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Tape of Mother’s 911 Call Played as Klaas Murder Trial Opens : Courts: Prosecution suggests that defendant Richard Allen Davis stalked the 12-year-old girl before kidnapping her from her bedroom and strangling her.

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Times Legal Affairs Writer

On the opening day of the Polly Klaas murder trial Tuesday, prosecutors played an emotional tape of the 911 call Polly’s mother made to police and suggested that Richard Allen Davis stalked the child before kidnapping and strangling her.

The burly, graying defendant, whose long criminal history spurred passage of the state’s “three strikes” sentencing law, sat blankly beside his public defenders in a black, long-sleeve shirt and gray jeans. He looked down or straight ahead as the prosecution declared that he had gone to Polly’s house with straps and a hood made from a woman’s slip--materials used to restrain the girl before her death.

Sonoma County Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Jacobs delivered the state’s opening statement matter-of-factly, trying to show that Davis had plotted Polly’s murder and betrayed no signs of impairment from alcohol or drugs.

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The prosecution intends to show jurors three videotapes of Davis, including one in which he demonstrates for police how he strangled Polly, and two tape recordings. Jacobs also indicated that the government will argue that Davis had a pattern of abducting and sexually assaulting women and probably would have strangled others had they not escaped.

Polly’s father and stepmother and three of her grandparents sat in the front row, occasionally grasping each other as gruesome details of the girl’s remains were reported. Her mother has not attended any of the court proceedings.

Marc Klaas, Polly’s father, listened as Davis was quoted describing the girl to police as a “f----- little broad.” Asked about his angry stares at Davis, Klaas said: “If I had a gun, it would have been a bullet boring into the back of his head.”

For the first time, he, other family members and the media heard the tape-recorded voice of Eve Nichol, Polly’s mother, painfully reporting the abduction.

Polly was having a slumber party in her Petaluma home on that Friday, Oct. 1, 1993. Her mother came into her bedroom and asked her and her two friends to go to bed. The girls had played a board game and were laughing and joking around, putting ghostly makeup on Polly.

After her mother returned to her bedroom, separated only by a bathroom from Polly’s, the girls finally decided to prepare for sleep. When Polly opened her bedroom door to fetch sleeping bags about 10:30 p.m., Davis was on the other side, the prosecution said.

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According to the girls, he ordered them to the ground, threatened to cut their throats and tied and gagged them.

About 30 minutes after he left with Polly, the two other girls managed to free themselves and woke Polly’s mother. At first, the prosecution said, Nichol thought it was a joke. Talking to a police dispatcher, she sounded disoriented and uncertain. Her voice finally rose with anxiety and turned hoarse as she seemed to grasp that her daughter was really gone.

“Uh, apparently a man just broke into our house and took my daughter,” she said, as though she could not believe it. “I just woke up, and two girls here spent the night with my daughter.

“She is 12 1/2.” Her voice grew more desperate as she responded to the dispatcher’s questions. “She is not here . . . I didn’t even hear anything. I was asleep.”

The dispatcher asked to speak to one of the girls, and Kate McLean’s voice was heard.

“He took Polly away . . ., “ said the 12-year-old. “We heard the screen door bang shut.”

She described how the kidnapper had tied them, put pillowcases over their heads and promised to only rob and not to hurt them, and she told how their hands had begun to swell.

Her calm, mature tone finally turned tearful when she described her sore hands and related that she had not yet talked with her own mother. “I’ll call my mom,” she cried.

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The prosecution made its opening statement in the afternoon after six men and six women were selected and sworn in as jurors. Most are middle-aged. Three men and two women were selected as alternates.

Davis, 41, faces the death penalty and has pleaded not guilty. His trial was moved to San Jose after a Sonoma County judge concluded that he could not get a fair trial in the county where Polly lived.

After his arrest two months after the murder, Davis told police that he had gone to Petaluma that night looking for his mother, got “toasted” on beer and marijuana and apparently blacked out, recalling only Polly beside him in his car.

He eventually led police to her partially decomposed body, which he had hidden near Cloverdale in a berry bush under a piece of plywood.

Jacobs, showing color photographs and a map, said that Davis had been in Petaluma in the days before the kidnapping and expressed surprise when the burst into Polly’s room and found other girls there.

Several witnesses will put Davis near Polly’s home before the crime, Jacobs said, describing the neighborhood as the kind where children rode their bikes in the street and their skateboards on the sidewalk and walked to nearby stores for ice cream.

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Taped interviews will show that Davis seemed uncertain whether he had raped the girl, denying it at times but also saying he could not be sure, according to Jacobs. An autopsy was inconclusive, but the girl was found with her clothing pulled up to her chest.

The courtroom was packed Tuesday, and reporters and courtroom artists had to wait in line in the morning for seats, doled out a couple at a time as prospective jurors were dismissed. The trial is expected to last several months.

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