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on a warm summer evening in 1980 a young married couple took their horses out for
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a leisurely ride through the woods one of the horses bucked and threw the rider the autopsy confirmed it was an accident
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but the family wasn't so sure [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
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hillsdale county michigan population just over 40 thousand this is farm country soybeans and corn
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mostly a hospitable place where friends drop in unexpectedly and there's always
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room for one more at the dinner table [Music] 25 year old shannon moore was a quiet
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unassuming young woman who grew up in nearby toledo ohio she was a very good student in school
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and she said when she was in first grade because she went to a catholic school i'll be a nun or i'll be a nurse
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and she became a nurse in september of 1979 shannon moore met an eligible bachelor
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from hillsdale county 36 year old david davis the two met at a friend's wedding
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shannon came home from the wedding of this other nurse and said mom i met this real nice man
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and he's just we spent the whole evening together we had such a wonderful time he told me
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he was a millionaire he has farms all over the united states and in belize and he's going to call me we have a date
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set up i thought the world of them from the very beginning he was just a kind of a rugged outdoor
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type person liked to fish and hunt i thought he was good to my daughter and that's the only
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thing that i cared about and i said to her shannon if you let this one get away from you you're nuts
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after an eight-week courtship shannon and david married and moved to david's
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michigan farm it seemed to be the ideal place to raise a family they bought two tennessee walking horses
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which were recommended because of their gentle nature on july 23 1980 10 months after the
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wedding shannon and david rode their horses to see their neighbor dick britton how's your eye
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great good real good dick was having a problem with some farm machinery so david spent time helping
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him we worked probably half an hour on this tool then shannon came up and asked me about
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taking our boy norman home with him and i went i went to turn around and tell her sure
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go ahead and take him and dave said no you can come get him in the morning and you know shannon had asked me the
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question but he had answered and so i dropped it david and shannon then mounted their
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horses and left [Music] instead of going back the way they came they took a shortcut through the woods
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a short time later david raced out of the woods back to dick britton's farm nick come quick he'd come riding back
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and he had blood on his shirt he was sweaty perspiring hard like he'd been in
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a fight or something kind of half fell off his horse and said that shannon had fell off her
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horse and she was hurt bad davis said that shannon's horse had bolted he said she fell and hit her head
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on a rock shannon was lying on her back her eyes were closed there was blood on the back of her head
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shannon's blouse was undone and her sneakers were off which britain thought was unusual
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i think we better get her to the car okay shannon was rushed to the nearest hospital
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and i was blowing the horn tooting as loud as i could and this nurse come running out and i
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says we need a we need a doctor i said i'll run to the front and tell him she's
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hurt bad shannon's lifeless body was wheeled into the emergency room where doctors checked
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for vital signs there weren't any the time of death was arbitrarily set at 8 45 pm
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the wound in the back of shannon's head and the x-rays taken at the hospital
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were consistent with david's explanation that she had fallen from her horse and
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hit her head her death certificate listed the cause of death as multiple cranial and
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cervical spine injuries [Music] since shannon died in one county and was declared dead in another no autopsy was
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performed because of a jurisdictional mix-up that failure would later come back to
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haunt shannon's family shannon moore had two lifelong dreams the first to become a nurse the other to
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raise a family she graduated from nursing school and had been married less than a year
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her dreams for a family would never be fulfilled because of a freak horseback riding
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accident which took her life at 26. when shannon's parents lucille and bob moore arrived at the hospital her
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husband david davis was in the hall crying they all instinctively hugged each other
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just as they always did he grabbed me and as he grabbed me he ran his hand under my face
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and i looked and it was three deep scratches and i mean deep scratches oh please god
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[Music] shannon's father had other concerns david insisted that shannon's body be
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cremated as a catholic bob moore was opposed the moore family wanted to take shannon's body back to ohio to bury her
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there at that point dick britton stepped in you know her mother was crying and bob
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was crying so i stood right up yelled at him i said dave that's her folks they
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said nobody knows her out here i said let let him take her back to toledo and bury her there i said her people will
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come to her grave and put flowers on it i said she don't know anybody here and
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he backed down and said okay the next day deputies from the hillsdale county sheriff's department visited the scene
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of the accident they found the bloody rock the only rock for some distance around
