For investigators at the scene of Polly Klaas’ abduction in early October 1993, the story strained belief. A thick-bearded stranger had entered the room of the 12-year-old girl who was hosting a sleepover on Friday night. He had a knife. He told the three girls he would slit their throats if they screamed.

He bound her hands using ligatures and an electrical cord cut from the Nintendo game box in the room. She pulled pillowcases over Polly’s friends’ heads and ordered them to count to a thousand. His mother was sleeping in the hallway of their home in Petaluma, California.

In this series, Christopher Goffard revisits old crimes in Los Angeles and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, from the outcome to the uncertain, delving into the archives and the memories of those who were there.

An FBI superior immediately described it as “Alien kidnapping.” But some researchers had their doubts. Such abductions are rare, and this particular scenario—a child being taken from a bedroom by a stranger in front of witnesses—defies their collective experience.

As the story became national news and the pressure on detectives increased, they questioned the 12-year-old boys who witnessed the incident. Was this some kind of joke? Did Polly have a boyfriend? Did she run away with him? Were they protecting him?

Detectives focused on minor inconsistencies. One of the girls said the intruder was wearing a yellow headband; the other didn’t remember it. Someone had heard the door slamming; the other did not. One passed a polygraph; the other showed inconclusive results.

Polly Klaas in 1993.

(Associated Press)

As quoted in Kim Cross’s book “In Light of All Darkness: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America’s Child,” one Petaluma police detective told another, “This (bullshit) — it never happened.”

“Interviewers were told to trust them as if you were a suspect,” Cross (a friend of this reporter) told The Times in a recent interview. “And they were threatened like this: ‘You know Polly’s parents are suffering. You can stop this if you tell us the truth. If you’re lying, you can go to reform school.’ And the girls’ stories never changed.”

Eddie Freyer was a senior agent at the FBI office in nearby Santa Rosa when he was called to the scene. Worked closely with the Petaluma Police Department.

Freyer told The Times that thousands of tips poured in, but at first “we had absolutely nothing.” He said investigators hope to obtain information by asking the girls questions in different ways. Freyer said their motives were “honorable but misplaced, oppressing these two girls to the point that they no longer want to talk to us.”

Authorities are working the crime scene south of Cloverdale, California, where Polly Klaas’ body was found in December 1993.

(Lacy Atkins/Los Angeles Times)

An army of volunteers searched the surrounding forest. Thousands of fruitless leads were called. Psychics came to offer their services.

“Everyone was trying to attach themselves to this case because of its growing notoriety,” Freyer said. “People want to visit the house, walk through the bedroom, read a book, things like that.”

The big break came in late November, when a Sonoma County woman was hiking in the woods near her home, about 25 miles from Klaas’ home. He found some discarded clothing, including a pair of children’s tights.

The woman recalled how, on the night of the abduction, she encountered a strange, threatening trespasser, with Pinto trapped in a ditch.

Hours after Polly was abducted, two Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies detained the man, released his car and let him go. They had not heard the all-encompassing bulletin, which contained a rough description of the kidnapper; dispatchers had not broadcast it for fear of alerting reporters listening on scanners.

“As the investigation progressed, we had no knowledge of this detention because the two deputies never called us,” Freyer recalled. “This would have saved us a lot of heartburn and grief. Would it have changed the final outcome of the case? Probably not.

Richard Allen Davis in a San Jose courtroom in February 1996.

(Associated Press)

The trespasser’s name was Richard Allen Davis, 39, an erratic sheet metal worker who was paroled three months ago from the state prison in San Luis Obispo for kidnapping.

It bore a striking resemblance to the composite sketch the 12-year-old witnesses helped create.

When scanning Polly’s bedroom, the FBI used relatively new “alternative light source” technology that allows fingerprints to appear under special powders. They found a hidden palm print on his bunk. Now they’ve paired it with Davis.

Police arrested Davis for a parole violation and held him in isolation at the Mendocino County jail. He did not accept anything. A visiting friend explained what was on the news: The police had Davis’ palm print. Then he started talking.

He said he was smoking pot and drinking beer the night he broke into Polly’s house. He admitted to strangling her. He took police to where he left her body in a nearby farm town.

Polly Klaas’ grandparents, Joe and B.J. Klaas, hug each other as they testify during the sentencing of Richard Allen Davis in a San Jose courtroom in September 1996.

