't found Polly, but they are about to move in on Richard Allen Davis.
- [48:13]
B
We got our warrants ready, had SWAT teams ready.
- [48:15]
A
They have three SWAT teams, they have snipers, they've got surveillance, the whole nine yards. Petaluma police say they have significant new information. Information in the polyclass kidnapping case.
- [48:32]
B
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- [49:02]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your
- [49:11]
B
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- [49:13]
A
Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. After the discovery on Dana Jaffe's property, investigators now know who they're looking for. Richard Allen Davis. They just need to find him.
- [49:47]
B
We had found out where he was staying at the Coyote Valley Indian Reservation just north of Ukiah. We developed information that he was staying at his relative's house had SWAT teams ready. We had evidence recovery team ready. We went and staged on a hill overlooking the area where we thought Davis was housed. I was in charge of our SWAT team at the time. My team secured part of the area. We needed perimeter control. We hadn't established that. So I said, hey, we gotta put some guys on the perimeter here. So we hit the house. Three SWAT teams simultaneously hit. And so there's that moment of silence. And I get a little nervous because the moments of more than a minute or so, and finally it comes over the radio, he's not there. And I almost, like, screamed, what do you mean he wasn't there? But then we got a radio call from one of the deputies who had been on the perimeter control, and he said he thought he may have our suspect there. We encountered Richard Allen Davis in his van. He shaved his beard off, which made it harder to identify him. Actually unholstered my weapon and kept it to my side, but thought this guy could be armed and dangerous. It certainly was dangerous. I asked him to step out of the car, keeping his hands in plain view. And as I had holstered up, then I handed him off to Mike Meese, who handcuffed him. And then we put him back in that deputy's car. We seized this Pinto. We shipped it down here to Petaluma for our evidence folks to go through it. We knew we wanted to talk to him, but we didn't want to alert him immediately or other people in the area immediately that he was being arrested for potentially kidnapping Paulie Klass. After Davis's arrest, I was actually the first person to interview Davis. Felt a little bit sick to my stomach, butterflies, worrying about doing it right. I did not want to screw up this case. I needed to get a story. No matter what that story is, I need a story before he invokes his Miranda rights. Davis story initially is that he had nothing to do with it.
- [52:19]
A
He's arrogant, almost cocky, you know, in his denials of being involved.
- [52:26]
B
In my mind, he's been thinking about this the whole time and coming up with an alibi. During the interview, Richard Allen Davis made comments that he's killed people like that, referring to child molesters and murderers. He's killed people like that in prison. But we had never talked about anything about possibly sexual assault of Polly. It's like a TV scenario where the witness says something and the police say, hey, how did you know that? He was starting to get angry at the time because our questioning line had changed and he wasn't feeling as comfortable. So we got at least a little more interview out of him before he decided that he wasn't going to talk any longer without an attorney.
- [53:20]
A
Do you remember first hearing about Richard Allen Davis?
- [53:23]
B
They showed me a polaroid picture, Eve and I, a polaroid picture of Richard Allen Davis. And they said, this is the guy we know. It's the guy. They asked me, do you know him? And I said, I've never seen this guy. I don't know who this guy is. And neither of us had ever seen him. In Petaluma, California, police say they now have a prime suspect in the kidnapping of 12 year old Polly Klass.
- [53:48]
A
The man who has been arrested for parole violations who may be connected to the polyclass kidnapping is Richard Allen Davis of San Francisco. He is 39 years old.
- [53:58]
B
A lot of print, a lot of news media. The frenzy was national.
- [54:03]
A
Richard Davis is what you would call, call a career criminal. Davis rap sheet for San Mateo county alone dates back 20 years to when he was 19 years old.
- [54:11]
B
I kept telling the cops, it's a
- [54:13]
A
repeat offender with a rap sheet this long.
- [54:15]
B
And it was, Richard Allen Davis should
- [54:18]
A
have never been out. People in law enforcement who I've discussed this with were stunned to realize that we routinely let people, these types of revolving door crew career criminals out long before their time is served.
- [54:35]
B
He was not closely monitored, and so the system's failures were that there were opportunities to take him off the street.
- [54:42]
A
It turns out Davis has had contact with law enforcement twice after Polly's abduction. There was that encounter with police on Dana Jaffe's property and he was arrested for DUI 18 days after Polly went missing. Richard Allen Davis will be transported down here to be looked at by the two little girls who witnessed Polly's kidnapping. Kate and Jillian are asked to come in to see if they can pick Davis out of a suspect lineup.
