Penny Davis was a nine-year-old girl who disappeared from Tonasket, Washington, in September 1994. Her remains were found in spring 1995 in a shallow grave about twelve miles from her home, and investigators determined she had been killed.

For more than a year the case stayed cold until 1996, when Jack Owen Spillman III, a white man from Spokane under investigation for other 1995 murders, confessed to Penny’s killing as part of a plea agreement. Spillman pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder covering the deaths of Rita and Mandy Huffman and Penny Davis; he received life without parole for the Huffman murders and an additional 45-and-a-half-year term for Penny’s murder.

The confession closed a painful chapter for Penny’s family and the Tonasket community.