David Davis Preys on a Nurse on the Rebound
(“Horse Play,” Forensic Files)
Shannon Mohr’s romance started out as a fairy tale and ended as a cautionary tale: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
The “it” in this case was David Davis, a self-proclaimed millionaire.
As YouTube commenter BellaMarley1 wrote: “Never trust anyone who tells you he’s a millionaire…nobody decent would do that.”
Fortune hunter. Maybe it’s not so much decency as wisdom. People with a lot of money usually know that announcing it can attract scammers and gold diggers or at least mean getting stuck with the check.
Of course, David Davis didn’t need to worry about being victimized for his money — he didn’t actually have any.
He wanted a cash infusion and tried his hand at the ever-popular Forensic Files murder and insurance fraud combo.
Delving into personal history. For this week, I looked around for more information about what David Davis was doing in the eight years between Shannon Mohr’s homicide and his capture on a tropical island.
I also searched for biographical details on Shannon Mohr. Forensic Files mentioned only that she was a nurse who wanted a family.
So, let’s gallop into a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Horse Play,” along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Wholesome girl. Shannon Mohr was born on Sept. 1, 1954, in Toledo, Ohio, to a devout Catholic family.
The sweet, caring child was “daddy’s girl and mommy’s best friend,” according to a 2013 episode of Happily Never After.
She fulfilled her dream of becoming a registered nurse, but hadn’t made progress on the marriage and children front.
One night in 1979, she reluctantly went to a friend’s wedding without a date. She had recently broken up with a Toledo firefighter. “Go, maybe you’ll meet somebody,” her well-intentioned mother told her.
It worked.
At the nuptials, Shannon, 25, met David Davis, 35. He was handsome and charming enough to make her forget about the age difference.
Play for sympathy. David told her he owned farms all over the country and was worth seven figures.
He said that he was a veteran who had sustained an injury in the Vietnam War, then attended the University of Michigan, where he was on the football team — and played in the Rose Bowl — and graduated with a psychology degree.
Oh, and his fiancée died in a car wreck and he thought he’d never love again, he told Shannon, according to “Gallop to the Grave,” the Happily Never After episode about the case.
Shannon’s parents, Lucille and Robert Mohr, liked the charismatic bachelor, too. (Even the judge who later presided at the murder trial noted that he was smooth, articulate, and clever.)
Whirlwind romance. There were some negative indicators early on, nonetheless.
Shannon and David married in Las Vegas (bad sign) on Sept. 24, 1979, after knowing each other for eight weeks (really bad sign), and they took out $220,000 dollars of insurance on her eight days after the wedding (worst possible sign).
But the warning signs were probably lost amid all the joy of a new relationship.
Sole breadwinner. Shannon moved to David’s 100-acre farm in Hillsdale County, Michigan. He grew corn and soybeans. She got a nursing job at Flower Hospital in Sylvania.
Shannon’s pay was the only income the couple had, according to the Chicago Tribune, but he most likely came up with some Dirty John-esque story to explain it away. And the lovebirds weren’t together long enough to start arguing about money.
On July 23, 1980, just 10 months after the wedding, the couple rode their Tennessee walking horses to visit neighbor Dick Britton. While at Britton’s property, David helped him repair some machinery, and then he and Shannon trotted off toward home.
Teary-eyed. But David came rushing back to Britton’s house, saying Shannon’s mare bolted and Shannon hit her head on a rock.
Shannon was lying on her back with no shoes on and her blouse partly unbuttoned.
She was lifeless by the time the two men rushed her into the emergency room. Doctors attributed the death to head and spinal injuries.
Lucille and Robert Mohr arrived at the hospital to find David Davis crying.
Cash flow problem. In his grief, he managed to articulate that he wanted the body cremated, but he ultimately agreed to let the Mohrs bury Shannon back in Toledo.
David sheepishly told his in-laws that he couldn’t afford to pay for a funeral because his money was tied up in the farm and he didn’t have any life insurance on Shannon.
The Mohrs funded the funeral, which took a surprising turn when David Davis’ mother and stepfather, Joyce and Theodore Powell, showed up.
David had told the Mohrs he was an orphan.
Parents galore. His father, David Ellsworth Davis, was still alive, too. The Mohrs also discovered that their daughter’s husband wasn’t a millionaire, didn’t own multiple farms, hadn’t really served in Vietnam, never played college football, and hadn’t graduated.
So, who was he, really?
David Richard Davis was born in Flint on Sept. 27, 1944, and his parents split up when he was 12. His father described him as a good student at Southwestern High School who enjoyed archery and other outdoor activities.
Premium story. He had two daughters from a previous marriage, to a woman named Phyllis June Middleton (Shannon didn’t know he had an ex-wife). Phyllis and David lived together on the Michigan farm. Alleging physical abuse, she filed for a court protection order and the couple divorced in 1976, according to reporting from Gannett News Service on Jan. 10, 1989.
