Love Story to Tragedy: a Too-Often-Told Tale : Domestic violence: A young Orange County woman is slain by her ex-lover. It’s not that uncommon.

Waiting tables on the last night of her life, Tammy Davis knew danger was on the way. Every few minutes, she would peer nervously out the big glass windows of Bob’s Big Boy, convinced her ex-boyfriend would drive up with a gun.

The 19-year-old told friends that night that Brian Framstead, the man she once loved and the father of her child, had been demanding to see their baby before he began a six-month jail term. Frightened of his past outbursts, she had refused.

At work in Huntington Beach that evening, Davis couldn’t shake the fear that something bad was about to happen. She told a friend that Brian had access to guns. And she said, “If you hear any loud noises, it’s me.”

Less than an hour after she left work on Friday, Jan. 5, Davis was slumped on the porch of a nearby stranger’s home, blood soaking her red, white and blue uniform. Seconds before the gunshot, she had pounded on the front door, screaming, “Help me! Help me!”

Almost immediately, Framstead was the chief suspect. He called his mother, hysterical, saying he had hurt Tammy and now he was going to have to hurt himself. As California Highway Patrol officers closed in on him 19 hours later in a parking lot near Victorville, he doused himself with gasoline, struck a match and burst into flames.

For three weeks, Framstead, 29, has lain silently in critical condition at San Bernardino County Medical Center, burned over most of his body, one of his legs handcuffed to the bed. A murder charge hangs over his head. The prosecutors wait.

Anguished friends and relatives struggle in vain to understand how a love affair once bursting with “butterflies and roses,” as one relative said, could explode into unfathomable tragedy. Reaching for explanations, they mention fights over money. Tiffs over the baby. Bad blood with in-laws. A 10-year age gap that made Framstead, perhaps, more eager to settle down than his teen-age love.

But none of it makes sense of the ruined lives. Aware that Brian had been bothering Tammy, her friends and relatives had the sinking fear that something dreadful was coming. But some of Framstead’s friends say violence was completely out of character for a man given to jokes and broad smiles. Others say he was a man in secret turmoil, on the brink of suicide, so fragile that he couldn’t tolerate the rejection of the woman he loved and the separation from his baby. Some believe love made him obsessive, that he stalked and harassed his sweethearts rather than let them go.

Framstead’s parents, speaking publicly for the first time since the shooting, said they saw no signs that their son was veering toward tragedy until he took his roommate’s shotgun on Jan. 5.

“It was not my Brian that did that,” Jackie Framstead said, choking back tears. “It was not the Brian I know.”

Two of Davis’ closest friends declined to talk about it. Davis’ mother, Debbie Armantrout discussed the tragedy briefly and reluctantly.

“She was just a young girl that didn’t see the signs,” Armantrout said. “This just feels like a bad dream. It’s a nightmare and I won’t wake up.”

Those who work with domestic violence cases are alarmed. They see a frightening trend: “routine” cases of bruises and blackened eyes are being replaced by broken ribs, burst spleens, fractured skulls, death. Each year in Orange County, more and more women seek protection from the courts and from police. But the safety those institutions offer has its limits. And so it is that women like Davis find themselves alone and in fear of the men who love them.

Love bloomed for Davis and Framstead at Westbrook Lanes in Garden Grove, where he cleaned the alleys or worked the front desk. Davis, described as sweet-natured and vulnerable, had bowled there since she was a kid. Her mother worked the front desk. Framstead used to make Davis laugh. Their romance began in secret, since Davis, then almost 17, feared her mother’s disapproval, said Brian Tramison, a close friend of Framstead who worked at the bowling alley.

Around her 17th birthday, Davis became pregnant. Friends say the two were thrilled.

“I really saw a big change in him,” Tramison said. “He was taking responsibility, taking care of her. He was always with her. He’d carry her bowling stuff and her coat and he’d open doors for her. He was never like that with other girls. They really seemed like they were in love.”

Jackie Framstead said Brian “adored” Davis and was “ecstatic” about the pregnancy. Framstead’s father, Dick, said he remembers the roses and stacks of love letters from Tammy that piled up in his son’s room. Brian saved the flowers long after the blooms had faded.

