How debt led one man to an American nightmare

Leon Davis Jr. bought a house he could not afford. What followed was almost unimaginable.

By Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
Published February 10, 2008

In January 2007, Leon Davis Jr. wrote on his blog, "I have hurt people in the past and I'm sorry for it! So 2007 and on I will live my life the right way, and that's keeping it real with my family and friends!" In December 2007, he was accused of killing five people over the course of six days in Polk County.
	[Family photo]

ADVERTISEMENT [Chris Zuppa | Times] Leon Davis Jr. bought this three-bedroom, 1,512-square-foot house in 2006. He borrowed nearly all of the $196,900 purchase price. At the time, he was earning about $13 an hour working at a citrus factory. [Family photo] Leon Davis Jr. and Victoria Campo were married on Valentine's Day 2007. Eleven days before the convenience-store murders, she wrote to him, "I love you with all my heart Leon!" [Chris Zuppa | Times] Dashrath Patel and Pravinkumar Patel were changing prices on this sign on Dec. 7 when a gun-wielding robber approached them. They put up their hands. He shot them through the left temples. Dashrath Patel, 51, was a clerk and a cook at the BP gas station near Lake Alfred. Pravinkumar Patel, 33, was visiting the BP to learn about the business. [Chris Zuppa | Times] Police say two employees fled the office of Headley Insurance in Lake Wales on Dec. 13 after being burned during a robbery. They left bloody footprints on the pavement. They died days later. Juanita "Jane" Luciano, 23, was a clerk at Headley Insurance Corp. She was 24 weeks pregnant when she was burned by Davis on Dec. 13. [Family photo] Yvonne Bustamante, 27, was a manager at Headley Insurance Corp.

WINTER HAVEN -- The house on Lot 89 of the Coventry Cove subdivision has double front doors and a two-car garage. A bay window looks out on the thriving lawn. The metal silhouette of a lizard curls around the doorbell. In short, the house exemplifies the suburban middle class lifestyle. Leon Davis Jr. bought it on July 19, 2006, roughly 17 months before he was charged in a five-murder rampage that concluded, police said, when he poured gasoline on two women, one of them pregnant, and set them on fire.

Someone glancing at headlines then might have pictured Davis as a violent career criminal. A closer look at his history, however -- an examination of hundreds of records, public and private, as well as interviews with people close to him -- suggests something far more complex.

His friends said they didn't think Davis was capable of such extraordinary brutality. They couldn't imagine what would have caused it. But on a time line of his life, the murder charges follow a trail of bad decisions that seems to lead back to the purchase of a new home he could not afford.

Up to that point he had a steady job, respect from his friends and only one arrest on his record. Then things began to come apart.

* * *

Davis is 6 feet 5, with big shoulders and pearlescent teeth. He is 30 years old. He grew up in Lake Wales, population 13,687, a town on a ridge in the heart of Florida where the economy runs on oranges. He enjoyed four-wheeling, and he did not mind country music, and his friends say he was good at making them laugh. He listed only two interests on his MySpace page: "BEING HAPPY IN LIFE AND MAKING PEOPLE SMILE WHEN I DO CRAZY THINGS!!!!"

Not that his record was spotless. He encountered police after fights as a teen and was later suspected of vandalizing two cars, though neither case was proved.

In 2002, he was arrested when he and his girlfriend and their 2-year-old son were caught leaving Wal-Mart with about $50 in unpaid goods, including Easter eggs and a package of children's socks.

In recent years, Davis became known for expensive possessions. He had diamonds for his earlobes, a gold chain for his neck, oversized rims for his Nissan. He had custom suspension and tinted windows and, at one point, a video screen in his headrest. He had a 50-inch plasma TV that cost almost $2,000.

And then, in July 2006, he bought the house with the lizard doorbell. Records show he financed almost the entire purchase price, leaving himself more than $196,000 in debt.

Davis cultivated an image of wealth -- the background of his MySpace page, for example, is a wad of $100 bills -- but in truth, he drove a forklift in the Florida's Natural citrus factory in Lake Wales for about $13 an hour.

While his complete financial picture is unknown, those wages alone seem insufficient to cover such a mortgage.

Davis soon developed a new source of income.

* * *

It was a clever scheme, a two-person operation. Authorities said his accomplice was Victoria Campo, a receptionist who told co-workers they had met at a Pleasure Island club in Downtown Disney. Here's how police said it worked.

Davis and Campo walked into Sam's Club a few seconds apart. Each got a shopping cart. Campo put a high-definition TV in her cart. Davis put an identical TV in his. Campo bought the TV, took it from the store, and returned with only the receipt. She and Davis converged on the door greeter -- he with the unpurchased TV, she with her receipt -- and got a refund sticker.

Then she used it to get a refund for a TV she had not actually bought. Net gain: about $600.

