Redemption Song

14:57Tracy Smith:What do you like about being a cop? When I became a detective, I loved being in the hunt. What is it about a mystery that you like? Solving it. And thanks to that phone call, Walsh felt he was on a fast track to solving this one. He was like, I know who did this. The suspect was a man named Dennis Davis. I did know Dennis very well. You know, he was a friend of mine. Dennis Davis was a well-known name in the Austin music scene, a studio owner and engineer who later moved to Nashville to work with big stars like Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. How did he come across to you? Was he a player, a ladies' man?

15:44No.

15:45Tracy Smith:No, not at all. I didn't see him that way. I saw him just really quiet and reserved. I never thought of him as someone that had the capacity really to hurt another person. Johnny knew Dennis, too, because Dennis had dated his mom. And he was good to Johnny. He just had this amazing studio. I had, like, the best studio in town. And I was, like, the only 16-year-old kid that could go by there any time. I thought he was a nice guy. Dennis Davis was not an obvious suspect. For one thing, he had what sounded like a solid alibi. He said he was with a girlfriend at his house on the night of the murder.

16:24Tracy Smith:Dennis told police he got a phone call from a friend and rushed to the crime scene, just in time to see Natalie being loaded into an ambulance.

16:36Tracy Smith:17 years after Natalie's murder, it was Dennis Davis' wife who made that call to police. Becky Davis had a feeling for years that her husband may have murdered Natalie, but never said anything until now. She was in therapy because her and her husband were going through a divorce, and the therapist said, you need to call the police. It was a tantalizing lead, but not nearly enough to make an arrest. So Walsh hit the road.

17:14Tracy Smith:And tracked down this woman, Amparo Garcia Crow, who was Dennis Davis's alibi.

17:29Tracy Smith:Amparo, come on in. Thank you. You come bearing journals, my goodness. Yes. Amparo Garcia Crow is a writer and performer. Here, let me help you. At the time, the cops never questioned her, but if they had, she would have told them there's no way she was with Dennis that night, and she can prove it. These are all your journals? Not all of them. That's just one box of probably about four years and I've had them for 30 years. Because she's kept detailed journals since the late 70s. At this time in my life I was writing every day. I kind of really wanted to get, in a way, a psychological picture of myself because the mind likes to change things if you don't, you know.

18:12Tracy Smith:It's clear from her journals Amparo knew both Dennis and Natalie. Dennis had a party recently, and I met the woman that he's seen, who was Natalie. Who was Natalie? In fact, around the time of Natalie's murder, Amparo had also been dating Dennis Davis. There was kind of a shyness to him. But Amparo says, according to her journal, she ended up dating Dennis for only about three weeks, before going back to an old boyfriend named Hal. I had gone back to Hal, and that's what I'm writing here. We're kind of in a honeymoon stage. That was the week before Natalie was killed. You stopped dating Dennis the Thursday.

18:53Tracy Smith:It's that Thursday before the assault. Dennis had told police he and Amparo had been in bed together when the dramatic phone call came, telling him that Natalie had been assaulted. But there's no mention of any of this in Amparo's diary. I'm a writer. I'm a dramatist. I know if I'm impacted by something, I log it. It would be in here if you were with Dennis that night. Absolutely. I'd be working it out. It would be so shocking. If a phone call had come in the middle of the night, I would remember that phone call and being woken up at his house in the middle of the night. That never happened. It wasn't exactly a smoking gun, but if Amparo's story is true, then Dennis is lying, and his alibi is worthless.

19:41Tracy Smith:Detective Walsh was energized by this new information, and it opened new doors, Walsh discovered another woman who revealed a very different side of the supposedly mild-mannered Dennis Davis. The first sign was he would just get beet red. His eyes would bulge out. That's when you knew, time to go.

20:13Tracy Smith:Austin, Texas, 1985.

20:19Tracy Smith:Rock and roll reigns supreme. The party was fueled by the warm Texas sun and plenty of beer and booze. You guys were all into the music scene. What was that like? Oh, there were just so many, you know, people that were up and coming. And everybody would go to so many clubs here and watch them play and then watch them grow. Linda Bless moved to Austin in 1984. She worked on tours with major rock acts. And Linda would turn out to be a key witness in the investigation into her friend, Dennis Davis. There were two different sides of Dennis. One was the very sweet, caring side. The other side, you didn't know when it was going to come out.