(Associated Press)

However, he told an unconvincing story about the night of the kidnapping. While deputies questioned him in the ditch where his car was stuck, he said he waited on a nearby hillside where Polly left him alive.

Freyer doesn’t believe this. Nobody does.

“That’s where the attack happened, and that’s where he probably killed her,” said Freyer, now 73 and retired.

Freyer traveled the world lecturing to law enforcement about the case and the case; these include the need for rapid evidence collection teams, interagency cooperation and communication, and experts trained to interview child witnesses in a non-threatening environment.

Why did Davis choose that house and that victim? Investigators believed he had been to Polly’s neighborhood before, perhaps lingering at the nearby park, and saw her walking down the block to get ice cream.

Davis’ extensive criminal record and decades of leniency have sparked outrage. As early as 1977, a parole officer said he was a threat to society, unable to function outside prison. She admitted that she heard voices telling her to rob and rape her.

He had escaped from psychiatric wards twice. His convictions included kidnapping a woman from her car at knifepoint in 1976, for which he was imprisoned for five years, and kidnapping a woman from her home at gunpoint in 1984, for which he was imprisoned for eight years.

At the trial for Polly’s murder, Davis’ lawyer did not dispute that his client was the killer but denied sexually assaulting the girl. The jury found Davis guilty of 10 felonies, including attempting an indecent act against a child.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thomas Hastings during the trial of Richard Allen Davis in February 1996.

(Associated Press)

During the sentencing, Davis directed a derogatory remark towards Marc Klaas, the father of the victim who attacked him.

“Mr. “This is always a traumatic and emotional decision for a judge,” Davis said as Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thomas Hastings sentenced him to death. “You made this very easy by your actions today.”

That case, along with the 1992 murder of 18-year-old Kimber Reynolds, who was shot by a parolee while trying to steal her purse, gave impetus to California’s controversial “three strikes” law.

The law mandated a 25-year sentence for criminals convicted of two prior violent crimes and treated even nonviolent crimes, such as residential burglary, as a third assault.

Marc Klaas initially supported the law but began to fear that the law’s impact would be “directed towards young Black men” due to harsh penalties for crimes less serious than murder.

At the time, Klaas told the public: “My tape recorder was stolen and I killed my daughter and I know the difference.”

In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson signed the three strikes into law, and California voters approved it and voted for Proposition 184 in overwhelming numbers. Two years later, when the state Supreme Court gave judges discretion to vacate strike convictions so they could not be used against defendants at sentencing, Klaas was convinced the guardrails were sufficient. He again threw his support behind three hits.

In 2012, Proposition 36 changed the law to require all three crimes to be serious or violent. But this remains a bete noire for critics of mass incarceration. (Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon told his prosecutors not to seek enhanced sentences under the law, prompting a lawsuit before the California Supreme Court.) Klaas continues to support the law despite his earlier skepticism.

Following the murder of his daughter, Klaas founded the KlaasKids Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the rights of victims and the protection of children. He supported bills like Megan’s Law, which would inform the public about registered sex offenders and coordinate search and rescue operations for missing children and young adults.

“They said Polly’s friends were lying because they knew Polly had run off with her boyfriend,” Klaas said. “We did everything we could aggressively to stop that mentality.”

He was determined to demand the death penalty for his daughter’s murderer. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom invited him to Sacramento for a conversation and then declared a moratorium on executions, saying he had consulted with victims’ attorneys. This left Klaas feeling cruelly used.

Polly Klaas’ father, Marc Klaas, hugs his wife Violet outside the Santa Clara County Superior Court on May 31, 2024 in San Jose, California. A judge refused to recall the death penalty for Richard Allen Davis.

(Nic Coury / Associated Press)

“We had a bullish conversation for about 45 minutes,” Klaas told The Times. “The governor of the state called the father of a murder victim and drove 200 miles to tell him, ‘I talked to him.’ “I can’t imagine what else it was for because the meeting had no substance.”

Klaas joined a recall effort against Newsom in 2021 but was unsuccessful. Newsom revoked San Quentin’s death penalty and Davis was transferred to a less restrictive facility. Klaas doesn’t think he’ll live to see Davis executed.

“I gave up on that years ago,” he said. “A lot of good people who worked on Polly’s case are dead. This man, Richard Allen Davis, survived.”

Klaas, 75, said he would retire at the end of the year and close his foundation. He could not find a successor.

“There were people I was trying to mentor to move the whole agenda forward, but nothing was falling into place,” he said.