Over several months, Davis collected more than $2,400 in fraudulent refunds. Then, one day, he faltered.

Davis was known for attention to detail. He kept his shoes immaculate and his pantry organized by food type. But here he made an uncharacteristic blunder: He tried to pull the scam alone.

It was Jan. 4, 2007, at a Lakeland Wal-Mart. When he got outside, the police were waiting.

* * *

Three days after he posted bail, Davis signed on to MySpace.

"LIFE IS CRAZY!" he wrote on his blog. "THE UP'S AND DOWN'S CAN MAKE YOU OR BREAK YOU. IT'S ALWAY'S GOING TO BE PEOPLE OUT THERE LOOKING TO HURT YOU! A HAND FULL WILL HELP YOU! SO IF YOU LIKE HURTING PEOPLE I HAVE NO LOVE FOR YOU!!! I HAVE HURT PEOPLE IN THE PAST AND I'M SORRY FOR IT! SO 2007 AND ON I WILL LIVE MY LIFE THE RIGHT WAY, AND THAT'S KEEPING IT REAL WITH MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!!!"

He and Victoria were married five weeks later, on Valentine's Day, in a small ceremony at the new house. He was 29 and she was 24. Her theft case was resolved through pretrial intervention. He pleaded guilty on July 6 to five counts of grand theft. His sentence was three years' probation and 50 days in a work-release program.

Here the downward spiral gained speed. Davis did his unpaid work-release hours by day and worked at the juice factory by night. He had to pay $20 a day for his supervision. He had to repay Sam's Club more than $2,400. In early August, when he tried to get cash from the Mid-Florida Federal Credit Union, the teller said he was overdrawn. His auto insurance provider had automatically deducted more than his balance.

Davis got angry, the teller, Kellie Curlee, later told police. "He says, 'I put a certain amount in my checking account for them to pull it out,' and he says, 'They have not informed me that they are raising my insurance.' He said, 'How much was it?' and I told him X amount of dollars, and he is like, 'That is bull----, that is bull----.' I had to calm him down because he was making a scene in the lobby."

Around the start of September, Davis was caught sleeping in his car during a shift at the factory. He told his friend Winford Melvin that he quit so he wouldn't be fired. He spent six weeks unemployed. Finally, on Oct. 17, he was hired as a maintenance worker for the city of Eagle Lake.

But instead of making $13 an hour, he would now make $9.

Two days later, Victoria went to his MySpace page and posted a picture of two tiny footprints. Beside it was a short message: "we are having a baby!!!!!!!!"

Victoria, then a waitress at Olive Garden, began missing work because of morning sickness. She asked an old boss how to document her pregnancy so as to apply for Medicaid.

Davis began giving haircuts to friends, for an optional donation of $10 to $15 apiece. He painted the baby's bedroom and stockpiled diapers and wipes. One day he walked into an office of Headley Insurance, a local broker for Nationwide -- the company that had infuriated him by raising his rates -- and canceled the policy on his Nissan Maxima. A clerk later told police he did not appear angry; she actually heard him laughing.

On Nov. 26, Victoria posted the following message on MySpace: "I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY HEART LEON!"

He was arrested four days later. Just before he left Florida's Natural, more than $11,000 worth of juice had disappeared. The investigation led to Davis. The charge: grand theft.

In a written request for a public defender, Davis said he had no savings, no cash and nothing in his checking account. After a weekend in jail, he got out on $5,000 bail. By then his new employer had learned of the arrest. He was suspended without pay.

That was Dec. 3, a Monday.

On Friday he bought a gun.

* * *

What happened in the next six days is almost impossible to understand.

Many people find themselves under the kind of stress Davis encountered in December. Almost none of them respond the way police say he did.

True, the crimes he is charged with had economic motives. They started as robberies, as many murders do, but escalated into something else that seemed to have little to do with money.

Was he capable of this all along?

If so, it was not apparent to those around him.

"He's a good dude," said Shawn Carden, an old friend who noticed that Davis always called his elders "sir" and "ma'am."

"The only thing I know of him is fun," said Winford Melvin, the friend and mentor, who saw Davis handing out Halloween candy and kicking a soccer ball with children in the weeks before the murders.

"He wasn't a violent person," said former basketball teammate Billy Washington. "Period."

But people tend to keep their lives in compartments. They hide things from even the closest of friends. For instance, Davis rarely talked about his 15 months in the Marine Corps after high school. Soon after the murders, however, his sister India Owens told investigators that depression and mental illness ran in their family, and that her brother had a "personality disorder," and that he left the Marines after trying to kill himself.

"What led up to that discharge," she said, "was him buckling himself into a vehicle and taking on a tree head-on."