21:13Tracy Smith:Linda says she saw glimpses of this darker side, a Dennis Davis who was jealous, angry, even violent. It was almost like a screaming inside, you know, like, ugh. What would set him off? It always seemed to pertain to women. His previous best friend told me one time that the only time that he ever saw Dennis get angry was when another man would be paying attention to a woman that he was with and the rage would come.

21:52Tracy Smith:In 2008, Detective Walsh went looking for Dennis to question him about Natalie's murder, and he found him in a jail cell in Pennsylvania, serving two months on a DUI. The interview starts out friendly. You're like the king. Yeah, it's good to be the king. Absolutely. Looks like he's your pal. Yeah, he was my pal. But not for long. Walsh wants to tie Dennis to Natalie's murder and the likely murder weapon, a baseball bat. Did you have a small bat?

22:28Tracy Smith:Dennis says he never had a baseball bat. He never had one. He had not just one, but he had a couple of them. In fact, Linda says, one night at a party at Dennis' house... All of a sudden, Dennis showed up in the doorway with this bat in his hand. Linda says Dennis was heading for his girlfriend. I just got up and pushed him into the bedroom, or, you know, had him go into the bedroom and put the bat down and, come on, let's go outside. And Walsh found tangible evidence of this angry side. Do you think you were jealous? I think I was starting to get a little bit. This is about the note. Sitting in the case file, a note left for Natalie from a jealous Dennis about her new boyfriend.

23:26Natalie, you can go to hell. I take that with you. If you don't have the brains and self-respect to see through his b****, then f*** you, DD.

23:39Tracy Smith:The case against Dennis is getting stronger. The broken alibi. The baseball bat. The angry note. Next, Walsh tracks down an ex-girlfriend named Galinda, who tells the most damning story of them all. Dennis had been in a rage and was crying, and he was laying down in the fetal position, and he told her that he had killed or he had murdered Natalie were the words that she said he used. He confessed to her. He confessed to her. And that was enough. In 2009, 24 years after Natalie Antonetti's murder, Austin police arrested Dennis Davis.

24:34Tracy Smith:Johnny had never imagined that Dennis was capable of killing his mom. People around town that knew me at times might have said, you know, I think Dennis did this. And I'll always be like, really? Like, he's such a, like a nondescript kind of dude. You thought he was a wimp. I thought he was kind of wimpy, yeah. But to Johnny, Detective Walsh was no wimp. When I first met Tom Walsh, it was like, this guy was actively, you know, working on this case. from the moment I met him, I never doubted that he was going to do this.

25:22He would never out and out say that he murdered Natalie. Towards the end of the whole interrogation, I said to him, what do you think? And he said, you think I did it?

25:34Tracy Smith:What was your reaction when you were told that he was going to be arrested for your mom's murder? Everything made sense. All the weird cryptic questions that Tom Walsh was calling me every once in a while. I was like, do you remember Chevy Malibu? Like, no. Do you remember this? Like, do you remember this guy saying this? Like, nope. And it all made sense. And Johnny suddenly looked at Dennis in a new light. He was a bad, jealous, violent guy. Dennis Davis says he didn't murder Natalie and can't believe that Johnny thinks he did. Johnny should know better. He knew me. I didn't do this horrible crime.

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27:28Everybody wants to get on this train. It's a cold case. Everybody wants to solve this case.

27:33Tracy Smith:Wade Russell is a Texas attorney. He's been a lawyer for 30 years and riding motorcycles more than 40. And he began working for Dennis Davis when he was arrested in 2009. The investigator wants to solve this case. Everybody wants to be a hero. The problem is, Wade says, there just isn't enough evidence against Dennis to convict. His client, he says, is an innocent man. The detective in this case knew that the neighbor identified someone who didn't look like Dennis Davis. And that neighbor is the only eyewitness, the man who called minutes after Natalie's attack to report a prowler carrying a baseball bat.

28:18This neighbor identified a person, a tall, blonde man. My client's about 5 '6", 5 '7", slight build, curly, dark hair. He is not the person the neighbor identified.

28:31Tracy Smith:So if Dennis Davis didn't kill Natalie, who did? I think it's very possible that Marty Odom committed the offense. That's Marty Odom, the rapist, who was living near Natalie at the time of her murder, the man cops once thought was their best suspect. He claimed to know the victim in this case, and we also know he's very violent. He was violent with his girlfriend, he was violent with his ex-wife. He took a polygraph, and he flunked the polygraph. The polygraph operator said, I'm 100 % sure he committed the offense. The guy who ran the lie detector test said he was 100 % sure that Marty Odom killed Natalie?

