(The entry you are about to read was originally blogged on November 19, 2005. At the end of the blog entry will be another note letting you know why I chose today to post this re-run. I’ve made no edits to the original, you will read it as it appeared here:
http://huffcrimeblog.com/?p=382.
What is truly fascinating about the following entry is the commentary left on the entry. The comments section is a must-read. ~ S.H.)
S. Wynn Davis was an entrepreneur. A wee bit from the bio of the founder of Valero Solutions, out of Santa Clara, California:
Wynn has been a leader in global consulting for over 14 years. Mr. Davis started his career at Andersen Consulting in the High-Tech Manufacturing and eCommerce Line of Business and has since been a Global VP or Professional Services for two public software companies in the CRM and Supply Chain Management areas…
Then there was Scott Davis, an Independent running for Governor of California in 2003. Here’s a quote from a blog titled greengabbro.net, an entry written in August of 2003 about Scott Davis withdrawing from that race. The blog entry was titled, “But you still have two kidneys, Scott!”:
Some people just don’t know how to run a press campaign, or something - Scott Davis has withdrawn his candidacy because in a race composed of equal parts serious budget difficulty and circus hijinks, with a dash of 100 or so candidates’ pet issues thrown in, the media were not paying enough attention to his pet issue. Quitter!Scott Davis’s pet issue was organ donation - a nice pet issue, one that is hard to argue against without being a jerk-o religious nutcase (what? the god that made your heart in the first place won’t be able to make you a new one for the afterlife? hahaha! jerkface. gimme those corneas.) but it’s hardly an issue of immediate political need in the state of California. All the serious pundits are talking about the budget, which will soon end up in a morass of un-money and no way to fund anyone’s pet issues, and all the non-serious pundits are talking about a) things that are funny, or b) things that have juicy human interest stories behind them. I have no idea if there was a juicy human interest story behind this campaign or not, and Scott Davis has “stopped giving interviews” so I may never find out…
Finally, there was Scott Winfield Davis, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, accused murderer and arsonist.
Want to read that again?
Yes, it’s the same guy.
If this is the first time you have heard of Scott W. Davis, you may not know why Atlanta wants him back in the tender clutches of the Fulton County jail.
Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start.
Because the following is drawn from newspaper articles no longer readily available to the general reading public I will not provide URLs, but citations.
On December 13, 1996, this article by Maria Elena Fernandez was published in the Local News section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution — “Love triangle examined in businessman’s slaying.” Fernandez wrote:
The slain businessman whose body was discovered in his torched Buckhead home had recently been involved in a love triangle, said longtime friends Thursday.The body of David Coffin, 41, was found under debris that fell during a fire Tuesday night at his home on West Conway Drive. Coffin was killed by a single gunshot to the head, authorities said.
Atlanta police Maj. Mickey Lloyd said police are optimistic an arrest will be made soon.
Lloyd declined to comment on details of the investigation, but acknowledged that police were aware Coffin had dated a woman who was estranged from her husband and “we’re looking into that aspect of the investigation.” Police also are investigating the burglary of Coffin’s home between 7 p.m. Saturday and noon Sunday. Coffin’s 1988 Porsche convertible was stolen. It was found burning in a north DeKalb vacant lot Tuesday.
Coffin called his brother and several friends Sunday to tell them about the burglary, said his friend, Gina Jewett of Connecticut. Coffin was upset about “items of sentimental value” that were taken.
Coffin told friends that he had been dating a woman who was estranged from her husband, Jewett said. But Coffin said he was breaking off the relationship, Jewett said.
“He was very leery of the whole situation and wanted to cut it off,” Jewett said…
Just a day later, on December 14, Fernandez co-wrote this article with Michael Weiss, “Businessman Charged in Killing of Heir.” From that article:
Atlanta police charged Scott W. Davis of Battleview Drive with murdering David Coffin, 41, whose body was discovered after a fire destroyed his home on West Conway Drive home Tuesday night.Coffin’s family founded the Dexter Corp. in Windsor Locks, Conn., a Fortune 500 chemical company. Coffin was an heir to a $19 million trust. Davis apparently is the son of Dave M. Davis, the medical director of a Buckhead psychiatric center who frequently helps police profile killers. Dr. Davis, 59, testifies in criminal trials around the state and is best-known for developing a profile of the killer in the Atlanta “missing and murdered children” case before Wayne Williams was arrested.
Dr. Davis would not speak to reporters Friday night. An entry on him in Who’s Who in the World lists a son named Scott Winfield Davis, which is the suspect’s name.
In addition to the murder charge, the younger Davis was charged with arson, auto theft and three counts of burglary, said Maj. G.M. Lloyd.
Coffin, who bought and sold businesses, reported his house was broken into Sunday. His car, a Porsche, was found burning in a parking lot in north DeKalb County on Tuesday.
Police believe Davis had broken into Coffin’s home at least three times in the days before the slaying, Lloyd said.
Davis’ lawyer, Bruce Morris, said his client will plead innocent to the charges. Davis will remain in Atlanta City Jail until a hearing Monday morning, Lloyd said…
The AJC reported, on March 14, 1997, that Scott W. Davis had been released on $500,000 bond. His bond was secured by his parents’ home.
There things lay, for a while.
An article published in the AJC by reporter John Spink on Christmas Day, 2001, gives a rare update into the investigation into David Coffin’s murder:
“One of the things that’s so remarkable about this case is that David’s father has been so supportive and trying to do whatever he could,” Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said.”When you see a person who’s obviously been so devastated by the death of his son — I’m just hoping that someone out there, for a second, would put themselves in the place of Mr. Coffin and call us so that this guy can reach some kind of closure,” Howard said.
