Man recants confession to unsolved killings in jailhouse interview

A man charged last week with the 1996 killings of three teenagers in North Las Vegas told the Review-Journal on Wednesday that he made a false confession.

“I was high on PCP,” Willis Davis said during a video call and phone interview at the Clark County Detention Center. “Then, you know, I was out of my mind. I really don’t even remember what I said. I’m trying to remember what I told police.”

On Thursday, prosecutors formally charged the 43-year-old in connection with the fatal shootings of 18-year-old John Muldrow Jr., 15-year-old Xavier Crockett and 14-year-old Jason Moore, court records show. The shootings were tied to gang violence, and Davis told police he was a member of the GPK gang at the time of the killings, according to his arrest report.

Davis told the Review-Journal he was a gang member at the time of the shootings, and he knows who the shooters are. But he declined to name them unless there is a trial and said he is afraid of being a “snitch.”

“If I go to trial, yeah, I’m going to let them know what happened,” Davis said. “I’m not guilty.”

The two-page arrest report had no mention of drug use or Davis being impaired at the time of the confession. North Las Vegas Police Department spokesman Alex Cuevas said in an emailed statement Wednesday that police believe the confession was legitimate.

“All confessions that were given, at the time of the detective’s interview, were both vetted and corroborated based off of intimate knowledge of the crime only a guilty person would know,” he said. “At this time, there is no further information available to disseminate. This is to help protect the integrity of the case.”

According to Davis’ arrest report, he was stopped on Jan. 12 by Metropolitan Police Department officers who accused him of unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon. Davis said he was jaywalking when he was stopped by police.

After his arrest, he told police that he “wanted to confess to murders that occurred years ago in North Las Vegas,” an officer wrote in his arrest report.

Davis said Wednesday that while talking with police, he told officers, “You guys are doing your job, but you got more work to do,” and that “there’s a lot of cold case files that are open.”

He said the conversation went from there.

“They asked me specifically about the crimes, and I was just guessing what could have really happened,” Davis said.

He said he knew details about the cases because his fellow gang members told him about the shootings in 1996. He said he was afraid to say anything then because of gang retaliation.

According to the arrest report, Davis told police he shot Muldrow on May 18, 1996, after he set out to “do a drive by shooting” near a neighborhood in the area of Commerce Street and Carey Avenue.

“He chose this area because he was a GPK gang member and he was looking for members of the NTG gang to shoot,” the report said.

Davis said the shooting on Nov. 8, 1996, that left Xavier and Jason dead happened after two of his friends “asked him to ‘do a lick’ with them,” the report said. At least one of his friends was a “Rolling 60 Crip gang member,” and Davis said “his GPK friends regularly gave him a hard time for being friends with a rival gang member,” according to the report.

The three walked to a desert area on the 3000 block of Clayton Street, and Davis told police he shot both teenagers in the head, the report said.

“He shot (redacted) one more time, then chased down (redacted) who had ran,” the report said. “He then shot him a second time.”

According to the report, Davis told police he used guns that matched casings found at both homicide scenes.

On Wednesday, Davis admitted to a lengthy arrest history but said he has never killed anyone. Davis said he does not believe he will be convicted of murder.

“You had no witnesses, no fingerprints, no ballistics,” he said. “You have no weapon. Who can sight me at these crime scenes with these weapons killing these people? Nobody.”

Davis was charged with three counts of murder with a deadly weapon and one count of conspiracy to commit murder, court records show. He remained in jail on Wednesday without bail.

He is scheduled to appear in North Las Vegas Justice Court on Thursday morning.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.