Bahe Davis

Bahe Davis, a 19-year-old Native American man, was a patient confined within the walls of the Utah State Hospital in Provo, Utah, in the winter of 1995. He had been sent to the hospital's forensic unit for a psychiatric evaluation after a court found him incompetent to stand trial on aggravated assault charges. The charges stemmed from an incident in November 1994 in which he was accused of stabbing another patient. His time at the hospital, which was meant to be a period of assessment and care, ended in a brutal and unsolved homicide.

On the evening of Sunday, January 29, 1995, patients in the forensic ward gathered for a Super Bowl party to watch the San Francisco 49ers play the San Diego Chargers. It was a brief diversion from the routine of institutional life, complete with snacks and drinks. The next day, January 30, Bahe Davis was found dead inside the facility. An autopsy revealed he had not died of natural causes or by his own hand; he had been killed. The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to his abdomen, which was severe enough to lacerate his liver.

The investigation into the homicide was handled by the Provo City Police Department. The crime occurred in a secure state facility, a closed environment where the pool of potential suspects was seemingly limited to other patients and staff. Investigators in 1995 quickly focused their attention on a single patient, another individual housed within the forensic unit. However, no one was ever publicly identified as a suspect, and no charges were ever filed in connection with Bahe's death. The case presented unique and significant challenges for law enforcement, who cited the difficulty of interviewing patients and witnesses with serious mental health conditions as a major obstacle to uncovering the truth.

The setting of the crime was itself a troubled one. In the mid-1990s, the forensic unit of the Utah State Hospital was housed in the Hyde Building, a 75-year-old structure described by hospital officials a year after the murder as inadequate and insecure. The facility was overcrowded, holding more forensic patients than it was designed for and mixing them with civilly committed adults and senior citizens. The building was plagued with structural problems and was not originally constructed to securely hold a criminal psychiatric population, leading to several escapes in the years surrounding Bahe's death.

Decades have passed, but Bahe Davis’s homicide remains unsolved. His case is one of many in Utah involving Indigenous people that have gone cold, a tragic pattern that has led to the formation of a state task force to investigate Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives. While his name is listed in Utah's cold case database, few other details about his life have been made public. There are no available photographs of him, nor are there public memorials or statements from his family. The story of who he was beyond his final months in a state institution is unknown to the public.

As of February 2022, the investigation into the death of Bahe Davis is still open but inactive. The Provo City Police Department holds the case file, number 9500863. Anyone with information about the homicide of Bahe Davis is encouraged to contact the department at 801-852-7242.