In March 1988, it was Tammy’s time. The young mother found a way to name her daughter after the man she loved: Briana.

For a while, things seemed fine. Davis, Framstead and Briana lived with Davis’ mother and brother in the Garden Grove mobile home where she had grown up. Tramison said Tammy and the baby would attend Brian’s softball games. But neighbors said a change came over the couple. Tammy seemed downcast and they heard quarrels from inside the trailer. “There was a gloom over that mobile home,” said neighbor Rick Salazar.

“I had a feeling the young man (Framstead) was filled with all kinds of turmoil,” said Ann Decker, the bowling alley supervisor who knew them both. “And here was a girl (Davis) struggling with so many stresses. I saw her vacillate between her fear of Brian, her love of Brian, the fact that he was the father of her child and that her family was strongly opposed to him.”

In late March last year, Davis and Briana moved in with her mother, who had remarried and was living in Stanton. A relative of Davis said she was furious because Framstead spent money irresponsibly and neglected Briana, charges Framstead’s mother denies. Tramison said Framstead blamed himself for the breakup, believing perhaps he had spent too little time at home.

Things took a turn for the worse on April 22. Davis went to the trailer to retrieve Briana after a visit. Framstead knocked her to the floor and strapped tape over her mouth, according to court documents. He later told friends he was desperate to reunite his family and just wanted to make her listen. He laid a gun on the table; she listened.

A few days later, Davis obtained a restraining order keeping Framstead away from her and the baby. He was slapped with misdemeanor assault charges, and ultimately pleaded guilty to brandishing a weapon. He was to begin serving his six-month jail term Jan. 7, two days before Davis was shot.

After that April confrontation, Jackie Framstead said, Brian “cried every day. He’d look at Briana’s picture and just bawl.” Framstead would say he didn’t want to end up like his own parents, who divorced in 1970, Jackie Framstead said.

Tramison said Brian told him later that he had planned to kill himself that day in the mobile home. “He was serious about it,” Tramison said. “It really scared me.”

But Framstead seemed to pull himself together, his mother said. He began seeing a psychiatrist. By November, his spirits were up and he borrowed money for a deposit on an apartment for him and Tammy, hoping they’d reunite, Dick Framstead said.

But Davis’ friends tell it a little differently. Tammy Hernandez, Davis’ friend and her boss at a Santa Ana thrift store, said Davis was scared to leave her night-shift job alone because Framstead had been waiting outside for her one evening.

“He put her through hell,” Hernandez said. “He wouldn’t leave her alone.”

Gerry Poynter, 24, dated Davis for a few months after she split up with Framstead. About 1 a.m. one morning last summer, Framstead tailed him as he left Davis’ house, Poynter said. He forced Poynter’s car into the left turn lane on deserted Beach Boulevard, walked around to the driver’s window and demanded to know what Poynter was doing with Davis, Poynter said. When told they were dating, Framstead said, “You’d better watch out,” Poynter said. On another occasion, Poynter said, after his car was parked in front of Davis’ house for half a day, he found his fuel line sliced.

Kathleen Benkowski, 27, who lived with Framstead for nine months before he met Davis, said that when she ended their relationship, she “couldn’t get rid of him.”

“He kept calling and coming over to see me whether I wanted him to or not,” Benkowski said. “He’d show up at odd hours knocking on my door. Once when I went to work at 5 a.m. he was out there in his car, waiting for me. It was a little scary.”

But Jackie and Dick Framstead said they never knew of those incidents.

“He was a happy-go-lucky kid with an easy temper,” Jackie Framstead said. “He was a kind and caring person. He loved his family. If Brian was your friend, you had a darn good friend.”

But friendships can sour. Barbara J. Phillips, director of Community Service Programs, which administers the county’s domestic violence assistance project, said that since 1982, the number of restraining orders sought in domestic violence cases in Orange County has increased 666%. Between 90% and 94% are filed by women.

But only a few of those who need help go to court. Figures compiled by the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Statistics show that calls to law enforcement for help in domestic violence situations are increasing in Orange County and statewide. In 1987, Orange County police agencies received 10,955 such calls for help. In 1988, the number rose to 11,265.

