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Mike Davis aka Walter Waldhauser
A year ago I maintained a blog that was mostly about my personal life and contained a lot of posts that random strangers wouldn't be interested in reading. But one of the best things I wrote about was the strange but true story of Mike Davis. It's too good of a story not to be on the internet somewhere. This post may seem really long, but I promise that it's worthwhile reading.
And here are the Mike Davis posts:
July 1, 2003
Mike Davis was one of my classmates at Arizona State University College of Law. He was a little older than most of the other students. He said he was a pilot before law school. Then he made a lot of money trading commodities. He was a real nice guy. Everyone liked him.
My friend B was the only person I know who was in any way suspicious of him. “There’s something suspicious about Mike Davis” he told me. “How so?” I asked. B explained that Mike Davis claimed to have a lot of money, but B saw him waiting on line at the financial aid office to pick up a student loan check. I disregarded B’s suspicions about Mike Davis and went on with my life. Although once I asked him why he quit being a pilot. “It sounds like a pretty good job” I told him. “You’re really just a glorified taxicab driver” was his answer.
In the summer after I graduated from law school, my friend Polly Sullivan called me on the telephone, and sounded very excited. “Did you see today’s Arizona Republic?” she asked? No, I hadn’t. It seems that on the front page of the Republic was a story about Mike Davis. “ASU Law Student Was Texas Murderer of Three” read the headline. It seems that Mike Davis was not really the mild mannered law student we thought he was. He was really the nefarious Walter Waldhauser, one of the perpetrators of a triple murder, as documented in the book The Cop Who Wouldn't Quit by Rick Nelson. The book tells the true story of the Wanstrath murders, and the cop, Johnny Bonds, who tracked down the killers. Mike Davis served his time in prison, got out on good behavior, and then enrolled in law school.
The thing about Mike Davis is that he was such a nice guy. “He was my best friend!” exclaimed my friend C. “Did he tell you that he was a pilot before law school?” I asked C. “No, he never said that” said C. The story of Mike Davis was the talk of our graduating class that summer. Since most of us didn’t have any jobs, there was nothing else to do except gossip anyway.
“The guy is a natural-born criminal, and he will never pay his debt unless he dies in prison,” says former Houston homicide detective Johnny Bonds. That’s pretty harsh if you ask me. Mike Davis always seemed like a pretty nice guy. Unfortunately, in 2000, he was sentenced to sixty years in prison for allegedly being involved in some kind of insurance scheme. Here’s a link to the article: http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2000-06-08/news3.html/1/index.html. I’m not sure if he’s really guilty, or if they just were out to get him because of the murder he committed over twenty years ago. And I really don’t trust these New Times papers. This newspaper chain has done hatchet jobs on a lot of people I’ve had the good fortune of knowing whom I have high opinions of.
It turns out that Polly Sullivan, my friend who first told me about Mike Davis, was herself later murdered. The murder happened on Christmas Day, 1998. I didn’t find out about it until months later. It’s still an unsolved crime. This is the only link I was able to find on the internet: http://www.alternativevoices.org/polly.htm.
I attended a memorial service for Polly (which was pretty lightly attended) in which her parents spent most of the time trying to get people to help them track down her murderer. There was a suspect in the case, but apparently the local district attorney’s office didn’t seem to think there was enough evidence against him. Her parents, on the other hand, were sure he did it.
More interesting, her parents told us about her life, and I realized that most of what Polly herself told me about her life was completely false. Yet another lying classmate from law school. Her biggest whopper is that she told me she was married. To a white guy construction worker with long blond hair and a tattoo. “Did you ever see the husband?” my friend B once asked me. “No” I said. “Then she’s probably making up the story.” Looks like B was right on that one as well. Her parents didn’t mention anything about her having a husband. No husband was present. There was no mention by anyone of a husband. I really wanted to ask someone “hey, was Polly married to some white guy with long blond hair and a tattoo?” but it just didn’t seem appropriate.
What I’ve learned from these experiences are (1) you can’t trust anyone to tell you the truth; (2) you never know who’s a murderer and who might someday be murdered; and (3) my friend B has amazing insights into human psychology, although he’s also out in left field a lot.
It looks like this is my first blog entry where I named names. I figure there’s an exception allowed for convicted murderers and people who are dead.
Hey Mike, if you’re ever surfing the internet from prison, and you come across this web page, I want you to know that whatever all these law enforcement people in Texas say about you, I still think you were a nice guy, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend law school with you.
