Fear, Anger, Calls for Action Are Legacy of Polly’s Death : Violence: Nation is outraged by crime’s horror and suspect’s felony record. Pressure grows for tougher laws.

In a society where violent crime has become commonplace, it is rare for a single brutal act to stand out. But the abduction and murder of Polly Klaas have bruised the psyche of a nation that is no longer so easy to shock.

In small towns and big cities alike, the innocent-looking 12-year-old’s awful fate drove home the disturbing message that youngsters are not safe even in their own bedrooms.

Children as young as 5 are reporting fears that some monster will come and snatch them from their homes, just like Polly. For some adults, the case has awakened buried memories of sexual abuse. In Petaluma, suburban children no longer walk alone or ride the bus by themselves.

And in many communities, Polly’s story has caused tormented parents to rush out to buy watchdogs or new locks and to lie awake nights worrying about how they can watch their children every moment.

“She truly has touched a chord in everybody,” said Molly McVay, who moved with her 10-year-old daughter to Sonora in the Sierra Nevada Gold Country to escape the violent atmosphere of big city life. After Polly’s body was found, McVay and her daughter had a heartfelt talk about the girl whose face was on flyers all over town.

“This is the one thing that’s shaken me,” McVay said. “There is no place to go. There is no place that’s safe.”

More than any other recent crime, the Polly story has also roused thousands of people who never met her and given impetus to a new wave of activism by those angry about how violence has insinuated itself into daily life.

“It is a call to action,” said Lois Salisbury, executive director of the advocacy group Children Now and the mother of an 11-year-old daughter. “This is beyond everybody’s nightmare.”

Polly’s case first captured wide attention because of its singular horror: She was taken from her bedroom at knifepoint by a man who simply walked into the house, came upstairs and grabbed her during a slumber party. Her mother, Eve Nichol, slept in a nearby room.

Soon, Polly’s brown eyes and sweet smile jumped off flyers posted in windows from Mendocino to New England and turned up in MTV videos and on personal computer screens worldwide. “She has the most natural, innocent beauty about her,” said McVay. “There is something about her that is completely unsullied.”

The nature of her death--apparently at the hands of a parolee who narrowly escaped a brush with the law an hour after the kidnaping--has given a focus to the pain. Nichol remained in seclusion, but on Tuesday Polly’s distraught father, Marc Klaas, held his first news conference since her body was found and called for stricter laws to protect children from violent criminals.

Looking pale and gaunt, Klaas urged that the energy and public interest created by his daughter’s abduction be channeled into an overhaul of the nation’s criminal justice system

“The bottom line is we cannot afford to ignore the right of our children to a safe world,” said Klaas, wearing a lavender ribbon in memory of his daughter. Striving for that, he said “would be the greatest memorial for Polly.”

The case may become yet another high-profile California crime that prompts tougher laws. In the 1980s, the case of Lawrence Singleton, who hacked off the arms of a 15-year-old girl and served only seven years in prison, led to stronger penalties for such vicious crimes. And the case of Patrick Edward Purdy, who killed five schoolchildren at a Stockton schoolyard, helped spur passage of a ban on assault rifles.

Leaders of the massive volunteer search that spread out from Petaluma after the Oct. 1 kidnaping--about 10 million flyers were circulated--asked supporters to take down their flyers and write a message on the back to their legislators urging the passage of laws to better protect children.

“I want to round up all the kids, lock arms and not let anybody near them,” said Joanne Gardner, a country music video producer. She worked as a volunteer at the Polly Klaas Foundation nearly every day after the kidnaping.

“It’s like a war-torn nation here (in Petaluma),” she said. “People are locking their doors and they have to go find their key because it’s been in a drawer for 15 years.”

Politicians of varying stripes are calling for tougher laws to keep people like Polly’s accused killer--a twice-convicted kidnaper on parole after serving half of a 16-year sentence--behind bars longer.

Others call for better intervention and treatment to prevent people like the suspect, Richard Allen Davis, from becoming violent career criminals. Davis, who was arraigned Tuesday in Santa Rosa, had been in trouble with the law all his life.

In Polly’s case, the debate has already begun over what kind of changes in the law would best protect children.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and groups such as the National Rifle Assn. have thrown their support to the so-called “three strikes and you’re out” initiative that would require life terms without possibility of parole for those convicted of three felonies. Gov. Pete Wilson, in expressing his sorrow at Polly’s murder, said he might support the measure.

Others, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, have called for a change in sentencing laws so that violent criminals serve their full sentences if they pose a threat to society.

“This is a man who in my opinion should never have been released in the first place, and yet he was,” the senator said.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a liberal Democrat who represents Petaluma and lives 10 blocks from the house where Polly was abducted, also is calling for stricter penalties and tougher parole standards.

David Collins, who started the Kevin Collins Foundation after his son, Kevin, disappeared on a San Francisco street 10 years ago, said the central problem is that government agencies have not devoted enough resources to tracking the kind of criminals who repeatedly abuse children.

“These case are happening every day,” said Collins, who helped organize the Polly Klaas search effort. “What’s being done to identify and prosecute and incarcerate is practically nothing.”

While public support grows for the “three strikes” idea, some criminologists say that simply building more prisons and locking up more people is not the answer.

“We have quadrupled the number of people in prison but they don’t seem to be the right people,” said former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, now a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “Law enforcement ought to be concentrating more on crimes against women and children. Instead, the major resources are going into the war on drugs and it can’t be won.”

To reduce child abuse, said Children Now policy director Joseph Liu, one important aim must be to help abused children must be helped to recover from their trauma so they do not become child abusers.

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this story.