- [55:10]
B
We had a process of making the different suspects read from a script. Basically some of the stuff that was said to the girls in the bedroom that night just so they could hear their voices also.
- [55:26]
A
But neither Kate nor Jillian could positively identify Davis in that lineup.
- [55:31]
B
The girls only saw him for a couple of seconds. It was a stretch that they would actually pull him out of a lineup two months later. the time I was deciding on the charges, I started out first by saying, can we prove this without polyclos's body being recovered?
- [55:51]
A
While law enforcement is deciding exactly how to proceed with Richard Allen Davis, they get a surprising message from the man himself. The jail said, yeah, Davis wants to talk to you and so they put Richard Allen Davis on the phone, and what he tells them changes the course of this investigation.
- [56:09]
B
She lied. We're looking at her. Richard Davis was arrested for investigation of parole violations. He's not been charged with kidnapping. Polly Class was a gentleman down in San Mateo County. He's reading the paper, big paper. Davis's palm print discovered in Paulie's bedroom. He goes, I know that guy. He came to work for me after he got released out of prison about five months ago.
- [56:43]
A
He jumps in his car and he books it up to Mendocino County Jail.
- [56:47]
B
They put him into the Glass Inn. You know, little room, visitor room. They're on the phone.
- [56:51]
A
He pointed to his palm and sort of mouthed the words, they found your print.
- [56:56]
B
Davis gets up and walks away. Has the jailer get him on the phone and says, hey, I want to talk to you guys now. I ain't gonna try not to figure. Let me get this thing back here. I was in the room outside the interview room where I could watch on a TV screen the actual interview taking place and listening to it to get information and take notes that might help us in locating Polly. Vouch for the. I can't vouch. And I had this balcony before. It's hot.
- [57:37]
A
There's one thing about that interview that, to me, is so striking. If you didn't know who was who, if you didn't know that's an FBI agent, that's a homicide detective, and that's the offender. They were like three friends sitting around the table discussing this case as though they were all equal.
- [58:00]
B
You need some more coffee?
- [58:01]
A
Do you want a cup of coffee? Back then, people smoked. Hey, can I get you a cigarette? So you want them to feel engaged with you. You want them to feel like an equal. Because then they're going to contribute more. With Davis now comfortable, investigators get right to the crucial question.
- [58:19]
B
First thing is good. First things. Is she alive? Can we go get her? She's not alive. His story was he was in Petaluma to visit his mother, and he couldn't get a hold of her. Why don't you tell me what happened that night? So I was parked downtown. There's some park along some main street. So I went over at 7:11, got a quart of beer, went back sitting in the park, had my car parked around the corner. He says he gets a beer. He smokes a PCP cigarette. He's kind of got fuzzy after that. What do you remember about going there? I was just going into a window. Which window did you go? Where's it from? There was no forced entry to the front doors, the back doors, or appearance that anybody had come in or out of any of the windows. Guess I went in and pulled them all lied down or whatever. And where were they? They're in bedroom, I guess. There's three of them in there, I guess. Okay.
- [59:51]
A
I sat down with a number of investigators and had kind of a director's cut where we watched the confession tape together. And they said, see that body language? This is what. This is how we interpret that. See how he suddenly can't remember any detail once he goes into Polly's house. He's trying to distance himself from the crimes.
- [60:08]
B
He's trying to get away from the idea it was premeditated. The next thing I basically remember is driving down the road and I heard in the front seat and got turned off some road.
- [60:31]
A
Davis tells investigators about the moment got he stuck in the ditch at Dana Jaffe's property on Pythian Road.
- [60:37]
B
She was still alive, you know, trying to figure out what the. Was I gonna do at that point. The car got stuck. Had her get out of the car, go sit up on the embankment. I tried to get the car out, couldn't get it out. Lady came down. Where was she when the lady came down? She was sitting up on the embankment. Had she been alive on that hillside, I. I don't have any doubt. She would have made some noise. I don't have any doubt.
- [61:13]
A
Davis then tells the investigators that once he left Dana Jaffe's property, he went to a gas station where he claims Paulie asked to use the bathroom.
- [61:21]
B
I was out of the car and what? That's my strangled more. She was coming back to the car to get back in. Strangled her? Yeah. What'd you use to strangle her? Piece of cloth.
- [61:42]
A
That's Davis's story of the night. But investigators say they believe there's far more to it than what he's admitted to.
