Davis killer in grisly 2013 slayings will stay in prison after judges reject appeal attempt
Daniel William Marsh will remain in prison for the gruesome 2013 murders of a Davis couple, a California appellate court ruled Wednesday, a final verdict ending Marsh’s try for an early release and a measure of relief for the slain couple’s survivors.
The judgment, authored by 3rd District Court of Appeal Judge Louis Mauro, was joined by appellate justices Andrea Hoch and Coleman Blease.
“I’m beside myself. I never knew that I would find so much peace in the words FINAL,” Sarah Rice wrote in a text message to The Sacramento Bee following the appellate decision Wednesday. “I’m looking forward to letting my ‘Granza’ and Chip rest in love knowing we did everything we could possibly do to ensure the safety of our family, friends and community.”
Marsh, she said, “deserves to spend his life in prison for his actions.”
Marsh murdered Rice’s grandmother, 76-year-old Claudia Maupin, and her husband, 87-year-old Oliver “Chip” Northup, in the bedroom of their south Davis condominium in April 2013.
Marsh, 24, was 15 and days away from his 16th birthday in April 2013, when he slaughtered the pair, stabbing both more than 60 times each and mutilating their bodies. Marsh would later tell investigators killing the couple “exhilarated” him.
The teen’s thrill murders shocked the Davis community, and in 2014, Marsh would be convicted and sentenced to 52 years to life in state prison.
That shock was renewed in July for the families of Maupin and Northup when Marsh appealed his 2014 Yolo Superior Court conviction and fought to be released in May 2022 as a juvenile offender under a 2019 state law barring 14- and 15-year-olds accused of violent crimes from being tried as adults. Rice and her mother, Victoria Hurd, rallied opposition to the law — Senate Bill 1391 — calling for the legislation to be overturned.
A Yolo judge in 2018 had upheld Marsh’s sentence and in an August hearing, the appellate judges signaled that they were prepared to reject the Davis murderer’s appeal.
“There’s nothing to appeal,” Associate Justice Hoch said at the August hearing.
This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 2:13 PM.
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