Phyllis probably didn’t realize how lucky she was to get out of that marriage alive — or maybe she didn’t have enough life insurance to put her in danger.
Although David denied it at first, he had a total of $330,000 in life insurance — the original policy plus some subsequent smaller ones — on Shannon Mohr. The policies were due to expire at the beginning of August 1980, just days after Shannon’s untimely death, according to the Sun-Sentinel, a Florida newspaper that always has great crime coverage.
David would later give various explanations for the existence of the policies, including that he didn’t pay attention and never knew about them, they each took out insurance on the other to help pay farm expenses in case one died, and that an insurance salesman sought them out and sold them on the idea of insurance.
Need that piece of paper. The Mohrs also discovered that David had plans to go on a trip to Florida with a girlfriend shortly after Shannon’s death, according to the Toledo Blade. David claimed he needed to get away and regroup — and his gal pal had invited herself.
While away, the grieving husband had neighbor Dick Britton forward him his mail. He needed multiple copies of Shannon’s death certificate for insurance purposes.
To the police, however, Shannon’s demise still looked like an accident, and they closed the case.
Intrepid reporter. The Mohrs launched a letter-writing campaign to persuade the Michigan attorney general’s office to continue investigating. Dick Britton also urged authorities to take a new look at the evidence against his former friend.
A month after Shannon’s death, her body was exhumed and an autopsy revealed a severe gash on her head and bruises on her face, hand, and arm.
Still, no forensic alarm bells sounded, and the case stayed closed.
Then, a Detroit Free Press reporter named Billy Bowles started poking around and discovered sketchy incidents from David’s past. He had twice profited from fire insurance on his farm — he “insured everything,” his father-in-law would later say — and collected worker’s compensation from a suspicious injury supposedly incurred while working for a car manufacturer.
Out at sea. Bowles also found out that David had taken some advanced courses in pharmacology at the University of Michigan. Investigators theorized that David used succinylcholine in the murder.
Michigan reopened the case of Shannon Mohr’s death.
Meanwhile, David had sold his Michigan property, collected five-figure payouts from Shannon’s smaller policies, and taken up residence on a sailboat in the Bahamas with a girlfriend. He was waiting for the final results of Shannon’s latest autopsy so he could get his hands on the bulk of the insurance money.
After a third autopsy, investigators farmed out lab work to Swedish scientists who had developed methods for detecting succinylcholine. They found high concentrations in two areas of Shannon’s body, suggesting someone had given her two shots of the drug, which is often used on horses.
Media aid. Investigators eventually concluded that the injections, not the head injury, killed Shannon. Succinylcholine paralyzes every muscle except the heart and makes it impossible to breathe without a ventilator. The drug probably left Shannon conscious as she slowly suffocated.
The authorities moved to arrest David Davis in Haiti in December 1981, but he fled, leaving his sailboat behind. He eluded them for eight years.
Then, Unsolved Mysteries broadcast an episode about the case.
A Beverly Hills dentist named Cheri Lewis later said that the fugitive looked like a man with odd thumbs whom she had dated, according to the Detroit Free Press. Lewis later noted that David garnered sympathy by speaking of his wife Shannon, “who drowned.”
And Hollywood stuntman Beau Gibson thought David Davis’ picture resembled his best buddy, “Rip Bell,” who had given him flying lessons, the Detroit Free Press reported.
You’re busted. But only one of David Davis’ associates — who remained anonymous — actually called the toll-free number on Unsolved Mysteries. The tipster said the fugitive was living under the name David Myer Bell in American Samoa, where he and his 23-year-old wife resided in a tin-roofed shack.
Four FBI agents arrested David Davis at Tafuna International Airport in Pago Pago, where he was working as a pilot for Pacific Island Airways. (He met his wife, Maria Koleti Sua, on the job. She also worked for the airline.)
He admitted his real identity and peacefully submitted to the arrest, according to the Detroit Free Press on Jan. 7, 1989.
Tropics-wear. “Oh God, I don’t know what to say,” Lucille Mohr told the Detroit Free Press upon her ex-son-in-law’s capture. “It has been eight years of hell…my heart’s coming out of my chest.”
At a stopover in Hawaii, David, 44, wore a blue and white Aloha shirt during FBI questioning, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
In addition to identifying himself as a pilot, David had posed as a doctor, nurse, and “even as a harpsichord player” while on the run, according to an FBI spokesman quoted in an AP account.
Only the pilot claim was genuine. He earned FAA certification while on the lam.
Cold-hearted husband. By the time the feds nailed him, the once-rugged-looking David Davis was “overweight, slovenly” and “gray-bearded” but he “nevertheless cut a dashing figure,” according to the Detroit Free Press.
