Description
Victim: Susan Lee Eads
Perp: Arthur Raymond Davis -Died Jan. 1984.
Date of Crime: Wednesday, August 31, 1983
Location: Seabrook, Texas
No Codis hit-2018
Solved Genealogy-June 2020- NO TRAIL PERP Deceased.
On Wednesday, August 31, 1983 investigators from the Seabrook Police Department responded to the scene of a naked, female body lying in an open field. They observed a strap around the victim’s neck that matched the fabric of nearby clothing, and a stick lodged in between the victim’s neck and the fabric that had been twisted, creating a tourniquet. Less than 25 yards away they located a 1976 Chevy Monte Carlo and traced the vehicle to 19-year-old Susan Eads. Susan’s cause of death was determined to be ligature strangulation, and she had been sexually assaulted. A rape kit was preformed and foreign DNA was located, leading to a blood type profile of the perpetrator.
Investigators learned Susan was a cocktail waitress and that Tuesday night she worked a shift until 12 AM, and afterwards she made her way to a bar called Jason’s Club. There witnesses observed a tall man with a mustache and a cowboy hat approach Susan and ask her to dance, but she declined. Shortly thereafter, Susan left the bar, and the man in the cowboy hat followed a good distance behind her. The bartending staff assisted in creating a sketch of the man, which was widely circulated in the area. Less than a month after her murder, a mysterious man started regularly calling the Eads home and harassing Susan’s family. The male caller taunted Susan’s mother and said he had nude photos of her. Police contacted the local telephone agency and they planted a recording and tracing device on the Eads home phone, but were unable to trace any of the threatening calls.
As years went by several suspects emerged in the case. A local transient confessed to the killing, but was cleared through DNA blood typing. In 2018, Texas Ranger Brandon Bess picked up the case and identified a suspect named Anthony Shore. (RED HERRING) Between 1986 to 2000, Shore murdered 4 women in the Houston area, and became known as the "Tourniquet Killer" because of his use of a ligature with either a toothbrush or bamboo stick to tighten or loosen the ligature. But when investigators located additional forensic evidence from Susan’s clothing and entered the sample into CODIS to compare to Shore’s and other offenders, they learned Anthony Shore was not a match and there was no CODIS hit in 2018.
Investigators were back to square one, but now had a sample of DNA suitable for advanced testing and enlisted the help of an independent genealogy company “Gene By Gene” to create a family tree profile, and identified a biological son of the perpetrator. The son told police that his father, Arthur Raymond Davis, was a former Vietnam vet and boat captain living in Seabrook in 1983 and estranged from his family. He also informed investigators that his father died in a car accident in January of 1984. He agreed to give investigators his DNA for comparison, and furthermore provided them with a photo of his estranged father. When compared to the sketch of the cowboy who was seen talking to Susan at the bar that night, it bore a shocking resemblance. But ultimately, the DNA from Susan Eads’s clothing would confirm that Arthur Raymond Davis killed Susan Eads in August of 1983.
