By Marc Klaas

Special Agent Chris Allen of the FBI is a Hair and Fiber Unit examiner. His job is to link items collected from a crime scene to individuals or other locations. Initial submissions in Polly's case were limited to; a throw rug, hair samples from Polly's hairbrushes, beige fabric used to bind her girlfriends, pillow cases, a nintendo control panel and severed nintendo cable. Subsequently, he added evidence collected from Pythian Road, the scene of Polly's rape and murder, and Cloverdale where the killer discarded her body. A clinical analysis of the evidence revealed a far different scenario than that offered by Richard Allen Davis.

The tenacious scientist testified that a strand of the killer's hair found on the throw rug and forcibly removed from his head indicated a struggle in the bedroom. Sheer beige cloth used to tie Polly's friends matched cloth found on Pythian Road and in Cloverdale. When untied and matched for edges, the cloth was obviously cut by scissors and originated from the same piece of fabric. The killers Pinto revealed microscopic trace cuttings of the identical material. This indicates pre-meditation. Not a random drug induced crime. Acrylic fiber from the carpet on the floor of the Pinto matched fiber found in Polly's hair in Cloverdale. She was not sitting next to Davis. Forced to crouch on the floor, my poor baby fought for her life and spent her last hours bound, gagged and cowering on the floor of the decrepit Ford.

At approximately 6pm, on September 24, 1976, Frances Mays unlocked the driver's door of her Volkswagen Beetle in a rapid transit parking lot in Hayward, California. A stranger put a knife into her back, told her to get into the car and slide over to the passenger seat. He forced her to remove her shoes and crouch in the floor of the vehicle. He held the paring knife in his left hand. With his right hand he placed a small brown paper bag containing a four foot length of fiber cord behind the driver's seat. To put her at ease he said, "I need to get away from here. There is somebody following me. I will not hurt you." Then he drove away.

Scared and crying Frances offered the man her wallet. Angrily, he told her to shut up and took the wallet. Ms. Mays reached up and unlocked the passenger door when he turned down a side road. The man heard the click, re-locked the door and hit the crying woman on the head. He eventually parked the Volkswagen one hundred yards off the road of a deserted cement plant, facing the road. Still holding the knife in his left hand, he instructed her to sit on the seat. When she complied, he unzipped his pants and exposed his limp penis. "You know what I want you to do," the rapist instructed. Ms. Mays sat there, frozen. He placed his right hand behind her neck, forced her head into his lap and again showed her the knife. "I'm going to start counting. Five...Four...Three..."

Before her head disappeared below the dashboard, Frances noticed a car driving down the main road. She screamed, grabbed the knife blade with her bare hand, unlocked the door and ran through the gravel toward the approaching vehicle. The man exited the driver's door and walked in the opposite direction.

California Highway Patrolman Harold J. Wentz was driving to work when he saw the woman running towards him with her hands above her head. "He kidnapped, robbed and tried to rape me," the hysterical woman sobbed.

Officer Wentz put the woman in his car with his wife and pursued the escaping rapist. He encountered the grungy molester in the cement yard. "Freeze," ordered the Highway Patrolman, pointing his service revolver at Richard Allen Davis. "Put your hands over your head and walk backward towards me."

Seventeen years later the killer still used a knife to have sex. He still carried bindings and forced his victim to cringe on the floor of the car. Only this time he chose more carefully: A little girl, too small to fight back and unable to tearfully tell her story to a stunned and silent jury.