Susan Otten had been sleeping in her Barton Hills Drive apartment in 1985 when she heard disturbing noises coming from downstairs, where her roommate, Natalie Antonetti, had been sleeping on the couch.
"I heard thumping noises. I heard moaning," she told a Travis County jury Tuesday. "It wasn't like normal crying."
She found Antonetti badly beaten. "I didn't recognize her," Otten said. "She was covered in blood."
Antonetti, 38, died 18 days later of head injuries. Nobody was arrested in the attack until 1999, when Dennis Davis, Antonetti's ex-boyfriend, was charged with her killing.
On Tuesday, Davis, a former South Austin recording studio owner, went on trial on murder charges in state District Judge Mike Lynch's court.
During opening statements, prosecutor Mark Pryor said the case is about jealousy.
"It's a case about a man, a former boyfriend, who descended into a jealous rage and killed a vibrant, healthy young woman, Natalie Antonetti," Pryor said.
"This man, Dennis Davis, left a trail of bread crumbs, small mistakes, that eventually led police to his door," he said.
Pryor said that in 2007, after the case had long gone cold, Austin police received a tip that they should look at Davis for Antonetti's murder. The tip came from Davis' wife, Rebecca Davis, Pryor said.
Rebecca Davis told police that years earlier, Dennis Davis had told her that "he had sinned against God and man," Pryor said. "More than that he would not say."
Police reopened the case and eventually talked to an ex-girlfriend of Davis', Gelinda Mudgett, who told them that while she had been dating Davis in the late 1980s, he had confessed to the killing.
"One night he had gone out, (Mudgett) found him curled up on the doorstep of their home, crying, tremendously upset, and he told her, flat-out told her: 'I killed her. I killed Natalie Antonetti,'" Pryor said.
During his opening statement, Davis' lawyer, Wade Russell, discounted Mudgett's testimony.
When police first contacted Mudgett, the "first thing she said was, 'I think he said he killed her one time,'" Russell said.
Russell said Mudgett later changed her story and said she was not sure what Davis had said. Finally, Mudgett told police in great detail about Davis' alleged confession, Russell said.
Russell said there is no forensic evidence linking Davis to the case. Mudgett's testimony is "the crux of the case," he said.
Russell also said a witness told police he saw a man leaving the apartments with a baseball bat shortly after the attack. The description did not match Davis, Russell said.
Davis, 61, owned Studio D on South Lamar Boulevard for several years before leaving Austin for Nashville, Tenn., where he had lived until his arrest.
Antonetti had begun dating Davis in early 1985, her son Johnny Goudie testified.
Goudie, an Austin musician, was 16 when his mother was killed.
Goudie said Davis had been friendly to him, and knowing Goudie's interest in music, had invited Goudie to his recording studio.
Goudie said that on Oct. 13, 1985, the morning his mother was attacked, he had been sleeping when Otten — who was his girlfriend — woke him up and told him that his mother was downstairs lying in a pool of blood.
When Goudie found Antonetti, she couldn't talk, he said. His mother walked into the bathroom to clean the blood off her body and went upstairs to change her clothes before an ambulance arrived.
"She was obviously in shock," Goudie said.
One of the first people Otten called that morning was Davis, who arrived at the apartment before she left for the hospital, according to testimony.
Neither Otten nor Goudie said they could remember details about their interactions with Davis that day.
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