Post Mortem | A Fatality in the Stairwell

**Anne-Marie Green** (0:10)
Welcome to Post Mortem, I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green. And today we are discussing the case of Kevin Davis. Now in the early morning hours of August 12, 2023, Kevin's wife, Alison, called 911 and said that she woke up to a loud noise, and she found Kevin at the bottom of the stairs. Kevin later died in the hospital. An autopsy later revealed that he had a crushed in skull and a murder investigation was launched, with Alison becoming the primary suspect. She was charged with murder, arrested, and put on trial where she would fight to clear her name.
Joining me now is 48 Hours correspondent, Peter Van Sant. Thanks for chatting with me today, Peter.

**Peter Van Sant** (0:54)
Hey, Anne-Marie. Great to be here.

**Anne-Marie Green** (0:56)
And the usual reminder before we get into it, if you have not listened to this episode of 48 Hours, head on over to your podcast feed to get the full audio. You're going to find the full episode in your podcast feed right underneath this one. Go take a listen and then come on back. All right. Here we go, Peter, because this one's a little different.

**Peter Van Sant** (1:16)
It's a dozer.

**Anne-Marie Green** (1:17)
Yeah.
Of course, at the center of this entire episode, the big question, was Kevin's death an accident or was it murder? We see very early on, people interacting with Alison are interpreting her behavior differently. She's speaking to first responders and they have very different assessments of what they're seeing. You guys actually played some body cam footage of that.

**Peter Van Sant** (1:43)
That's right. These two first responders that are of particular interest here, they are trained to observe anything suspicious at a crime scene as well as trying to save a life. And so they focus on how things are said. And at the Davis house, the first two responders were standing by an ambulance and one officer said, She doesn't have a normal reaction for me telling her, her husband's critical, right? And the EMT said, I think she's still in shock. That shows you the range of interpretation as you look at these people.
But having watched all of that video, there were some very odd moments.
Alison apologized for wearing pajamas. Now, the normal reaction would be quick, he's in here, quick, he's fast, follow me. But she apologizes about what she's wearing.
She laugh-talked with people at the scene. That struck some as very, very odd. But a lot of the people who defend Alison's behavior say, she was raised to be extremely polite, and this is how she speaks. She will always say thank you to people and whatnot.

**Anne-Marie Green** (2:49)
In watching the hour, the only time that it struck me as odd was that little laugh-talk that we saw. But as I listened to you put it all in line for me, like list it all, what comes across to me is someone who's a people pleaser almost, that you mimic the reaction that you're getting from other people, you say thank you and you apologize for being inappropriate. Like that's how it actually comes across to me.

**Peter Van Sant** (3:17)
Well, you know, the laugh-talk that she did, I've covered so many hurricanes.
And you'll walk up to someone in their house has been destroyed. Is this your house? And they'll go, yeah, yeah, this is it. There's not much here, is there? The laugh-talk, I think that's a stress reaction in some people that it is a involuntary emotion and that laugh-talk occurs. That's what I was thinking about when I watched that. And also keep in mind, her friends said that later she was incredibly emotional. She was crying at the hospital.
And her dad said that Alison, she compartmentalizes because she knew she had to be calm to help Kevin.
And Alison's defense said that, well, if she committed a crime and had rehearsed a story, why would she have forgotten to act sad on the police body cam video?

**Anne-Marie Green** (4:10)
Right. So there were some questions about the 911 call, and I want to play that.

**Peter Van Sant** (4:17)
911, what's the address of your emergency? My husband just fell down the stairs and there's blood everywhere.

**Anne-Marie Green** (4:23)
I can't look all over. I don't know if people ever did.

**Peter Van Sant** (4:26)
Okay.

**Anne-Marie Green** (4:27)
I can't understand what you're saying.

**Peter Van Sant** (4:28)
Take a breath for me.

**Anne-Marie Green** (4:30)
I'm sorry.

**Peter Van Sant** (4:30)
I'm sorry.

**Anne-Marie Green** (4:31)
What's your address? My husband just fell down a ****** plane.

**Peter Van Sant** (4:37)
Okay.

**Anne-Marie Green** (4:37)