Land Park slaying has residents, Sacramento-area law enforcement professionals shocked

The suspect in Friday’s slaying in Sacramento’s tony Land Park neighborhood first showed up on the front porch of a home there Thursday night, apparently masturbating in an act caught on the homeowner’s Ring doorbell camera, law enforcement sources said.

Sacramento police were called to the scene, but were unable to find the man. They asked the homeowner to take down a screenshot from the Ring video that had been posted on NextDoor while they searched, two sources told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday.

What happened next has jolted even seasoned law enforcement professionals: a 61-year-old woman home alone with her two dogs was attacked by a man who broke into her 11th Avenue home through a window, killed her dogs, raped her and then killed her before setting the house on fire, the sources, who were not at liberty to speak publicly, said.

The victim was identified in a criminal complaint as Mary Tibbitts — she went by her middle name, Kate.

The suspect is Troy Davis, a 51-year-old transient with a long criminal record who was last arrested in June on a car theft charge, then released from the Sacramento County Main Jail.

Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Rodney Grassmann initially refused Tuesday to discuss why Davis was released before a June 22 arraignment set for Sacramento Superior Court, referring questions to Sacramento police.

Police noted that the Sheriff’s Office is responsible for the jail.

“The police department does not have responsibility on releasing people from the County Jail,” police wrote in an email.

Grassmann later blamed the release on legislators and judges.

State lawmakers “made laws that created zero bail,” he wrote. “In fact, the Legislature is meeting as we speak and are discussing a plan to make ALL crimes other than murder, zero bail.

“Judges then implement these laws and release subjects that fall into the zero bail which is the case here as the murder charges came days after the subject was released on the zero bail charges.”

Voters rejected an end to cash bail last year, rejecting Proposition 25 by a 10-point margin. But in March, the California Supreme Court ruled that defendants in the state cannot be detained in jail while awaiting trial simply because they cannot afford bail.

The ruling did not outright ban cash bail — the justices said judges must consider factors such as the seriousness of charges and past criminal history and then use those factors to set bail at an amount the defendant can afford.

This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 1:21 PM.