The Shadow
The burly, unshaven man sitting in his car in the Covington Walmart parking lot didn’t waste time on chitchat when Mary Davis opened the door, slid into his passenger seat and handed him a photo of her husband. “You sure you want me to kill him?” the man asked.
“You damn right I do,” the 58-year-old Covington woman replied, unaware that cameras were capturing everything.
“You want me to shoot him?”
“Damn right. I want that man dead as a doorknob.”
Tucked inside the purse on her lap, according to authorities, were insurance policies on her husband’s life — policies that would pay her $500,000 upon Dennis Davis’ death.
Inside the car, four cameras were secretly recording the conversation, and they also recorded Mary Davis handing the man $500 in $100 bills. According to authorities, she had mistaken a state police special agent who called himself Tony for a hit man.
At Davis’ preliminary hearing Friday in Alleghany County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, assistant county prosecutor Ralph Jackson played a videotape of the encounter, displaying his criminal case against Davis by offering a rare glimpse of how such transactions play out. According to testimony, Davis gave the agent $500 as a down payment with plans to give him another $250,000 when he finished the job. As her meeting with the agent unfolded on a large television screen in the courtroom, Davis, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, grimaced, sank back in her chair and lowered her head, as if unable to watch.
Judge Laura Dascher certified two charges against Davis to a grand jury: soliciting murder and attempted capital murder for hire. The grand jury must decide if prosecutors have enough evidence to put Davis on trial.
At Davis’ side in the courtroom sat her 21-year-old son Michael Davis, who gave his mother the $500 to use as a down payment to kill his father, according to testimony. Dascher certified two charges against him as well: conspiracy to commit attempted capital murder and conspiracy to solicit murder.
Authorities started investigating Mary Davis in October after a local man told Covington police that she was shopping around for a hit man to kill her husband, a driver for UPS in Roanoke County. The informant eventually brought police Sgt. Kenny Duncan a letter, allegedly written by Davis, offering details of her husband’s comings and goings: the make and color of his car, his license plate number, the time he left for work, the route he took down U.S. 220, Interstate 581 and Peters Creek Road, as well as his habit of stopping to eat lunch in Appomattox while making his usual run to Richmond.
Duncan testified that he contacted state police Special Agent Billy McCraw, the man who would meet with Davis in the Walmart parking lot, posing as a killer named Tony. McCraw testified that he called Davis twice to arrange the hit, first on Nov. 24.
“When I called her, I said I understood that she had some work she wanted me to do,” McCraw testified. As the two discussed exactly what she wanted him to do, he continued, she told him that, “Well, I want him to, you know, go bye-bye.”
McCraw said they also discussed his $250,000 payment, along with her desire that he make sure her husband’s body could be found — for insurance purposes.
McCraw made his second call on Nov. 30, when, he said, they arranged to meet in the Walmart parking lot. Later that day, during their conversation in the car, McCraw asked her if her son wanted to help. “He don’t want nothing to do with it,” she said on the videotape. “But he gave me the money.”
After pushing the five $100 bills into his shirt pocket as they sat together, McCraw pressed his foot on the brake pedal, activating his brake lights — the signal for nearby officers to swoop in and arrest her.