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not far away were shannon's untied sneakers lying about five feet apart and there was an area where the grass
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had been matted down then looked around a little bit took a few pictures and left
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and i asked him about the shoes and they said now you can have them over the next several days
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the moores made arrangements to bury their daughter david's parents whom the moors had never
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met came to the funeral and what they had to say made it clear that everything david had
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told the moors about his past was a lie he was not a millionaire he didn't own
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farms all over the country and even more shocking was the fact that he had been married before and had two daughters
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the moors believed their daughter's death was no accident dick britton had come to the same
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conclusion because of something davis had said the day after shannon's death
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so the next morning we're sitting at my table and he wants to know about the
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neighbor he said does the neighbor still want to sell his farm and i said huh and he said never mind and i'm thinking
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how can you be thinking of buying a farm the next morning after your wife died and then he left and i just that just
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kept working on me i kept thinking what that don't sound right you know just
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a week after shannon's death dick britton and the moors took their suspicions to the hillsdale county
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sheriff's office [Music] the more is discovered the davis had taken out insurance policies on
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shannon's life totaling 330 000 during the ten months they were married the morris demanded an autopsy
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and shannon's body was exhumed a month after her death the autopsy revealed a three and a
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quarter inch dash on the back of shannon's head along with bruises on her upper back left shoulder her upper right
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arm right hand and left cheekbone but they found no evidence of foul play the coroner concluded that shannon died
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of the head injury the sheriff's department considered the case closed believe it or not yes when they first
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brought her up and said there was no evidence i thought they're missing something
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there has to be and i knew then we had to keep going one way or another because something was
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wrong the moors weren't the only ones who were suspicious billy bowles a reporter for the detroit
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free press uncovered some devastating information on david davis painting him as a consummate liar who lived off money
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gained from suspicious insurance claims one claim was for a questionable fire on a farm
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davis once owned the vacant farmhouse burned and he collected about 30 thousand dollars insurance for
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that the barn burned mysteriously while he was away and uh and he collected six thousand dollars
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for that uh in addition to those uh he had left a job at uh chrysler after a very suspicious
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injury uh and he was collecting workman's compensation and social security for that
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bowl's investigation revealed among other things that davis had studied pharmacology in college
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armed with this new information the moore family asked the state's attorney general to open
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a new investigation shannon's autopsy revealed she died of a single blow to her head
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detective don brooks had two theories number one this young lady actually felt on a horse
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and struck the only rock around squarely and it really is an accident or number two he killed her and the only way in my
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opinion for him to get her in a position where he could slam her head into that rock was to have
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her completely immobilized so we wanted to look at the possibility that she was drugged at the time
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something that would paralyze her but leave her heart still pumping and still she's still alive with davis's
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background in pharmacology police asked local veterinarians what drugs farmers use with their animals that can cause
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paralysis one of the drugs mentioned was a powerful muscle relaxant named succinylcholine used in animal surgery
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after anesthesia has been induced they will go ahead and give you some succinylcholine and what it will do is
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completely paralyze every what we call skeletal muscle it won't hurt the heart but it will
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all the intercostal muscles which help in breathing or anything that you use to voluntarily
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move it will absolutely prevent those muscles from functioning it's also used in humans
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in large doses succinyl choline can be fatal but there was a problem succinylcholine is broken down in the
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body almost immediately and is therefore undetectable if this was the drug david davis used on
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shannon he had gotten away with murder [Music] in the seven months in shannon moore's
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death her husband david davis sold his michigan farm and moved to the bahamas where he lived on his sailboat with his
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new girlfriend davis was waiting for the conclusion of shannon's investigation so that he could
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collect the 330 thousand 000 from her life insurance policies although the autopsy was consistent with
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davis version of her death the crime scene wasn't davis said he and shannon were riding
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back to their farm when shannon's horse bucked threw her to the ground and her
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head hit a rock but the rock she hit was the only one within a hundred yards for some unexplained reason shannon's
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blouse was unbuttoned and her shoes were removed and placed a few yards away the
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grass was matted around the body police wondered whether davis might have injected shannon with some kind of
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paralyzing agent like succinyl choline before her death there was no known test to identify
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succinylcholine but local scientists heard about a new test developed in sweden which was
