Polly Klaas’ Mother Plans to Work to Prevent Child Abuse

In her first interview since her daughter’s body was found, Polly Klaas’ mother said Sunday that she will soon being working toward helping children.

“I think it’s going to be in preventing child abuse, because that’s where it starts,” Eve Nichol told the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa.

Nichol, who pleaded for her daughter’s return when Polly was abducted Oct. 1, went into seclusion after her daughter’s body was found more than two months later near Cloverdale.

The mother said she believes that Richard Allen Davis, 39, who has been charged with kidnaping and murdering Polly, acted alone.

“I think his choice of her was random,” she said. “It was just a hideous accident.

“It’s real important that people understand that it was random, and it can happen to them,” she said.

Stricter laws against recidivists might have prevented her daughter’s death, she said.

“This repeat offender thing is just an atrocity,” she said. “That is the thing we can change most profoundly and most quickly. . . . For me, bottom line, he should not have been walking the streets.”

Davis has spent more than half of his adult life in prison and was paroled in June after serving eight years of a 16-year sentence for kidnaping.