Phillips said court orders can offer only limited protection and cannot stop someone intent on injuring or killing.

“The victim unfortunately has to take responsibility to see that it gets enforced” by calling the police, she said.

Court officials say the violence is worsening. One experienced judicial officer who sits in family law court said that at one point last year, the tension in family law court and in the hallway, where spurned lovers and battered spouses come face to face, “was so thick you could cut it with a knife.”

“It started happening more and more that I saw them walk out of court and knew nothing could protect them,” the court commissioner said. Marshal patrols were stepped up in the hallway.

Many who study domestic violence feel it is the reporting of the abuse, not the abuse itself, that is on the rise. Among them is Murray A. Straus, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire and a widely known expert on domestic violence. He said he “applauds” the increase in protective court orders and calls to police because it means women are taking advantage of the protections the system can offer.

Police reports and friends say Davis was the one who reached out to Framstead for a reconciliation, calling in November and asking to see him. Framstead’s mother recalls that he was “ecstatic,” asking for money to put gas in his car so he could meet Davis.

Tramison said it “seemed like the old days” again. Tammy and Briana were back in the stands at softball games and Brian sneaked off the field at every chance to give Tammy kisses, Tramison said. In a Christmas card, he asked his father to bless their upcoming marriage, Dick Framstead said.

But things went awry around the holidays. Accounts on this period differ. But most agree a pivotal incident was New Year’s Eve, when Davis told Framstead she was staying home. But then he found her at a party in a local motel room with a girlfriend and two male friends. He flew into a rage, reportedly tearing the screen off a window, Davis’ friends told police.

In the days after that, Jackie Framstead said, her son was disconsolate and felt betrayed.

“He said, ‘Mom, I could never ever trust a woman again,’ ” she recalled.

Davis’ sense of dread deepened. She quit taking his calls. Her mother has said she tried to contact Framstead’s parole officer, without success. On Friday, Jan. 5, Framstead called repeatedly, asking to see Briana. When Tammy’s mother got word of these calls, she left work abruptly, worried.

Police reports say Jackie Framstead was convinced her son would kill himself that day when he left her house about 4 p.m., very upset, and saying, “Tell everybody I’m sorry.” Jackie Framstead does not recall that now. She says the first sign of trouble came when he called around midnight, frantic, saying he had “hurt” Tammy. Panicked, she called Bob’s Big Boy. A police officer answered and said Tammy had been in an accident.

While the officer was still on the line, the operator broke through with an emergency call from Brian. This time, he said he loved Tammy and his mother, Jackie Framstead recalled.

“The third time he called, he said he’d hurt Tammy and that it wasn’t fair, that now he was going to have to hurt himself,” Jackie Framstead said.

The fourth time, he told her he’d left the gun in a flower bed near where Tammy was found and asked her to tell the Huntington Beach police where it was, she said. He also asked her to find out how Tammy was and said he’d call back. He never did.

“He kept saying, ‘I love her,’ not, ‘I loved her,’ ” she said, noting her son’s use of the present tense. “I don’t think he realized what he’d done.”

In his Inglewood apartment, Framstead left a four-page letter referred to in police reports as a suicide note. Jackie Framstead only read a small portion of it before police confiscated it, she said. It was signed, “Please forgive me,” she said.

Framstead’s friends still don’t understand what snapped inside him. They have their theories. But many, like Al Henry, 53, a lifetime friend, say it doesn’t sound like the Brian they know.

“He was like a son to me,” Henry said. “I think he was just overwhelmed by the love of the girl and didn’t know what to do. It confused him. He was obsessed with her. He just wasn’t the kind of boy who would do anything wrong. The family dream was what he wanted, to marry and settle down. Something just exploded inside him.”

Tammy’s friends console themselves with memories. Poynter, her ex-boyfriend, said she was “the kind of person (who) could have a terrible day and see someone else who’s down in the dumps and make them feel like things were OK.”

“She always saw the good in everything,” he said, fighting tears. “One night we were driving and there was a full moon and she said, ‘Look, see the smiling face on the moon?’ I looked up and I saw the face. Now every time I see a full moon, I see that smile and I think of her.”