July 2, 2003
If you read yesterday’s entry, you may be wondering how Mike Davis got into law school. Well, as far as I can tell, he got a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from the University of Phoenix while he was in prison. Then he applied to ASU when he got out, and his grades from UoP and his LSAT score got him admitted. The application didn’t ask about anything except your education and your LSAT score. He wasn’t being dishonest when he didn’t put down on the application that he was convicted of murder.
During the last semester of law school he applied to the Arizona State Bar like everyone else. And the application to the bar requires you to submit detailed background information, which he did. The State Bar contacted the law school and asked the Dean if he knew that Mike served time for murder. After the law school found out about Mike’s past, they found a reason to deny him his degree. Unfortunately for Mike, he did omit one required item from his application. The application required him to list all institutions of higher education that he attended. It seems that in his earlier life, before he served hard time, he attended another law school. He was admitted to that law school based upon falsified credentials; at that time he didn’t have the required undergraduate degree.
I am sympathetic to Mike on this omission. If I were applying to law school, and I had previously attended another law school before I had even completed my undergraduate education, I sure as hell would not bother to mention that either. Nevertheless, this was used as an excuse to deny Mike the law degree he otherwise earned. He had good grades in law school and he also contributed to class discussions. And he made these really funny police siren sounds. Like when Professor Guerin asked the Tax Law class what happens if you make a really big omission on your tax return; Mike did his police siren sound.
Mike did go to some extraordinary lengths to perpetrate his rich guy story. Between classes, he would go to the pay phone to allegedly call his broker. He would make up stories of exciting things he would do during winter and spring breaks, like skiing the Swiss Alps. I was told that he even gave people t-shirts that he claimed he bought at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. He had me convinced he was an eccentric rich guy. Now I know better than to believe people when they say stuff like that.
July 6, 2003
After writing about Mike Davis, I decided to finally read the book The Cop Who Wouldn't Quit by Rick Nelson, which I bought at Amazon.com a few months ago but didn’t put in the effort to read until now.
The book is a surprisingly long 364 pages, and reads like a murder mystery novel. It is a murder mystery, of course. But in order to make the book read like a novel and not a newspaper article, I wonder how much Rick Nelson embellished things.
When Walt Waldhauser (aka Mike Davis) was first introduced, Nelson described him as “swarthy.” My dictionary defines “swarthy” as “of a dark color, complexion, or cast.” And that was certainly not Mike Davis who was pale skinned. So we must not assume that everything in the book is the god given gospel.
The book does a pretty good job portraying Waldhauser as a good for nothing scam artist. It’s really very hard to reconcile the Walt Waldhauser in the book with the Mike Davis whom I knew. Mike Davis regularly went to church, he volunteered at a hospital, and he was an all around nice guy. In fact, I’d say that Mike really is a genuinely nice guy. In parts of the book, Nelson describes how Walt (and Markham Duff-Smith as well) were both genuinely concerned with people liking them. Being nice to people, and having morals, are actually two different things. There are people with gruff personalities that everyone dislikes, but who would never kill anybody. And then there are people who are nice all the time, but underneath they would kill a baby or their own mother in order to make a profit.
One thing consistent between Walt and Mike is that they were both concerned with having other people think they were big shots. Walt in the book told people all kinds of lies so they’d think he was someone important. He would claim to be a successful investor and a mafia lawyer. Mike wanted everyone to think he was rich. He could have made up any story to explain why he was in law school. If he said that his job sucked and he thought being a lawyer would lead to a better career, he’d have the same story as everyone else. But no, he had to spin a yarn about how he was a pilot and a successful investor in the commodities markets. And he’d make a show of calling his broker between classes, and telling people about the exotic vacations he’d go on. Even after nine years in prison and supposedly finding Jesus, he remained a person who continued lying to people so that they would think he was someone important.
From reading the book, it’s likely that Walt/Mike and Markham would have gotten away with the whole thing were it not for the fact that the hitman they hired was a complete idiot. The hitman saved the gun instead of throwing it out, and whenever he got drunk, he’d tell people about the murder, and other murders he committed. The lesson here is that if you want to kill someone, and not get caught, then do the murder yourself. Don’t try to hire someone.
