‘Reservoir of grief’: How covering the Polly Klaas tragedy forever changed the way 3 reporters lived their lives

The abduction

MARY CALLAHAN: I was not yet a mother when Polly Klaas was torn from the safety of her home. But I don’t think I needed to be to understand the unendurable loss inherent in her disappearance, in the manner it occurred.

Her mother’s grief-etched face — her eyes framed in agony and tense mouth drawn into a grimace — made it plain, even as she clung to hope that she would see her daughter again, alive.

Eve Nichol had been asleep just 15 feet away or so when a bearded intruder appeared in her daughter’s room the night of Oct. 1, 1993, apparently creeping in through an unlocked door to the house the seventh grader shared with her mother and younger half-sister Annie.

Polly had been playing games with two girlfriends in her room during a Friday night sleepover and had just opened her door to get sleeping bags when she saw the man standing there.

He ordered the girls to lie on the floor, assuring them he wouldn’t hurt them. He tied their hands, hooded them with pillow slips and gagged them. Then he disappeared into the night, taking Polly with him.

Nichol learned her daughter had been stolen only after the two friends felt safe enough to wiggle free of their bindings. Still groggy from sleep, she struggled to make real the unimaginable — confusion and bewilderment, along with growing terror, evident in her voice on the recorded 911 call she made then.

During the grueling, 64-day search for Polly, there were thousands of leads but no real answers until Week Nine.

Nichol was simultaneously the picture of grace and the most eloquent portrait of suffering conceivable — pained yet brave as she confronted each excruciating day. She was a warrior mother, forced to stay strong for the 6-year-old daughter still in her care and for the child in whose survival she desperately needed to believe.

Nichol was separated at the time from her husband, Allan Nichol. Polly’s father, Nichol’s ex-husband, Marc Klaas, lived in Sausalito with his now-wife, Violet Cheer.

Nichol and Klaas would endure the coming weeks in the spotlight of a tragedy that consumed Petaluma and brought international attention to Sonoma County.

It was if they were the victims in some horrifying screenplay — the stunning violation of the sanctity of home; a violent career criminal repeatedly imprisoned yet somehow free; the near-misses that allowed him to evade capture for so long; the grudging admissions when he realized the evidence against him was undeniable; and, finally, his crude defiance in the face of conviction and ordered execution.

RANDI ROSSMANN: The night Polly was taken, I’d worked late. Our office was near the river on the east side of Petaluma Boulevard South, just blocks from her home. While we were wrapping up stories and headlines, Davis walked into her house and took her. I later wondered if he’d taken the boulevard to flee. Maybe he drove by as I walked to my car late that night.

For me, when a big story broke, I pushed any emotion back to some corner of my brain, not to be touched for years. Work took over. It became, “Who do I call? Who do I go see, and how can I get the information I need?"

That's what happened here. I remember bracing, like, "OK, here we go."

Even as I saw in the community and with other reporters, the collective horror at what was unfolding, I always felt I didn't have the luxury to feel.

Just over four years earlier we'd had the Ramon Salcido murders, which were so breathtakingly horrific they created a short spasm of global shock and brought the attention of the world's media to Sonoma County. (Salcido’s murderous April 1989 rage took the lives of seven people, including his wife and two little girls. Another daughter, age 3, survived, though he’d slit her throat like the other two and left them at a dump, where they were found the next day.)

That was such an incredibly hard story to work. And now, with Polly, we all quickly realized, we had another one. I can still feel the knot in my stomach, realizing what was coming.

CALLAHAN: I remember clear as day the moment I saw our front page announcing that Polly had been taken away in the night. It was in the Sunday Press Democrat, delivered to the door of my small rental house in Ukiah, where I had worked for just more than a year in the newspaper’s Mendocino County Bureau.

The story seemed impossible — and impossibly painful. It hurt to think about the fear and agony Polly’s parents and loved ones experienced for each minute she was missing.

And it was easy to imagine how terrified Polly was when the dark-eyed, bushy bearded man in black turned up in her doorway and took her away for good — and, if prosecutors and the jury were correct, at least attempted to assault her sexually, despite having promised not to hurt her.

I can remember traveling the region’s highways during the months Polly was missing — and for a long time afterward — scanning the edges of roads for clues to her location or, worse, anything that could be her remains.

When Davis was finally apprehended and led investigators to the makeshift grave off Dutcher Creek Road at the south edge of Cloverdale, I wondered how many dozens of times I had driven past, oblivious, en route to Santa Rosa, Petaluma or Sebastopol, where my then-boyfriend, Press Democrat photojournalist John Burgess, now my husband, lived.

Journalism can be very odd, particularly for those covering crime and public safety, as I did for more than half of my career. A lot of your time is spent conveying the sordid details of the most heinous behavior conceivable, trying to explain the unexplainable reasons people do what they do, and marveling at how detectives work and how those responsible eventually get caught — when they do.

At the same time, you’re interacting with the victims or grieving loved ones in the worst moments of their lives.