In July 1999, 10 months after Davis left the Marines, someone smashed the rear window of a Dodge Stratus, poured acid all over the car and put sugar in the gas tank. The Stratus belonged to a man who had recently quarreled with Davis' girlfriend, Dawn Wooten, who would become the mother of his son, Garrion. The police report said Davis threatened the man before the car was trashed. He was listed as a suspect but never charged.

Four years later, Davis and Wooten had just broken up. She told police he was "taking it very badly." She had found a new boyfriend. On July 8, 2003, the new boyfriend parked his Pontiac in her driveway. Witnesses saw Davis in the area and heard his stereo's signature rumble.

The Pontiac caught fire around sundown. Someone had doused it with gasoline.

* * *

Back to 2007, 18 days before Christmas, north of Lake Alfred. Darkness at closing time outside a BP gas station. Surveillance cameras catch a tall gunman shaking the locked front doors.

The gunman sees a clerk behind the counter. He fires and misses. Then, across the parking lot, he sees two other men, changing gas prices on a sign.

One is Dashrath Patel, 51, who cooks the egg rolls and corn dogs and chicken gizzards served inside the store. Beside him is his friend Pravinkumar Patel, 33.

The gunman goes to them and they put up their hands and he shoots them both in the head.

In the following six days Davis cuts hair, plans a birthday party for his son Garrion and looks for a new job. If he is distressed, he hides it from friends. On Dec. 11, his wife writes to him on MySpace: "I love you babe!!!"

On the morning of Dec. 13, police say, he buys a cigarette lighter. He is not a smoker. He visits his sister, perplexing her by obsessively locking doors. About 3:30 p.m., he walks into Headley Insurance, a sand-colored building across Central Avenue from the Family Dollar in Lake Wales. The employees recognize him as an ex-customer.

The manager on duty is Yvonne Bustamante, 27, who has two young sons and enjoys softball and Spanish bingo. With her is Juanita Luciano, 23, mother of two daughters, nearly six months pregnant with a boy.

Davis demands money, police say, and when the women resist, he gets the money anyway and binds them with duct tape and throws gasoline on them and lights it and then throws more gasoline even as they burn.

The women flee outside and Davis follows. When a bystander approaches, Davis shoots him across the nose. State investigators later conclude he is using the same gun that killed the gas-station clerks. Davis does not run from the scene. He walks. This is all in the police reports.

Luciano's baby is delivered prematurely. He lives three days. Both women die soon after that. Davis is caught on surveillance cameras at his bank a few minutes after the robbery and a few hours before he turns himself in. There is money in his hands. He is counting it. Police say he gets about $900 in the robbery: Three human lives for less than a mortgage payment.

* * *

The house with the lizard doorbell was quiet last week. Weeds grew in the yard and the vertical blinds were drawn. A neighbor said the residents were gone. Foreclosure seemed inevitable.

Davis is awaiting trial on five counts of first-degree murder, among numerous other charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

His new home has concrete walls and a metal bunk. It costs $49.87 a day to keep him there. The bills go somewhere else.

Times researcher John Martin and staff writer Jeff Testerman contributed to this report. Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3416.

The victims

Yvonne Bustamante, 27, manager, Headley Insurance Corp. Originally from Batesville, Texas. Graduate of Lake Wales High School. Had two sons: Damon, 8; and Darrion, 4. Died Dec. 18, five days after being severely burned in a robbery at her workplace. Calmly identified her attacker before she was rushed to the hospital. "Yes," she told a police officer. "It was Leon Davis."

Juanita "Jane" Luciano, 23, clerk, Headley Insurance Corp. Helped Leon Davis cancel his insurance a few days before the robbery. Originally from La Pryor, Texas. Had two daughters, Alysa, 5; and Danielle, 3. Enjoyed taking them to the movies. Was 24 weeks pregnant with a son, Michael, when she was set on fire in the robbery at the insurance agency. Stumbled across the street to the Havana Nights restaurant and sat down in a booth. "Please," she said. "I need a glass of water." Died Jan. 3 from her burns.

Michael Jaden Bustamante, 3 days, son of Juanita Luciano, delivered at 5:21 p.m. Dec. 13 by emergency C-section at Orlando Regional Medical Center after his mother was burned. Died at 4:10 a.m. Dec. 16. Autopsy said the cause of death was extreme prematurity, and the manner of death was homicide.

Dashrath Patel, 51, and Pravinkumar Patel, 33, died of gunshot wounds to the head about 9 p.m. on Dec. 7 outside a BP gas station near Lake Alfred. They were changing gas prices on a sign by the road when a robber approached. Dashrath was a clerk and a cook at the store; Pravinkumar was visiting to learn about the business. According to The Ledger newspaper, both had families in a small village in India who depended on the men's financial support.

[Last modified February 9, 2008, 23:43:35]