29:08Yes.

29:09Tracy Smith:That I'm innocent. That I didn't do it. Dennis Davis, the man in hot water for this once cold case, in his only TV interview. Through your eyes, who was Natalie Antonetti? She was a very vivacious, lively, energetic young woman. When she answered the phone, she went, hello? Just like that. Dennis told us he truly cared for Natalie, and that's why he wrote that angry note about her new boyfriend. A musician. One of my pet peeves in this world is when I see young women get involved with musicians who just drag them down. In the note, Dennis told Natalie to go to hell. That was a pretty angry note.

29:57Tracy Smith:Yes, it was. Doesn't it sound like the guy that wrote that note would be capable of harming Natalie, the guy who's angry? Getting mad writing a note is a far cry from killing somebody. You wrote a nasty note, oh, you're capable of murder. Everything gets blown out of proportion. But how does he answer Galinda's story about his confession? She exaggerated. So what's the real story? I just told her, I told her some things. I said, it's my fault that Natalie died. If I hadn't upset her that night, that day, she'd still be alive today. The night she was attacked, Natalie went out for a short walk by the pool near her apartment.

30:42I think someone spotted her or followed her or she ran into someone out the pool and then they came back later. And then killed her? Yeah. Did you ever hurt Natalie? No, never. Did you kill Natalie? No, I did not. I'm absolutely sure. I wouldn't do something like that. You have a victim who has no defensive wounds. It's not a burglar. It's not a rapist. Somebody was exceptionally angry at her. There's one candidate for that, Dennis Davis.

31:20Tracy Smith:Austin Assistant District Attorney Mark Pryor. This is the first case I've ever lost sleep over. This was a very tough case. Mark Pryor's co-counsel was Efrain De La Fuente. Being a cold case, a 1985 case, and here you are trying it in the year 2011. The prosecution's case wasn't just cold. It was almost entirely circumstantial. Yeah, I just wake up at night and I'd wonder about, could we do this? Could we bring Johnny Justice? When I went in and met with Efrain De La Fuentes and with Mark Pryor, they never said, don't get your hopes up. I think Efrain said, I don't know, Johnny, brother, this is going to be tough.

32:01Tracy Smith:April 2011, Natalie Antonetti's brutal and unexplained murder, unsolved for 26 years, is finally going to trial. The evidence is going to show that this man, Dennis Davis, split her scar as she lay on the couch in her apartment. The evidence is going to show that this man, Dennis Davis, left a trail of breadcrumbs, small mistakes that eventually, after two decades, led the police to his door. The prosecution's case may be circumstantial, but they do have that phone call that started it all. The statement that the defendant had made was that he had sinned against God and man. The woman who made that call was Rebecca Davis.

32:51The defendant's white.

32:54Tracy Smith:And they have Amparo, who denies being with Dennis on the night of the murder. Linda Bless, who remembers him carrying a baseball bat. And Galinda, his ex-girlfriend, who says he confessed to murder. He told her. He flat-out told her. I killed her. I killed Natalie Antonetti. Attorney Wade Russell reminds the jury there was no physical evidence against Dennis at all. You're not going to hear any DNA evidence. You're not going to find any hair samples. You are not going to hear from any eyewitnesses that saw Dennis Davis at the crime scene. Dennis would choose not to take the stand. There is not proof beyond reasonable doubt.

33:39And everyone knows that as you sit here.

33:43Tracy Smith:This case would be all about truth and lies. Did you have a small bat? He lied in the interview. Didn't have a bat. Says it twice. His ex-girlfriend was beaten to death with a bat. He owned a bat. He knew he had one. He just lied. This is ludicrous. It's ludicrous. It's reasonable doubt after reasonable doubt. All right, ladies and gentlemen, jury, you may retire to the jury room at this time. In less than four hours... The defendant please rise. The jury was back with their verdict. The state of Texas v. Dennis Davis in the 167th District Court, Travis County, Texas verdict the jury. We, the jury, find the defendant...

34:45The defendant, please rise.

34:49We, the jury, find the defendant, Dennis Davis, guilty of the offensive murder as alleged in the indictment signed by the foreperson.

34:57Tracy Smith:Guilty of Natalie Antonetti's murder. It was 26 years since Natalie was killed, but it was not too late for Johnny. I was so grateful. I mean, I was overcome.

35:14and it was hard to hold in. My aunts and I were squeezing each other's hands so hard, it was unbelievable.

