INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A Kansas City, Kansas, truck driver has been preliminarily charged with the murders of two women during the 1990s.
52-year-old Gary Dion Davis is being held in the Wyandotte County jail on a $500,000 bond after detectives working under a newly formed cold case unit connected him to the crimes through DNA evidence, authorities said Wednesday.
Davis is accused of killing Christina King, a 26-year-old mother who was found beaten to death on Christmas Day 1996 behind an abandoned building.
He is also facing charges for the fatal stabbing of Pearl Barnes, who also went by Sameemah Musawwir, who was found a month earlier in a vacant house, the Kansas City Star reported.
Detectives are continuing to investigate the circumstances behind the killings Davis is accused of, Kansas City Police Chief Karl Oakman said in a conference.
Investigators found no information to suggest Davis knew either of the women. His department is working with other law enforcement agencies as police suspect he may have been involved in other violent crimes.
“We believe that once we’re done with the investigation that we may be able to connect him to other cases, but we still need the public’s help,” Oakman said. “We’ve reached out to other agencies, going through their cold cases. But, in my experience, based on him killing two women, most likely he’s killed more.”
Oakman said Davis went on with “his normal life like nothing happened” after the alleged murders.
Activists in Wyandotte County, Kansas, had been calling for a cold case unit, specifically urging investigations into the unsolved killings of primarily Black women.
Oakman said the department had identified suspects in 11 cold homicide cases.
Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree praised the work of the cold case unit, saying the detectives worked “tirelessly” to bring closure on killings “so many had forgotten.”
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