That doesn’t make us callous and inconsiderate. You never lose sight of the suffering people cause one another, and you experience the same shock, disgust and anguish over the extremes to which people will go.

But you create distance between heart and mind and learn to hide or at least subdue your reactions. Compartmentalizing is how most would view it. I think of it more as holding onto many feelings and thoughts at once and honoring them all.

The pressure

MEG MCCONAHEY: I think back on the Polly Klaas story as such a dark time.

Part of what made the story so difficult to cover was not just the sad circumstances but the intense competitive pressure. Not only the Bay Area media but the national and even international press caught on to the story. It really exploded when actress and former Petaluma girl Winona Ryder, then an A-list star, offered a $200,000 reward for Polly’s safe return. Polly’s face moved from flyers to the cover of People magazine. She came to be known as “America’s Child.”

The competition for any nugget of news was fierce and for two months unrelenting. An emotional quote from Polly’s father could quickly blow into a story. Klaas was understandably a hot mess of fear, grief and rage. While Eve was very guarded, Marc would talk to any reporter who would listen. He wanted to keep the pressure on law enforcement and the public to find his daughter, even as interest and hope diminished, threatening to put Polly into a grim and growing list of kidnappings of young Bay Area girls over the past decade who remained missing.

It was so sustained. You’d wake up every morning and have to face this story.

ROSSMANN: With any big story there's always a flurry of initial things to cover, starting with the crime and on to the effect on the Petaluma Police Department and the burden of such a difficult, huge case, countywide efforts by many law enforcement agencies, new theories and the day-to-day investigation.

Eventually there was less obvious news. My job got harder, especially as editors demanded I turn up something new every day. I also had to get multiple sources to confirm any lead before it could be published.

The stress felt crushing. I was often nervous. If I'd gotten a good story one day, what about the next? We all felt some of that, and it created a tension in the newsroom from pressure pushed by editors, but also pressure we put on ourselves.

This was our backyard. It was our story. We couldn't allow ourselves to get beat, and we owed our Sonoma County readers our very best effort to give them this story, which was now such an intimate piece of the local fabric and affecting them in real time.

It meant I had to push sources and find new ones, call at crazy times, meet "by chance" for a quick word or hand-off note. On top of this, it was paramount for me to protect anonymity of all sources. So I went beyond obvious options, as there was so many agencies, government departments, officials and volunteers involved.

I still get a visceral gut punch at the thought of all those TV satellite trucks lined up in front of the Petaluma Police Department, day after day after day. There was so much competition, and it felt like it would never end.

Obviously, my stress was nothing compared to what Petaluma police and FBI agents endured trying to find Polly, find Davis and end the nightmare that had ripped a hole in the peace of American suburbia. And years later, I realize it must seem such a stupid thing to anyone outside the profession to want to be first on a story. But that's the business, and that's the role we played.

Terrible news is often the biggest story, and this was so big. It was a churn of adrenaline, stress, pride and fear, with a strong mental dam holding back the emotion of the horror of what Polly went through, as well as her parents and friends.

The wait

MCCONAHEY: I remember being sent over one Sunday afternoon to talk to Polly’s mother. Nichol, with her sad brown eyes, looked out the front window to the candle she had lit as if to guide Polly home. Winter rains were approaching, and the days were short. She said she worried about her daughter being out in the cold, without shoes.

Another time, weeks into the investigation, I met with both of Polly’s parents. Though divorced, Klaas showed up at Nichol’s cottage, and they appeared at least united in their fear and grief. I was specifically assigned to ask them, “Do you believe Polly will be found alive?” Their response was to be part of a Sunday story underscoring the grim statistics on child abductions that suggested each passing day reduced the likelihood Polly would return home alive.

I sat with them for a couple of hours. They had not lost hope that Polly would be found or would one day walk in the door. Little Annie, Polly’s half-sister, wandered into the room at one point clutching a Magic 8 Ball, gave it a shake and asked it if Polly would come home. “Most decidedly so” popped up in the window. I froze as the minutes dragged by. I waited for an opening to pose my question to her parents, but I just couldn’t say the words that would challenge their faith in her return.

Out on the street as we approached our cars, the photographer with me, John Burgess, worriedly noted, “You didn’t ask the question.”

“I know,” I said, looking down. “I just couldn’t.”

Back at my desk in our little riverfront office at Foundry Wharf, I looked across the room at Randi Rossmann and lost it. I still remember: She wore her hair that day in a French braid. She came over and gave me a hug. We didn’t have to say anything.

But I felt weak and embarrassed. Reporters, particularly in those days, were not supposed to show emotion. I wound up working around the missing quote, hoping the editors wouldn’t notice. Instead, I talked to experts and to other parents of missing children, like TV crime avenger John Walsh, whose son had been abducted, and David Collins, whose boy Kevin was snatched from a bus stop in San Francisco in 1984 and never seen again.

I kept Eve and Marc and their faith, in a separate story.

