In late 1974, Davis witnessed a traffic accident involving a 23-year-old woman. After offering to help her, he instead dragged her to a nearby wooded area, where he raped and attempted to strangle her. The victim lost consciousness, and with Davis thinking that she had died, he left. Some time later, the woman regained consciousness and managed to make her way back to town, where she was given proper medical attention. She later told of her experience to the police officers, who created a
facial composite of her attacker. On August 24, 1975, Davis went to a bar in
Howard County, where he met 20-year-old Roseann "Ann" Sturtz. According to investigators, he lured her to an isolated area, where he sexually assaulted and murdered her. Davis' body was found four months later on December 15, in
Columbia. Unlike his later murders, Davis was not charged with this case due to a lack of conclusive evidence, leaving the case unsolved until March 2025. A few months later, Davis lost custody of his son, after which he decided to assault a female social worker who he believed was instrumental in him losing the case. On New Year's Eve, he lured the victim from a nightclub and into his car, before rapidly speeding away. On the way, however, Davis realized that he had kidnapped the wrong person: the woman inside was 24-year-old Kathleen Diane Cook, a stranger with no relation to his court case. She started to demand her release, threatening Davis with legal troubles as she was the fiancée of a high-ranking police officer in the Baltimore Police Force. Her threats were ignored, with Davis eventually stopping at a vacant lot of a mall in
Catonsville, where he proceeded to rape her. Despite this, Cook continued to threaten and humiliate her assailant, saying that he was
impotent and unpopular with women. Angered by her attitude, Davis then shot her four times with a .38-caliber revolver, which failed to kill her. Cook then ran towards his car and attempted to sound the car horn, but Davis caught up with her and stabbed her several times, killing her in the process. On August 24, 1976, Davis was driving along the
I-95 when he was approached by 23-year-old Peggy Ellen Pumpian, who wanted to ask for directions to the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge. After a brief conversation, he started tailing her vehicle and eventually forced her to pull over, claiming that he could show her another route. Pumpian allowed him inside her car, whereupon Davis spent some time mapping a route with a pencil before he pulled out his revolver and demanded that she give him money. After she gave him her money, Davis raped Pumpian at gunpoint. During an attempted escape, Pumpian hit him in the face, resulting in a fierce struggle during which Davis shot her five times in the chest, killing her. He then wiped off his fingerprints from the victim's car and left, travelling for
New York to make himself a credible alibi. Pumpian's body was discovered eight hours later, and after extracting the bullets from her body, authorities decided to conduct a ballistics test on them. The results showed that the rifling marks of the revolver's barrel corresponded with the one used in the Cook killing, which led investigators to connect the two cases. On September 3, Davis raped a 21-year-old woman he had met on the I-95 - for unknown reasons, he let the victim live and simply left her after the assault. On February 23, 1977, he lured a 24-year-old pregnant woman, Carol Willingham, into his car, under the pretext of helping her. He then drove to a wooded area outside of town, where he beat, robbed and raped her before releasing her. == Arrest ==