By NC WANTED Staff

Posted: Apr. 29, 2009
Updated: Jul. 14, 2009

DURHAM COUNTY — Ian Davis II was the baby of the family, the only son.

“After he died, his friends told me they called him the peacemaker,” said Betty Davis with a weathered Southern drawl. She narrates what happened to her son on October 1, 2002 with weariness and talks about his sweet demeanor with nostalgia. “This destroyed my world.”

Davis spent the last night of his life at a friend’s townhouse at 1304 Seaton Road in Durham, two blocks from where he lived with his mother. Though Ian was 18, he had a curfew and told friends he should probably go on home. But it was late, and they convinced him to sleep at their place rather than walk home in the dark. They ate some spaghetti, and Davis fell asleep on the couch, his arms around the dog.

Sometime before 3 a.m., men stormed the house with guns.

“They must not have liked the tone of his voice, or he didn’t get down fast enough,” Ms. Davis said, a hint of desperation creeping into an otherwise hollow tone. “That’s what’s so ironic about it – Ian hated confrontation.”

No one else was hurt, but Investigator Michele Soucie said she’s looked at Davis’s background and feels confident he was an unintended target. Eyewitness accounts have not been helpful.

There were unintended targets beyond Davis. His older sister, 13 years his senior, was married about a month after the murder and about a year later, was divorced.

Around the same time, Davis’s father shot and killed himself on a firing range in Barbados.

Ravaged by the cruel events of the past several years, Ms. Davis nonetheless yearns for her son’s killer to be caught.

And he may be, Investigator Soucie says. She keeps Davis’s file close at hand and spends whatever time she can find between her ‘hot’ cases to go back, read interviews and make contacts.

Like Investigator Soucie, Ms. Davis is confident there are people out there with information about what happened to her son. Because there was more than one person who stormed into the house, she’s counting on the vices of the treacherous to bring about justice for her son. There is a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Somebody’s going to talk – she just knows it.

It won’t bring her son back, save her daughter’s marriage or resurrect Ian Davis the First, and it certainly won’t bring to life an Ian Davis III, if there ever was to have been one. But it may keep another family safe from the anguish she’s experienced, she said, and it may make her feel like less of a victim.

If you have any information about the unsolved murder of Ian Davis, call NC WANTED toll free at 1.866.43.WANTED (1.866.439.2683) or click on "Report a Tip" Your identity can be kept confidential.