His trial kicked off in November 1989.
The prosecution would conclude that on the day Shannon died, David Davis suggested they have sex outdoors. While Shannon was getting undressed, he sneaked up on her and gave her one or two shots of succinylcholine to immobilize and kill her, but she fought back before the drug took effect. She left scratch marks on his arm, which the Mohrs noticed at the hospital. (He said they came from tree branches he brushed by in his hurry to summon help for Shannon.)
He then staged the horse accident by hitting her head with the rock, the prosecution believed.
Popping the question. Early on, sheriff’s deputies had noticed that the rock with the blood on it was the only rock anywhere near the scene of Shannon’s death.
And evidence of David’s con jobs and lies came spilling out.
David had asked a series of women to marry him after knowing them for just weeks, investigators discovered. Shannon was apparently the first one who said yes.
A gal pal named Jeanne Hohlman testified that David said he was a CIA agent assigned to protect Shannon. After Shannon died, he told her the mission was over and they could start dating again, according to Happily Never After.
David Davis chose not to take the stand.
Escape from execution.The jury took 21⁄2 hours to find him guilty of first-degree murder. Noting that Shannon’s death by suffocation was “more despicable than a contract murder,” Hillsdale Circuit Judge Harvey Moes sentenced the wife-killer to life without parole.
Lucille Mohr said she wished Michigan still had the death penalty, but her husband noted that “being locked up in a cage the rest of his life is probably 100 times worse,” the Gannett News Service reported on Jan. 8, 1989
In captivity at Marquette Branch Prison, David continued to profess his innocence.
Bid rejected. “I could never have hurt her,” he told the Toledo Blade in 2001, still maintaining that Mohr fell from her horse and hit her head.
David filed an appeal with a federal court that year. There was continuing controversy over the lab work purported to reveal the presence of succinylcholine — a number of industry professionals regarded the tests as junk science — but it didn’t help David’s case much.
The real smoking guns were the insurance policies, David’s tall tales about his life, and the murder scene appearing staged.
He lost on appeal.
The death he deserved. In prison, David boycotted the television room when other inmates watched the TV movie about Shannon’ murder, according to the Toledo Blade story, which also noted he sported a “white beard and wrinkles.”
Ultimately, David got a taste of his own medicine.
He acquired neuromuscular disease and died at the age of 70 in a prison health care facility in 2014.
Lucille and Robert Mohr, who ultimately received the bulk Shannon’s life insurance payout, died in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
Intrepid cop. Billy Bowles, who Forensic Files viewers will remember from his appearance on the show, died the same year David Davis did. A colleague credited him with spending seven years toiling over a “10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle” until a picture emerged in the Shannon Mohr murder case.
According to the Chicago Tribune, another hero of the whodunit challenge was “tenacious state police officer Detective Sgt. Don Brooks,” who never bought the story that Shannon’s death was an accident. Brooks went on to appear on Forensic Files.
The obituary for Dick Britton, who died in 2021, notes that assisting with the investigation was among his favorite accomplishments. (Thanks to reader David Lewis for sending in the update.)
Shannon Mohr’s murder spawned many episodes of various true crime shows. No luck finding anywhere to see them for free online, but you can watch the made-for-TV movie, Victim of Love: The Shannon Mohr Story, on YouTube. The Philadelphia Inquirer called it “great trash TV.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
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Thanks, Rebecca, for this comprehensive update. I saw this ep a couple of weeks ago on UK tv. It’s not victim-blaming to question why judgement as to the ‘engagement’ duration was so short. How could she think she knew him even remotely adequately as a basis for marriage?
And is it fair to wonder whether most people would’ve thought his explanations to cover a multitude of oddities in those weeks before the wedding (and certainly after) were just too convenient? No parents; the former g/f died by accident; no obvious money despite ‘wealth’; seemingly a g/f in the background throughout this (he was off to Florida with her just after the death); and a large insurance policy despite his wealth – so why needed (unless that was fraudulently opened without her knowledge)? Is it unkind to ask what WAS she thinking…?
Significantly, though, what none of us can know is whether – too late – her alarm bell was ringing and she’d expressed this to him (albeit that he had to strike when he did to get the payout).
He was clearly an intelligent, resourceful man, to maintain quite successfully all the fiction, have used a plausible murder method, and elude police for so long.
‘BellaMarley1 wrote: “Never trust anyone who tells you he’s a millionaire…nobody decent would do that.”’ Yes, she’s wrong: many do – certainly those new to wealth – but by foolishness, not malevolence.
I wonder if he lied about his age to her – especially once he knew hers, just in case the 10-year difference might put her off? It would be insignificant to him within his grander web of lies.
The early-ish death was welcome, though it’s a shame Shannon’s parents pre-deceased him.