35:25Tracy Smith:The next day was Davis' sentencing hearing, and the star witness was a shocker. I am begging the mercy of the court. It was his ex-wife, Becky Davis, the woman who started it all with her phone call to police.

35:43Now, you're aware, of course, a call that you made to the police got this investigation started. Yeah, yeah.

35:52Tracy Smith:Amazingly, Becky, who once turned her husband in to police, is now standing by her man. I don't understand that he forgave me. He just said, Becky, why didn't you ask me? I could have told you what happened. And he not once got mad at me. Sometime after she made that fateful phone call, Becky reconciled with Dennis. Now they're back together, and she says she can't live without him. I can't do things. I can't pay my bills. I can't lift anything. I can't operate without him. I don't know what I'm going to do now. The judge was not persuaded. The defendant would please rise. At this time, the court assesses your punishment out of a term of 36 years.

36:58Tracy Smith:After court, Wade Russell says the defense was gutted. they weren't allowed to present evidence of Marty Odom as an alternative suspect. We had a strong, very strong circumstantial case against Marty Odom. Marty Odom is the rapist who seemed to match the eyewitness description. Thank you very much. But Wade never got to tell that story in court. You had this other guy that you think killed Natalie, but you couldn't tell the jury? I was not allowed to tell the jury that. It's like trying a case with your hand behind your back. The jury, in essence, heard half a case. They didn't get the whole case.

37:36Does that sound like a fair trial to you? It does not to me.

37:39Tracy Smith:If you have a guy at the scene who says he saw somebody with a baseball bat, that's a pretty strong witness. At face value, it is. But he changed the description of the guy that he'd seen. First of all, he said he was six feet tall. And then we had a month later that same witness picking out somebody who was Dennis Davis' size. And there was never any evidence that Marty Odom actually knew Natalie. To Mark Pryor, Dennis Davis all but convicted himself. It occurred to me very early on that we had a defendant who, in many ways, always wanted to confess to this. He gave an alibi that could have easily been broken.

38:19We had him making admissions to his wife, Becky Davis, and then basically a flat-out confession to Galinda Mudgett. The guilty conscience needs to confess. And I think that's what we had here.

38:33Tracy Smith:Even after the verdict, Dennis Davis says he's innocent of this crime. And he can't believe he ended up here, in a Texas state prison, for the next 36 years. I was shocked. I was completely shocked. Let's go back to how this all started. How do you feel about Becky calling police back in 2006? I couldn't understand why she would do something like that. She told me that I scared her one night. In 2006, Dennis and Becky had a huge fight in their backyard. I was swinging a swage that I used to chop wood. It's a big, heavy thing, and I was swinging it around the backyard, and I was angry, but I scared her.

39:19Tracy Smith:Soon after that fight, Becky made her phone call to police about the statement Dennis made almost 17 years earlier. He had said, quote, I've sinned against God and man. And when you heard that, your wife essentially saying, I think he's capable of murder. Well, she didn't say murder, but I guess that's what it is.

39:42Tracy Smith:Johnny says he's satisfied now, even though his mother's case could have been solved years earlier. I think that definitely those women, Galinda Namely and his wife Rebecca, were scared. I think they were scared of us. They could have solved your mom's murder 25 years ago if somebody would have spoken up. They could have. And then they also could have not talked. I'm just grateful that they did come forward when they did. I'm really lucky. We're lucky we got that call.

40:18The most important person in my life is never there, no matter what, all the time. My favorite person is never there.

40:32I have this great photograph of us when we went to Memorial Day BBQ. I was like 14 years old. And they had asked us to get involved in a softball game, and we were the ones that were barefooted, running on gravel. She was so excited that she and I had won. And so there's a picture of us after the game together with kind of these big smirks on our faces. Like you couldn't have done it without the barefooted Cubans.

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41:56Tracy Smith:Two years after Dennis Davis was sent to prison, an appeals court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial. The reason, Davis' lawyer, was ineffective, especially in failing to submit more evidence to the trial judge about the alternate suspect. If Russell had done that, the jury might have been able to hear about Marty Odom after all.

42:23Tracy Smith:In April 2014, Davis walked out of prison, a man with a second chance at freedom. Dennis, how do you feel right now? I'm in shock. I'll let you know as soon as I start feeling again. As for Johnny Gowdy's reaction, he thinks the jury got it right the first time, that Dennis Davis killed his mother. In 2018, the prosecution dismissed the case against Dennis Davis.

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