Three years later he will arrive at the floundering Cornerstone Church, an Assemblies of God congregation in Madison, Tenn. He makes no secret of his ex-con past, though he tends to go light on the viciousness of the details. His prison-to-preacher sermon draws believers and catapults him to regional fame.
That sermon, however, offers no mention of Jo Ella Liles. Davis doesn't tell his audience that he slit a 54-year-old Sunday school teacher's throat, nearly slicing off her head. What he shares with his congregation is this: He is guilty of murder. And where his message is vague in some places, he's embellished it in others, says Capt. Looper.
Davis claims that before his arrest, he led police on a desperate high-speed chase that ended with a crash. It never happened, says Looper. Davis went quietly.
The preacher also attributes the murder to losing himself to the drug-frenzied '70s. The culprits were LSD, speed, you name it. Yet Looper finds this dubious as well. When detectives tossed Davis' apartment, they would have found the hallmarks of a junkie, not a piddling sack of weed. Nor did Davis' appearance suggest a man lost to dope: He was a "nice-looking" kid, says Looper.
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