Man serving time for '97 killing faces new charge

A man who was once sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of a Tacoma woman now faces new charges that just a year earlier, he stomped and strangled someone else.

Pierce County prosecutors say new DNA testing of blood found on Cecil Davis' boots back in 1997 revealed it was almost certainly from Jane Hungerford-Trapp, who was found dead on the landing of a Hilltop-area apartment-complex stairway April 14, 1996.

Davis, 45, will be arraigned tomorrow on the new second-degree murder charge, filed yesterday, in Pierce County Superior Court.

Hungerford-Trapp's brother, Jim, 58, said his family -- including the victim's two daughters -- are elated that prosecutors are finally filing charges. He said it's been "some consolation" that Davis was already facing the harshest sentence possible for another slaying, but they still wanted to see him tried and convicted in the death of Hungerford-Trapp.

"She was a beautiful woman in a lot of ways," Hungerford said.

Davis was on Washington's death row until about two months ago for the unrelated Jan. 25, 1997, murder of Yoshiko Couch. The 65-year-old Tacoma woman had been raped, choked and suffocated with towels soaked in, a toxic household solvent.

The state Supreme Court overturned Davis' death sentence in that case Nov. 4, finding that the shackles he was forced to wear during his trial may have influenced the jurors who noticed despite efforts to conceal them.

Pierce County prosecutors plan to hold a new sentencing hearing to decide whether Davis should be executed for Couch's slaying, though defense attorneys are expected to urge prosecutors to leave him facing life in prison.

In 1997, police investigating Couch's murder uncovered evidence that Davis also killed Hungerford-Trapp about nine months earlier, according to court documents, but he wasn't charged.

"Back then, resources were better spent on other cases than prosecuting someone who was on death row," Deputy Prosecutor John Neeb said yesterday.

Davis' relatives told police that one day in the spring, Davis came to his mother's house "covered in blood from head to toe" and was talking about how he'd stomped and killed a woman, Neeb wrote in court documents.

Davis' sister showed police a pair of boots in Davis' room and said he'd been wearing them that day.

They had a trace of blood on them and appeared to match boot prints found on and around Hungerford-Trapp's body, according to court papers.

Investigators say new DNA testing showed that the odds of the blood being anyone other than Hungerford-Trapp's were 1 in 840 trillion.

Hungerford-Trapp had been living in the Shelton area and had been trying to overcome drug addiction. Her brother said she'd been visiting a friend in Tacoma when she was killed.

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