- [61:50]
B
What I felt was a supported by the evidence was that Davis had singled out polyclass to kidnap her maybe up to two months beforehand. And I feel very strongly that he knew where she lived by the night of the crime. He stalked her. He prepared for the kidnapping. He went into the bedroom. He specifically wanted the girl that lived there.
- [62:12]
A
And investigators believe there is a very specific reason he ended up stopped on Dana Jaffe's property.
- [62:18]
B
He finds himself driving, looking for some way to get around Santa Rosa. I think maybe he thought Pythian Road was the way to get around the city and not get caught with a body. In a car. If somebody is being transported in a car and you don't want that person to be seen, the floorboard is going to be the spot for him. My theory of the case is he killed there on the side of the hill because she was bound and gagged and all these things had been untied and found up on the hillside after the babysitter went down. He could have went up on the hill, assaulted Polly and killed her. At that time, he never confessed to sexually assaulting her. Did I believe he didn't? No.
- [63:07]
A
In prison, it's a big difference between being a murderer versus someone that sexually assaulted a little girl and then murdered her. In my opinion, he did not want to admit to that.
- [63:22]
B
I know I'm a piece of here. Still may know this is hard, though, and I understand that, and I appreciate you being man enough to own up to what happened. Richard Allen Davis should be spinning on a spit in hell right now. That's how I feel about that. Feel better? Get off your chest. No.
- [63:44]
A
Investigators now had Davis's story. They just didn't know how much of it was actually true. And they still didn't have Polly.
- [63:54]
B
My focus then was to get closure for the parents by finding her body.
- [64:02]
A
So would Davis answer the one question that everyone wanted to know?
- [64:06]
B
Do you know where she is now?
- [64:17]
A
Richard Allen Davis is sitting in an interrogation room. He's admitted to being the person responsible for polyclass's abduction and murder. But to ensure this is going to hold up in court, investigators know they need to locate Polly's remains.
- [64:32]
B
Can you tell me about where. About where she is? Outside Cloverdale. Right outside Cloverdale. Cloverdale is an odd place for something like this. From Petaluma, it's a straight drive up 101, Half a mile, quarter mile. Sure. Somebody could walk up the planer. Kind of probably remember he did it yet? I'll show you.
- [65:11]
A
And so they put him in the car and then they. They drove to Cloverd.
- [65:19]
B
Dave Alford, Sergeant Val Bello. The three of us got in a car and headed up north and we met at Cloverdale, I had mixed feelings. I don't trust suspects and I don't trust information until I can verify it. When Dave Alford and I walked out there and found the board and. And lifted it up and there's a body there. I mean, but it was advanced decomposition. You got Richard Allen Davis, who's sitting there leaning up against a car, smoking a cigarette like he doesn't have a care in the world. In the darkness is Lane Paulie Klaas. You have to suppress the rage that kind of builds up in. I started to kind of reach for my shoulder holster and thought I'd just put him down. I'll just say he reached for somebody's gun and we had to shoot him. And Eddie kind of caught my eye. I had to put my hand on his that was going for his gun. What a horrible place for such a beautiful girl to be put, you know? I was convinced it was polyclass. So I called down and said, yeah, tell the parents we found polyclass. It was that moment. It was again, Eve and I being called into the police station. And they didn't have to tell us anything. Christ. We walked in, and there were tears in their eyes. You know, there were tears in their eyes. And I'll never forget this. I remember that Eve started crying. The cops were crying, and I didn't cry. But we said, we need to tell our families. So I made a phone call, and I said, you know, it's over. She's dead. They're here to announce tonight that poly class is dead. Marjorie Barling was one of the thousands who volunteered in the search for Polly.
- [67:36]
A
Petaluma is an innocent town. We don't have that innocence anymore.
- [67:43]
B
For the first time in two months, we went home, and it was there that I understood and realized and just exploded.
- [67:52]
A
Describe that explosion for me.
- [67:54]
B
I started screaming. I had to be held down because I probably was on the verge of trashing my condo.
- [68:04]
A
It was really difficult.
- [68:06]
B
It's just the pain.
- [68:07]
A
It just poured out. The pain just poured out. And I was like, thank God our family was with us. Thank God. What did you see in your husband's eyes in those moments? Pain. It was pain. On the night Polly went missing, Eve lit a candle and put it in her window and said it would burn until Polly was found. And then on the night that her body was discovered, it was extinguished. We were at my birthday party on my birthday, and Jillian's aunt said, you need to bring Annette to Jillian's house. The whole way, I was saying to my mom, she probably wants to see us before she does a news conference. Sorry. And then I remember hearing Kate and Jillian crying inside the house.