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having some success finding succinyl choline even in embalmed tissue dr robert forney and tom carroll took
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shannon's tissues to the karolinska institute in sweden it took a team of toxicologists several
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weeks of trial and error just to extract a sample they could test we were working 10-hour days
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working on trying to get the method perfected and once we got the method perfected then we started analyzing all
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of shannon's tissues the tests were conducted with the mass spectrometer which bombards chemical
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molecules with ions shattering them into their molecular components the fragmentation creates a chemical
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fingerprint that can be compared to other chemical fingerprints to determine the unknown's identity
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[Music] after weeks of testing and hundreds of tests scientists finally got a break
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i looked over in one corner and in that one corner was one piece of paper and on
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that piece of paper was a perfect mass spectra of succinyl choline and that piece of paper was identified
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to have come from shannon's tissues that caused a riot when prosecutors in michigan learned the
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news they were elated but they didn't feel it was enough they wanted more evidence and needed to
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know where davis had injected her [Music] as a result for the second time shannon's body was exhumed
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the vast majority of the injuries sustained by shannon were on the left side of her body
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her left shoulder her left back and the left side of her head which would indicate a fall
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to the left and then falling on your left on her right side however there was a bruise
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in the upper quadrant of the right arm and also on the hand so those were the only bruises that you saw
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on her right side dr fourney took tissue samples from all the brew sites and returned to sweden
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he discovered the shannon's right wrist and upper arm had much higher concentrations of succinylcholine than
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her other tissues an indication that davis had injected her twice based on that evidence
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david davis was finally charged with shannon moore's murder when police went to arrest davis
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he was nowhere to be found the search for davis dragged on for months and then years
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[Music] police believe that david richard davis murdered his wife by injecting her with
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a lethal drug making the death look like a horseback riding accident the drug he allegedly used was believed
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to be undetectable but a team of determined toxicologists found it for eight and a half years davis eluded
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police before they finally got a break a story about shannon's murder appeared
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on network television an old girlfriend of davises called police with a tip she called and she wanted to tell me
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about an individual that she thought could be david davis she knew him by a different name
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however she was very very reluctant to get involved she was in fear of her own life
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the caller revealed that davis was living in american samoa with the samoan wife under the name david meyer bell
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in the eight years since shannon's death he had lived in california alaska and
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hawaii he had taken flying lessons and had become an expert bush pilot [Music] the fbi arrested davis at the pongo
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pongo airport and he returned to michigan for trial we know that he courted and dated
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several women before shannon and asked each of them to marry him in an extremely short period of time something
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like 14 months he asked five different women to marry him the first one who said yes
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became his victim bloomer said the motive was money and that the murder was premeditated
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prosecutors believe that after the couple left dick britton's farm davis coaxed shannon off her horse under
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the pretext of having sex the couple had a habit of making love outdoors [Music]
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[Applause] [Music] as shannon took off her shoes and unbuttoned her blouse prosecutors believe davis snuck up
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behind her and injected the succinal choline in the shoulder the injection didn't take effect
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immediately the two fought matting down the grass he then hit shannon on the head with the
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rock and injected her again this time in the wrist the dose killed her instantly
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if you're given an injection of succinylcholine outside of the hospital where they can help you breathe by a
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respirator you'll die of suffocation and that's exactly what happened to shannon
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davis i believe that the sectional calling answered the ever-present question in
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the jury's mind and that was if she didn't die from being thrown off a horse
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then what killed her we had to have that answer for the jury the jury deliberated for two and a half
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hours my heart was pounding so hard and i thought it's over we've got him
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david davis was found guilty of first degree murder i remember the courtroom which is full
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burst in applause and uh instead of standing around and shaking hands and i had to leave
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i had to leave the courtroom there's a law library right off the courtroom and
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i had to go in there and it was pretty emotional he was sentenced to life in prison
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i know we went out to the cemetery right afterwards and we looked down and said we got him
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he was that good of a liar so that i shouldn't feel too bad that he fooled us
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but i think i heard living with a killer all that time 10 months and i didn't know it
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and i also think i should have picked something out and i didn't [Music] [Music]
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so [Music] you