Sunday, November 22, 2009 3:41 AM
BY THEODORE DECKER
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Police say Ashley Baldwin, 20, left, and Shannon Tackett, 34, killed James A. Davis during a robbery on Nov. 10. Baldwin, who lived with Davis, feared him, her lawyer said.
Businessman James A. Davis, 47, faced 25 criminal cases within 13 months.
She was taken in like the others, her mother said, seduced by the big houses in Dublin and Brown Township, the money, the drugs.
She had lived with James A. Davis, a man nearly twice her age, despite her family's protests that he was abusive and controlling. In September, deciding that her family was right and that the beatings weren't going to stop, she left him for good.
"It's just a matter of control with Jim," the girl's mother said last week. "He went after the young ones in trouble.
"He had good talk, he had beautiful houses. That's their dream, and he promises them the world."
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The mother asked that her name and that of her daughter's not be used in the story.
But another young woman who stayed with Davis is now accused of killing him. Ashley Baldwin was charged with murder on Nov. 11.
She told Columbus police on Nov. 10 that her husband had been shot during a soured drug deal. But she led officers to the wrong North Side apartment complex and told them Davis was in a white car. Early the next day, a resident of another complex a half-mile away called to report a man in a green Chevy Blazer who hadn't moved in at least 12 hours. That's when police found Davis' body.
Detective Wayne Buck of the homicide squad said Baldwin, 20, and a man -- 34-year-old Shannon Tackett -- killed Davis during a robbery. He said Tackett, who is charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated murder, knew Baldwin from the South Side.
"We've got a good idea" who shot the 47-year-old Davis, Buck said, adding that it was too early in the investigation to disclose that or other information about the killing.
The detective rebutted the self-defense claims that Baldwin's attorney, Paul Scott, raised in court last week. Scott said Baldwin feared Davis and believed that she was in imminent danger.
Relatives of Baldwin's said she had been with Tackett on the night Davis was killed. But a woman who said she is Tackett's wife of 14 years insisted at their home last week that he would not have harmed Davis.
"He's not capable of this," she said, sobbing. "He's not. He's got four children. Those babies mean the world to him."
Although questions about Davis' death remain, it is clear that he had changed drastically in recent years.
Davis was born in Indiana and graduated from Gibsonburg High School in the Sandusky County town where his parents still live. He graduated from Ohio State University and, according to his obituary, had two daughters and was a self-employed businessman.
Davis had been owner and president of Gateway Management Services, a business founded in 1994 that specializes in medical evaluations relating to injury and disability claims. It is on Emerald Parkway in Dublin. An employee there said after the homicide that Davis hadn't been involved in day-to-day business in a year or two.
Davis' mother would say only that she and her husband were not aware of her son's recent troubles. His sister, Cleveland lawyer Laura Nemeth, said he had been a decent, productive man for "90 percent" of his life, but she would not comment further.
Before 2008, Davis had only four traffic tickets and an open-container violation, according to records in Franklin County Municipal Court. The last charge occurred in the Tuttle Park Place parking garage during an Ohio State football game on Sept. 20, 2003, in Ohio Stadium.
But in the past 13 months, police had filed 25 criminal and traffic charges against Davis, including domestic violence and drug possession. At the time of his death, three felony drug indictments were pending in Common Pleas Court.
"He, unfortunately, had a substance-abuse problem," said Davis' attorney, David Young. "That was a concern of the courts."
Dublin police had grown concerned in the past two years about increasingly strange activity at Davis' Winchell Court home, valued at $454,000. Neighbors reported the constant presence of young women, assorted nighttime disturbances, even shots being fired from the back deck in June.
Police reports from Dublin detail Davis' rocky relationships with young women, including Baldwin, one of the people police found him with on the night the shots were fired.
In interviews this week, two of Baldwin's relatives echoed that Davis was controlling and abusive with her and confrontational with her family.
Police documents back the claims made by the South Side woman whose 24-year-old daughter left Davis in September, about the time he moved out of the Dublin house and into his other house, in western Franklin County, valued at $390,000. The Dispatch is withholding their names because the younger woman is trying to get sober, has not been implicated in the homicide and fears retaliation.
In one report, Dublin police said they were told that Davis had strangled the woman's daughter on April 10 until she passed out and urinated on herself. In her request for a civil protection order, she wrote that "past violence included but is not limited to strangled, punched, pulled, dragged, threatened to kill, controlled, put gun to her head." She and Davis told police they were engaged.
He was charged with domestic violence and assault. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and paid a fine.
The mother said her daughter told her that Davis sometimes locked women in a basement room, allowing them out only to use the bathroom or eat. The daughter once stayed in the room for three days, her mother said.
Her mother told police about the room but said they told her they could not corroborate the story and had never found anyone locked inside it during their repeated visits there. Dublin spokesman Michael Racey said police could not comment because of the homicide investigation.
The mother said she had confronted Davis repeatedly in the past two years in an effort to keep tabs on her daughter. She said the younger woman had done well in high school and landed some scholarship money for college before throwing it away for drugs.
"She wasn't no angel, and she wasn't no angel when she was with him," her mother said. But Davis used his money and drugs to control users, the woman said.
"The kids, they're so vulnerable when they're on drugs. He had access to money, access to free drugs, access to a lifestyle they would dream about.
"He was messing with young people -- young, crazy people," she said. "Something's going to happen, either to him or (them)."
tdecker@dispatch.com
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