A couple accused in the death of a woman whose sexual assault and strangulation were videotaped told police they were responsible for another similar slaying, a prosecutor said.
Investigators found a second grisly videotape in the couple’s home, and the man led them to the second body, Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders said Thursday.
He said that shortly after Richard D. Davis and Dena D. Riley were captured May 25, they told authorities they had assaulted a woman in Independence, then strangled, burned and buried her near Liberty.
Sanders said Davis led them to the site and investigators found the body believed to be 36-year-old Michelle Huff, who disappeared in April.
“All our information indicates that is the case,” Sanders said.
The couple, who have not been charged in the Huff case, do not yet have attorneys of record, according to court documents.
They were ordered held without bond after they pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, assault, kidnapping, rape and sodomy in the death of 41-year-old Marsha Spicer.
Federal officials also were trying to determine whether the couple should face charges involving a 5-year-old relative. A doctor at Barton County Memorial Hospital said the girl suffered serious injuries “believed to be from a sexual assault.”
The girl’s mother alerted Pittsburg, Kan., authorities that the child had been taken by Davis shortly before the couple were caught in southwest Missouri. When they were caught, the girl was with them.
The couple had fled soon after police interviewed them about Spicer, whose naked body was found May 15 in a shallow grave in Bates City, east of Kansas City.
‘Tired of hurting people’
Court documents say Davis and Riley called 911 and said “they were tired of hurting people” and planned to overdose on drugs as soon as they found a place to drop off the girl.
The three then were involved in a wreck and picked up by police. Authorities then obtained a search warrant for the couple’s apartment and found the chilling videotapes.
One shows Spicer bound with duct tape around her wrists and over her eyes as she is beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.
According to court records, Davis told investigators the tapes police have found represented just “bits and pieces” of what the couple had made. An evidence log filed with the documents said investigators found a plastic bag with videotapes in a storage room at Davis’ workplace.