Walt/Mike and Markham did a good job themselves of keeping their mouths shut. But they both made the mistake of getting their ex-wives pissed off at them. Their ex-wives (whom they were both married to when the murders were committed) helped the police and the prosecutors quite a bit, even though they didn’t know any details about the crimes. The second lesson for killing people and not getting caught is not to be an asshole to your wife.
posted Saturday, July 31, 2004
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15 Comments:
By
digitalbrownshirt:
Con men make a career out of seeming to be a nice guy. It's kind of sad that you've fallen into the friend/family of perp syndrome. "My friend/parent/sibling/whatever would never do anything like that. He's a nice guy." You can see it on the news everynight. No one ever says, "I always thought he'd do something like that."
Hell, I'm a nice guy and I've done some seriously bad things in my life. People make mistakes. You pay the price and move on if you can or die if you can't.
posted at 8/02/2004 9:59 PM
By
Calico Cat:
I didn't fall for anything. The Mike Davis I knew really was a nice guy. I didn't say he couldn't have done the murder. I believe it. He was still nicer than most of the people in law school.
But I also carefully read the Houston press article Making a Killing about his viatical business, and it was hard for me to see what he was doing wrong based on that article which was just a hatchet job. Clearly there were some people in Texas law enforcement, such as Johnny Bonds, who were out to get him on something because they think he got away with murder, even though he served his time.
As I said before, those New Times papers do hatchet jobs on good people. Mike Davis isn't the only person I've known who was hatcheted by that newspaper chain.
The lesson of the story is that you don't really know who anyone really is.
posted at 8/03/2004 11:33 PM
By
Alicia:
I think that it is unamerican to not allow someone to make a fresh start once they serve their time and pay their debt to society. That being said, I will never understand why anyone would do something so evil as murder; maybe you can never repay that debt...
I have a similar sort of story: back in 1996 a girl (and her boyfriend) murdered another teenage girl in Texas. Her name is Diane Zamora (if you remember at all, there was a made-for-TV movie on the crime) and she was my math partner at the US Naval Academy. We hung out together often until one day she didn't show up in class -- she had confessed to her roommate who turned her in.
She seemed pretty nice and I liked her, though I had definitely noticed some odd behavior and comments. The biggest lesson I learned is that someone who has the ability to premeditate and carry out murder can be anyone you know. I think that the most recent case of Lori Hacking just reinforces this point: you can trust and even love someone for years without ever knowing what they might be capable of and what lies they are telling. Life's a crap shoot, I guess.
posted at 8/04/2004 5:29 PM
By
Calico Cat:
Alicia makes exactly the points I was trying to make. After you find out that someone you thought you knew was actually an entirely different person, your outlook on life changes somewhat.
And she makes a great point about repaying debts. When someone gets out of prison, they are supposed to go out and earn a living, aren't they? The only alternative to earning a living is to commit more crimes. But when the ex-convict does too good a job of making a living, people get mad. They say things like "why should the ex-convict be hired as an adjunct professor when a lot of law abiding citizens want the job?" Such was the case when James Hamm, another ex-murderer who attended ASU College of Law was hired to teach a class. (Law schools seem to attract a criminal element.)
James Hamm wasn't a nice guy like Mike Davis was. Hamm kept to himself and was kind of dour and taciturn. Of course, he had the onus of being known as an ex-murderer while Mike Davis was known as an affluent nice guy. And Hamm wasn't in my class, so I don't know him as well as I know Mike.
posted at 8/04/2004 8:55 PM
By
bean:
Like the creator of this blog, I also knew Mike Davis while in law school. As most who knew him have mentioned, Mike always seemed like a really nice guy--sometimes too nice. Thus, I didn't take him seriously when we had an interchange that later, once we found out about his history, took on more significance. Specifically, after the end of spring semester finals, I ran into Mike at a local bar (where we would all gather after finals, even though it might be 11:00 am). I had been having a difficult time with my husband, who had been physically abusive. Mike asked me about how things were going, and when I told him, he said, "I can have him taken care of." I thought Mike was kidding (this was, after all, someone we all thought was really nice--it was like having an older, slightly pudgy Opie offering to have Don Knox "taken care of") and I laughed and said, "Right." He looked at me seriously and said, "No, I mean it, I know people. I can have him taken care of." Again, I laughed it off and went about my business. The next summer when we found out his role in the Texas murders, it put that conversation in a whole different light. Not all psychopaths are described as "he was a loner, he kept to himself." Many are seemingly nice, normal, even charming people. Regardless of how Mike seemed at law school, I truly believe he's a psychopath.