- [69:18]
B
I was going around thanking my friends for being out there in the sun, you know, long hours just to guard the crime scene. A friend of mine, he just looked at me, and before I could say anything, he said, I'm sorry, Eddie. I'm happy to welcome the world to our parish church, where tonight we continue to remember Polly. A massive turnout. You know there were people that weren't able to get into the church. So many people in Petaluma were invested in that whole case. We sat in the front row. Linda Ronstadt performed Somewhere Out There was
- [70:03]
A
Polly's very favorite song. Somewhere out there beneath the pale light. We were all sitting together, all of Polly's friends, her family was nearby, but just deeply sad that we wouldn't
- [70:32]
B
be
- [70:32]
A
able to make any more memories together. After the outpouring of grief, this story wasn't over. Now the people of Petaluma wanted justice for Poly Klaas. And the trial ahead would once again transfix and shock the entire country.
- [70:55]
B
It was my opportunity to to look him in the eye and say what I felt and what I believed. This is the beginning of the end for Richard Allen Davis. He was 10ft away from me. So I took my shot.
- [71:13]
A
It's go time. And at aaa, we're here for it. Here for front row seats and backyard barbecues. All in for the spontaneous road trip and the well planned vacation for worry free commutes, awesome adventures and great escapes. From camping under the stars to four star hotels here where you need us most. With the best roadside assistance like we have been for more than 120 years. Wherever your journey takes you, we're here to power it. Join us@aaa.com AAA here for you, Mr. Sugar. We've run out of places to hide our money. We could do really bad things together.
- [71:49]
B
On Thursday, May 28. Crime is on the rise in Florida. Philly, say hi to your wife for me. Hulu's hilarious comedy.
- [71:56]
A
We're in the middle of a crisis here.
- [71:58]
B
Deli Boys is back with an all new season. You care more about the business than you do your own brother. More money.
- [72:04]
A
Mo problems. We rebuilt Darko on our own.
- [72:06]
B
No help from any man. I'm a man. Deli Boy Season 2 streams May 28 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers terms apply. You may remember the murder of Polly Klass. The man accused in her death goes on trial next month. The reason this case took almost three years to get to trial is not unusual in a capital case. I was amazed by how many people had actually physically gotten out searching for polyclass. I was convinced there's no way we could get a fair trial in Sonoma County. They renew their motion to change venue and I said, I agree. So the judge said, okay, Santa Clara.
- [72:56]
A
And at the same time, there was another high profile case heading to trial in California. This came right on the heels of the Oj Simpson trial.
- [73:06]
B
If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. It seemed like that everything that could go wrong with the case went wrong. Not guilty of a crime of murder. The trial was a disaster. There will be no repeat of the OJ Case here. It just made me work harder.
- [73:21]
A
While most people here in Petaluma say they're glad the trial is finally underway, what they say they'd like even more is to put all of this behind them for good. What was it like to watch Richard Allen Davis walk into that courtroom every day?
- [73:35]
B
Well, just being in that close proximity to that monster was kind of unbelievable. It's the devil that destroys your life. I mean, that's what he is. He's the devil that destroyed our life. We figured out that it would be in Mr. Davis best interest not to plead guilty. In this particular case, there was robbery, burglary, kidnapping, attempted lewd act on a child with four special circumstances. The jury had to find one or more of those special circumstances true for it to become eligible for the death penalty.
- [74:16]
A
Perhaps the most compelling story today was told by 14 year old Jillian Pelham. She and another girl were with Polly for a sleepover the night Davis allegedly snatched Polly from her home. Kate and Jillian, they were allowed to have one adult of their choosing go up to the stand with the and they both chose Jeanne Boylan.
- [74:35]
B
Jeannie's an incredibly talented and compassionate woman and there's a lot of love in Jeannie's heart and I think she was able to quickly convey that to both
- [74:47]
A
of the girls long enough to be a part of the trial. I became extremely close, especially with the girls. I felt like I wanted to continue to be there in the event they needed me again.
- [74:58]
B
I think they liked her, but they, because she believed them. She was just sort of quiet support.
- [75:03]
A
I just remember sitting on the witness stand with them and having them grip my hand and getting through that with each of the girls. After nearly a month and a half of the trial, the case finally went to jury. They deliberated for more than 20 hours before returning returning a verdict. We the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant Richard Allen Davis
- [75:31]
B
guilty of the felony.