Just days before he was shot in the head and his West Conway Drive home torched, the younger Coffin’s house was burglarized and his 1988 convertible Porsche stolen. The sports car was later found burning in a vacant lot in DeKalb County.
Although the charges against Davis were dropped, Howard said Davis remains a suspect in the slaying.
Howard said his investigators will be employing a “new strategy” early next year that they hope will produce more evidence in the case.
“We want to put together the kind of evidentiary requirements that can get a conviction,” Howard said. “We feel that we’re close, but we’ve got some other things that we want to tie up.”
I guess it took them a while.
Interesting in light of the fact that by December 15, 1996, Scott Winfield Davis had admitted that he’d shot at someone. The article was written by Michael Weiss, and published in Local News that day:
The man who police say killed a wealthy businessman and torched his Buckhead home told Atlanta police that he shot at a man trying to burn his own home on the same night, neighbors said.Scott W. Davis, 31, of Atlanta was arrested Friday, charged with the murder of 41-year-old David Coffin, heir to a Connecticut chemical company fortune. Police said Davis shot Coffin once in the head, then set his $375,000 house on fire Tuesday night with the body inside…
Let’s give Scott Davis credit for chutzpah, shall we? Even after he’d been charged with murder, admitted he’d shot someone, but been let go only because Fulton County, GA prosecutors didn’t have that last good nugget of evidence needed to tie him into the crime, he lit out for California — nearly as far in the continental U.S. as he could get from Georgia, I guess — and set about a re-invention of self that was rather impressive.
If you read Scott W. Davis’s resume online, you see that at least on paper, he was already an impressive-sounding guy. Not the type most people expect to indulge in arson and murder.
According to his resume, Davis attended UNC Chapel Hill and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Finance in 1987. Davis states that while at the University, he played Varsity Football, made the Dean’s List, and was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Davis then attended the University of Georgia in Athens for his Masters in Business Administration. Right out of business school he formed Athens Ventures Limited, LLP. Between 1989 and 1992 this company funded various service-oriented businesses in Athens, GA and the surrounding area. In 1992 Davis started work as Senior Manager for the Technology Competency Group for Andersen Consulting, based in Palo Alto, California. In 1998 he moved on from that job, continuing on with positions that:
[exemplified] strong IT leadership and change management techniques as well as superior sales and resource utilization skills that are critical to successful leadership in fast-paced technology-driven organizations… ~ (from Scott W. Davis’s online cover letter, accompanying the resume.)
Davis’s online resume appears to be out of date, as Valero Solutions, his own endeavor, is not mentioned.
However, there are funny little inconsistencies that may already be obvious in a lot of Davis’s information. As Valero CEO, he billed himself as S. Wynn Davis. His true name is Scott Winfield Davis, so the variation is slight… but interesting. For his candidacy for the California Governor recall election — famously won in the end by action hero and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger — he was Scott W. Davis. Why bother?
He ran for governor as an independent, yet this page shows him listed, along with someone named Natalie Lui, as a Santa Clara County City Captain for West Valley Republican Women, Federated. And yes, his platform during his brief run for California Governor was indeed based on his interest in organ donation.
As you read in the blog entry I quoted earlier, Davis initially appeared to quit the race because no one wanted to play his version of the game — to hear the AJC tell it, though, it was an old ghost named Coffin flaring back up like a spark that derailed the accused killer’s political ambitions. The next quote is from an article written by Steve Visser, published on August 21, 2003:
Davis dropped out of the recall election Tuesday after it became known he is considered a suspect in the slaying of David L. Coffin Jr., an heir to a chemical business fortune who was romancing Davis’ estranged wife.Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said Davis remains a target of the investigation into the death of Coffin, who was found shot to death in his home in 1996. Davis was arrested, but the case against him collapsed in 1999.
“We’ve discovered some things that we did not know before,” Howard said Wednesday. He wouldn’t describe the evidence.
Davis, a self-employed software consultant with a master’s degree in business from the University of Georgia, told the San Jose Mercury News he feared the Georgia investigation would become the focus of media attention…
Scott W., S. Wynn Davis, whoever, appeared, at the very least, to be comfortable with making the truth of things elastic. We all exaggerate from time to time… but I’ve always been bothered when people change their very names. That’s just a gut instinct, something I’d love to nail down for the gentle reader at the moment, but don’t know how.
And in Davis’s case, there’s something doubly bizarre about the fact that a man who now stands accused of murder ran for governor of California on a platform focused on organ donation. From whence came that particular hobbyhorse? After David L. Coffin, Jr. was shot and then burned, surely his organs couldn’t have been harvested, right?
This case will continue to develop in the coming days.
I am an Atlanta-area resident and would be interested in hearing via e-mail from anyone who knew Coffin, Davis, or Davis’s former wife, Megan. [redacted for a later re-posting to a new blog.]
(Here’s why I decided to post this re-run today: “Davis Guilty in Buckhead Murder.” From WSB TV here in Atlanta:
A jury has found Scott Davis guilty of the murder of David L. Coffin Jr. in 1996.
Prosecutors say Davis shot and killed Coffin in his Buckhead mansion and then set fire to the home to cover-up the murder…
There is a book in this case if there’s ever been one. Don’t know who will write it, though at the moment it isn’t me. For me there could be a big series of blog entries in it. But not right now. The comments left by others are fascinating enough in and of themselves.)
(Addendum, 3/25/07: At CrimeBlog.US, I posted a follow-up to this entry on January 5, 2007. I titled it, "Another Face for Mr. Davis."
Also, keep an eye on CBS 48 Hours -- their show about this case is coming up within the next two weeks.)