posted at 8/10/2004 1:42 PM
By
Reba:
Regarding Michael Davis:
I am shocked that anyone that remembers Mike Davis and has read or has knowledge of his complicity in the taking of a child's life could ever view Davis or Walter or whatever his name was the same. This man killed an innocent child for money, went to prison and came out. Can you repay society for the killing of an infant? In cold blood, premeditated for money, an inheritance? I hope we can't. I can't and I love everyone, even Davis but I would certainly not give him a new chance. The amazing thing was he got a new chance. He went to law school and nearly graduated. Yes ASU caught up with him but still he was smart and charming. He didn't have to go back to Texas and scam insurance companies through aids victims. He could have been a salesman selling ethical pharmaceuticals and done almost anything he wanted to and made good money. Perhaps not the millions he claimed but good money none-the-less. It wasn't that society didn't give him a second chance, we did at law school, every day.
How does anyone say he was nicer than most of the law school students at ASU. I don't get it! I remember approaching him from across the law school rotundra, Mike said, instead of hello, "that's her officer". (Identifying me as a suspect in some crime, I take it.)I was shocked and stopped in my tracks, not knowing why Mike said this and not really understanding the significance of his act. Time reveals many truths.
Reba
posted at 10/06/2004 4:24 AM
By
Calico Cat:
In response to the comment written by Reba: "How does anyone say he was nicer than most of the law school students at ASU. I don't get it! I remember approaching him from across the law school rotundra, Mike said, instead of hello, 'that's her officer'. (Identifying me as a suspect in some crime, I take it.)I was shocked and stopped in my tracks, not knowing why Mike said this and not really understanding the significance of his act."
That was typical of Mike's convict humor, and yes, after learning the truth about him, suddenly his seemingly insignificant jokes reveal that he was someone who spent ten years in prison. (In my main post, I mentioned the police siren sounds that he used to make.) That was just Mike's way of trying to be funny, he didn't mean anything by it.
How can I say he was nicer than most law students? Simply becaue he'd smile and say hello to everyone, and even make those goofy attempts at humor. I'm not going to name any specific individuals, but there were definitely some students in law school who'd walk around like they were too good to talk to people who weren't in their clique.
Once again, one of the major points of the story is that being nice to the people you interact with daily, and being an immoral psychopath, are two entirely different things.
posted at 11/30/2004 2:13 PM
By
Lee Keller King:
So what should be the standard for a person to rehabilitate himself/herself after committing a crime? Does it matter what the crime was?
Should a person who committed a murder (in the height of passion) be held to a higher standard than someone who committed fraud? How about attempted murder? How do we decide? How do you tell if a person is rehabilitated?
It seems, IMHO, that our society has become one quick to judge, but slow to forgive; or unwilling to forgive, at all.
Lee
posted at 2/21/2005 6:14 PM
By
india:
His ex partner Hout Wauhob is married to Asha Bailey from plano, tx.
Don't think her parents know anything about his background.
Wonder if he has taken an insurance policy out on her yet?
posted at 4/24/2005 11:03 PM
By
Janey:
Walt Waldhauser was the only perp in the Wanstrath murders who had the opportunity to go back to school and continue his education. He had reported to others that he was a grad from South Texas Law School(my father's alma mater) prior to the 1979 murders of the Wansrath murders which turned out to be a lie. Ted Bundy was also a law student and considered a "nice guy" by many who knew him. Obviously they weren't being hit in the head by his cro bar, or being raped and stranged by him. Let's wish we could ask Diana Wanstrath if she thought he was a nice guy....I mean he brought wine, right? Even when given "another chance" he couldn't escape his amorality and stay out of prison....Prison is way too good for him. He belongs with Allen and Markham. He held Diana down while Allen Janecka shot her in the head...why? The almighty dollar. Nice guy!
posted at 8/25/2005 11:14 PM
By
wildcat '72:
What a pathetic waste of time-you people have been duped by a psychopathic baby-killer.What? Just because you attended law school, and this scum-sucker somehow beat the odds and got out of the Texas penal system, a schlock degree from The University of Phoenix, then got to attend law school,he's a "nice guy"? Bullshit! -ever hear of Ted Bundy? Do you think people like that are so uncommon? Now I know how stupid people like you are. I attended the same High School as Waldhouser did in Houston, the defunct Westchester Sr. High. He was an asshole prick then, as he is now, and richly deserves the needle. Hopefully, when he breathes his last breath-which couldn't be too soon- the dead baby he killed, along with the other murdered family victims will be waiting for his worthless ass, and torment him for eternity.