PS What a stupid remark by the ‘Press’: By the time the feds nailed him, the once-rugged-looking ‘David Davis was “overweight, slovenly” and “gray-bearded” but he “nevertheless cut a dashing figure,”’according to the Detroit Free Press. How is that description not contradictory?
That is an intriguing theory — that she was on to him, so he had to act fast.
Rebecca: My imagination’s in flight… I can see them riding together – perhaps she suggested it to lull him into a sense of security – then to pounce with some hard questions / allegations… But I’m persuaded by your report that the insurance policy was about the expire and he HAD to strike. Perhaps he couldn’t afford to renew the premium.
This raises some further questions: (i) was the insurer suspicious that the ‘accident’ happened in the first year of the policy (how often does it happen?) and maybe did some investigating; and (ii) and, in particular, that it happened days before the expiration? We know from other eps you’ve covered that suspicious insurers commission their own investigations, quite apart from police. If suspicious wasn’t raised – why? I suggest that if you or I were the insurer reviewing the claim, our eyebrows would raise. See the FF case of David Lee Fisher, who faked a hunting accident for life insurance, which the police accepted as accidental but the insurer didn’t:
https://murderpedia.org/male.F/f1/fisher-david-lee.htm
(I’m sure FF covered this but can’t find the ep). It’s a sad case of an 18-yr-old who seemed to be looking for a father-figure in Fisher but was appallingly betrayed.
Will be on the lookout for the Fisher case on FF — doesn’t ring any bells now.
As far as the insurance company in the Shannon Mohr case, it fought hard. It not only refused to give the money to David Davis but also gave the Mohrs a hard time when they tried to collect — saying that the policy was taken out under fraudulent circumstances, which was kind of true. Still, I’m glad the Mohrs got some compensation for the grief.
If David told his wife that his parents were dead, didn’t that cause a major red flag for everyone when they showed up at the wedding? I heard he told Shannon and her family that he was an orphan raised by nuns. Tragic story for everyone concerned including his own children.
Yes it did – which is why it and other discrepancies prompted the Mohrs to pursue suspicions. One wonders what Shannon was thinking well before the 10 months she was married expired. How could he possibly cover having little or no money in that time, having said he was wealthy? Surely for most people this just wouldn’t add up? She’d expect SOME signs of material wealth: cars, holidays, etc, and even ‘don’t work – there’s no need.’
It may well’ve been her disquiet at this that prompted him to murder her when he did: she was asking hard questions, or may have threatened/planned to leave him (though she seems not to’ve disclosed this to her parents – perhaps because she was embarrassed at such a hasty marriage).
I don’d find it plausible that after nearly a year sans claimed wealth, the penny hadn’t dropped that he was a liar (if not a complete fantasist) – though she may have forgiven this. But as his whole history was lies, and this is hard to maintain, she may well have started to smell the coffee. He seemingly erred when he (presumably) invited his parents to the funeral, to meet the Mohrs who would of course know his tale that he was orphaned and could inadvertently (or not) disclose other lies. We also know he had a g/friend on the side – maybe Shannon suspected. Although Rebecca points out that the insurance policies were due to expire within days of the death – so perhaps she suspected nothing after all. I can’t imagine how, though…
Reminds me of Jeremy Bamber case UK, 1985. Murdered his family for inheritance. Created a murder/suicide theme. Almost successful. Cremated his parents against their said wishes as Davies had tried. Soon after the money. Detectives got him. Whole life sentence. Still has a Free Jeremy support campaign.
Yikes, I guess there’s an advocate or two out there for everyone.
Strangely, there was also a David Davis in the episode “Time Will Tell” (s5e15).
Clearly people named David Davis are not to be trusted !
Or maybe the almost-double name is the problem…Sirhan Sirhan.
Dick Britton had passed in 2021:
https://andersonfuneralservices.com/tribute/details/3219/Richard-Britton/obituary.html
He seemed like such a nice man — sorry to hear he passed away! Thanks for sending the link – I’ll update the post.
While watching “Unsolved Mysteries” on FreeVee, the first case that was aired on my list was this case. I recognized it immediately from the FF episode. Why Davis got to live 25 years in prison is beyond me. I feel he should have been taken out and tranquilized like Shannon was…to give him a true taste of his own medicine!
Horrible to think about what Shannon saw during her last minutes on this earth.
…that is exactly what I was thinking Rebecca… what Shannon saw during her last minutes on this earth…. an evil evil husband to do this to an innocent lamb and he continued to deny his involvement after sentencing. I guess people like this just have files that they can place these horrible matters in (in their minds) and go on with their selfish actions to delude others and convince themselves that they are just in their evil actions. Thank you for the article !
So glad you likee the post — thanks much for your thoughts an D.D.!