- [75:32]
A
Davis was found guilty and the jury determined those four special circumstances to be true.
- [75:40]
B
At the end of the guilt phase, he turned towards me and he looked at me and he flipped both middle fingers up. I always thought that was an opportunity for people to see into his soul. The other incident happened after the penalty phase. Mr. Davis, do you have any comment you would like to make at this time on the report or the recommendation? Judge Hastings allowed the killer to make a statement. I would also like to state for the record that the main reason I know I did not attempt any lewd act that night was because of a statement the young girl made to me when walking her up the embankment. Just don't do me like my dad. I have to pay my dues. Associate. When that happened, my mother, who was sitting one person over from me, just. I thought you would die. I really did. He was 10ft away from me, so I took my shot. Damn. What are you doing? I got nowhere. I was completely surrounded by bailiffs. Within a moment. He made those statements to Mark Glass. Just to be malicious and hurtful to a father who just lost his daughter. That doesn't tell you he deserved a maximum penalty. I don't know what does. It is the order of this court that you shall see suffer the death penalty. Said penalty to be inflicted within the walls of the state prison in San Quentin, California. We found Paulie, but. And we solved the case. That's some gratification. Not a lot, but some. What made this case even more difficult is that it resulted in the passage of the three strikes law.
- [77:36]
A
California enacted a three strikes sentencing law. It sets mandatory punishments, including 25 years to life for any three time felony offender.
- [77:45]
B
This basically says if you commit your third violent felony, you are going to go to prison without the possibility of parole. You get three chances.
- [77:55]
A
There was such a sense of public outrage of how could this person, a repeat offender, been let out to kidnap Polly. So that was used to rally support for the three strikes laws and get them passed.
- [78:09]
B
Three strikes was about enhancement. Criminals were leaving California because they didn't want to be faced with being accountable for their own activities.
- [78:21]
A
Everyone felt a connection to her. And over the last three decades, those connections to have multiplied into something truly extraordinary. It's a pretty nice legacy.
- [78:41]
B
Eve kept a candle burning in the window until Paulie was recovered.
- [78:48]
A
Detective Pat Parks was so moved by the case that he. He wrote a poem for Polly.
- [78:54]
B
We raced the darkness of the night, your face our only guiding light. We knew your love by a mother's candle, by a father's anguish too tough to handle. We assured ourselves that faith alone would be enough to bring you home when you died. Your love by millions multiplied. As we raced the darkness of the night. Your face remains our guiding light. We will run the race and endure each mile encouraged by your enchanting smile. So that's the case. In a few words. Her body was found out in that field. In Cloverdale. I live here in Sonoma County. I drive by, going one place to another. Every time I do go by, I stop by there. It's my way to kind of honor that hollow ground. Every time I go by there, there's a new addition to this area, a new cross, a ribbon tied in a tree. Quite often teddy bears, jewelry spread out and rocks. And then people place rocks and people will paint a message on there remembering some other missing child. Usually a date. Could be a birth date or a date missing, some notation about that case.
- [80:35]
A
Everyone felt a connection to her. When I see candles and rocks with things on it, I appreciate that she touched so many people. Polly's case changed America. She changed childhood in America, but she also changed how the FBI investigates crime. So many of the procedures, technologies, protocols for kidnapping that were used and tested and proven in her case are now used today to improve how we not only find missing kids, but investigate crime. Quite simply, my dream is to save a child and that the next family that has this kind of tragedy that will have a happy outcome. I love children. And if anything I can do can help protect them, then I think Polly would be real proud of me. If you were to look back on those 30 years now, what do you think is the lasting legacy?
- [81:51]
B
I think the legislation, I think the attention that we brought to the case, and I think that our very active, proactive work in search and rescue, I think of the work that we've done, those are the lasting elements of her legacy.
- [82:12]
A
It's a pretty nice legacy.
- [82:14]
B
Well, I think her legacy is strong. I do. But still, I mean, you know,
- [82:21]
A
I
- [82:22]
B
traded for a hug. He would trade it all for one more hug. Richard Allen Davis, the man convicted of murdering Polly Klass, remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison. In 2019, California's Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order declaring a moratorium on all executions in that state. That is our program for tonight.
- [82:46]
A
Thanks for watching.
- [82:47]
B
I'm David Muir. And from all of us here at 2020 in ABC News, good night.
- [82:54]
A
Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. We hope you'll join us Friday nights at 9 on ABC for all new broadcast episodes. See you then. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart Choice with Auto quote
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B
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A
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