posted at 11/04/2005 4:15 PM
By
mcmallen:
I also went to high school with Walt Waldhauser. He seemed to be a nice enough guy back then. Although oddly, he was supposedly playing the stock market and futures markets back then. Apparently he was lying even at eighteen.
posted at 12/04/2005 9:01 PM
By
johnny bonds:
I am the cop who made the case on Walhauser. I ran across this blog while looking for something else and feel I have to make a comment. I have been a peace officer for 38 years, over 30 of those years working on murder cases. Walter Alfred Wauldhauser Jr. aka Mike Davis is by far the most deliberate criminal I have ever dealt with. He is smart, he came from a very good family who supported him emotionmally and financially and could have done anything with his life he wanted. He chose to be a criminal. He is one of the most evil humans I have ever dealt with. When he struck his plea bargain in 1981 I took 5 confessions from him. When I met with him he held out his hand and looked me right in the eye, smiled and said, "Hey Johnny, I'm really a nice guy, I just want you to know this whole thing was just business, nothing personal." All I could see was Kevin Wanstrath laying dead in his crib in a pool of blood surrounded by stuffed animals. I have never had a stronger urge to kill anyone in my life.
I have kept up with him, where he is and what he is doing, since 1979 and will continue to do so until one of us dies. His attorney accussed me of stalking him at his insurance fraud trial in Dallas several years ago and asked my why I kept tabs on such a "Good Guy". I answered, "Because he scares me, he is one of the most dangerous people I have ever known."
So Calico Cat, I read between the lines that you think old Mike has paid his debt to society and should be able to go about his business, that the viatical service he ran was legitimate. He scammed over $5 million from investors, some of them retirees who sunk their life savings into this con game. At the sentencing phase of his trial the judge told him his sentence would be directly related to the amount of money he returned to victims and gave him a month to do so. He didn't return a cent, he got 5 life sentences and first come up for parole in 2026. Maybe he can come live with you.
Johnny Bonds
posted at 1/05/2006 3:37 PM
By
Calico Cat:
In response to Johnny Bonds,
I never knew anything about the Wanstrath murders until I read the book. Before that I knew "Mike Davis," the nice guy. Everyone who knew him in law school thought he was a nice guy. As I already pointed out in my post above, "nice" and "bad person" aren't mutually exclusive.
What I learned from the whole Mike Davis story is that you never know who people really are. I also learned that if people tell a story that sounds a little unbelievable, there's a good chance they are making the whole thing up. There are lots of people besides Mike Davis and Polly Sullivan who make up stories about themselves.
Mike Davis was only a casual acquaintance of mine, but he was a real buddy of my friend who I called "C" in the original post. C knew him really well and he also thought Mike Davis was a nice guy (until he found out who he really was). C and Mike Davis would go to church together. Hey, that's another lesson for Bible Belters reading this. Church attendence has nothing to do with being a good person. I can't stand attending religious services, but I'd never kill anyone.
Rereading through the viatical stories that are online, I learned that the jury found that Mike Davis aided HIV positive people in fraudulently obtaining life insurance. If a twelve man jury found him guilty beyond reasonable doubt, then I guess he did the crime. But I still think it's strange that a guy gets only 10 years for murdering three people, but life in prison for insurance fraud.
It's too bad, because it seems to me that Mike could have been a successful salesmen selling legitimate products.
posted at 1/10/2006 1:28 PM
By
Native Tex:
This whole chronology of events is surreal. Growing up next door to the Waldausers in Houston, Walter ("Chip") babysat my brother and I on numerous occasions. He helped us make models, shared his interesting hobbies and even at that young age he struck me as caring, unusually smart, outgoing and ambitious. His parents Hillary and Walter could not have been nicer, as was his sister Robin. The book showed the other side that I wanted to disbelieve, but it was too well-researched and documented – yes sadly, it was true. His follow-on actions only served to reinforce the fact that he is where he belongs and would truly be a menace to the innocents of society if set free. However, I too saw only the "nice guy" side of him at one time -
From a former neighbor -
posted at 4/24/2006 3:25 PM
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