Polly Klaas’ Killer Was a ‘Nice Little Boy,’ Jurors Are Told

Jurors deciding whether Richard Allen Davis deserves to die for killing Polly Klaas heard fond recollections of the young Davis on Wednesday: rambunctious, lovable, “the best little boy.”

The defense, which hopes to persuade jurors that Davis was molded by forces beyond his control--a child cast adrift in a loveless, troubled household--began by calling his 91-year-old grandmother, Norma Watson Johnny.

Johnny, wearing a white bonnet tied under her chin, smiled and nodded as she recalled looking after Davis as a child.

“That’s my grandson,” she said, turning to Davis sitting at the defense table. “Nice little boy. I don’t know what he’s doing back there.”

Davis, 42, was convicted last month of murdering Polly after abducting her from her bedroom in Petaluma on Oct. 1, 1993. Jurors also found him guilty of the special circumstances of kidnapping, burglary, robbery and attempting a lewd act on a child.

The same jurors are now deciding if Davis should face execution or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

His grandmother, a Paiute Indian who lives in Nevada and said she never saw him much after he turned 10, occasionally struggled for dates and lost the thread of her narrative.

She said Davis was a sweet child. Once when she was killing chickens, she said, he came up to her and said, “Grandma, don’t kill the chickens because they are [his brother] Don’s friends.”

“We loved him,” she said. “We thought that he was the best little boy.”

She said Davis changed after his father gained custody of the five children he had with her daughter Evelyn.

Irene Davis, the defendant’s aunt by marriage, also said Davis’ father was a strict and stern character able to intimidate people with a look.

“His whole family was really scared of him,” she said.

Wednesday was the defense’s first major attempt to soften the effects of weeks of wrenching testimony about Polly’s final hours, when she was taken from a slumber party, strangled and then discarded in the undergrowth beside a highway.