CALLAHAN: Interviewing grieving loved ones is one of the hardest parts of the job. And I think the public sometimes wonders why we do it — intrude on their mourning and ask about their loss.

The truth is, many people welcome the opportunity to speak about the life of someone lost, to share feelings and memories that transform someone otherwise identified merely by name, age and place of residence into a whole human being with a real place in the world.

For Marc Klaas and Eve Nichol, there was also a clear motive to keep people looking for Polly, even if it meant enduring the media glare.

Observers commonly drew distinctions between Nichol’s quiet reserve and her ex-husband’s highly public grief, which some found unsettling and which ultimately drew the ire of Davis, who would air his disdain in court.

I know the three of us feel like we had no business judging a father’s response to the abduction of his only child. How does any of us know how we would act under that kind of strain?’

In the years that followed, during the months of her killer’s trial and Klaas’ decades of devotion to the cause of missing children, I would come to know and see that he was coping the only way he could, with far greater self-awareness than I had imagined. I think of him now as a man of generosity and an open heart.

MCCONAHEY: Terrible, heart-rending things happen to children. They die in accidents. They drown in swimming pools. They get cancer. They are abused. As reporters we often have to cover these stories, beating back our own emotions as we uncover awful details and, often, talk to their parents about what is surely one of life’s most profound losses. But there was something about the Polly Klaas kidnapping that was particularly terrifying to parents.

Much was made of the fact that such things don’t happen in small towns like Petaluma. But they do. I knew that all too well. I lived in the much tinier village of Glen Ellen when Ramon Salcido killed a neighbor within sight of our village school and then killed his own preschool-age daughters.

But Salcido’s victims were known to him. Polly’s abduction awakened a parent’s worst fears. One can comfort and hold a child with an illness and grieve a death, however unbearable. A child taken by a monster from the place where we believe they are safest, where we are duty bound to protect and keep them, is the most agonizing kind of helplessness. It chafes against all our instincts as parents.

As a young mother with a 6-year-old son, it yanked at my own primal fears about his vulnerability and my own. One day, I had to swing by the search center, and my son was with me. I couldn’t leave him alone in the car — I was, like so many parents in the wake of Polly’s kidnapping, tightening my leash. So I brought him in and he briefly met Marc Klaas. My son, usually a chatterbox, was unusually quiet back in the car. I probably explained in the least scary way possible that Klaas’ little girl was missing.

“Does he have any other children?” Robin asked me. He was quiet again, and then worriedly said, “He doesn’t have a spare.” It struck me; neither did I.

My son is now 36 and a new father himself. We talked recently about the kidnapping. I wondered what he even remembered and how it affected him. He told me that the conversation in the car outside the search center had embedded, and he felt a self-consciousness and pressure about his own safety. It made him more cautious as a kid, not just for himself but for the sake of his parents.

The Polly Klaas kidnapping had a major social impact in the 1990s on how people and society regard children, child safety and parenting. Parents became more vigilant and, some would suggest now, too hovering. Self-defense classes for kids became a thing. Debates simmered about what is an appropriate age to leave a child home alone. How can you fortify your children without making them timid toward life?

I was a latchkey kid in the 1960s, when our suburban neighborhood was filled with moms at home. But after Polly, I didn’t let Robin come home alone until he was 12. He told me it made him frustrated that we didn’t trust him. But it was not that. I trusted him. I just didn’t trust who might come in the door.

“The issues reverberate through families through generations,” my son reflected. “The way you raised me was 100% influenced by that story. And the way you raised me will be reflected in the way I raise my child. Even though I’m not thinking about Polly Klaas every day, the choices you made will stick with me and it will carry some day into my children’s parenting, as well.”

The arrest

CALLAHAN: After eight weeks of investigation, there had come a point where I wasn’t sure we’d ever know what became of Polly. Then, suddenly, toward the end of November, the days unfolded with one shocking revelation after another.

It turned out that Davis’ car had become stuck in a ditch on a remote section of Pythian Road near Oakmont and Hood Mountain Regional Park barely an hour after the Oct. 1 abduction some 27 miles away. A property owner had called 911 about the trespasser, and two deputies spoke with Davis before helping him free his car and move on.

They thought it was odd to find a man at such a remote place, by dark. Davis said he was “sightseeing” though it was after midnight. And though he had violated conditions of his parole, he had no warrants out when the deputies checked.

He was alone, and word of a child kidnapping had not been broadcast on the radio channel the deputies used. Davis would later say Polly was up on the wooded hill, alive, while he talked with the deputies, though many doubt that.

Two months later, the property owner discovered a pair of knotted red tights, a man’s black sweatshirt and other evidence on a steep slope.

It broke open the case. Investigators, informed that a man had been questioned nearby just after the abduction, got Davis’ name and mug shots, along with his entire history of escalating assaults.

Two days later, they tracked him to his sister’s home on the Coyote Valley tribal reservation near Redwood Valley, in Mendocino County. Authorities swooped in, taking him into custody for parole violation and failure to appear on a 5 ½-week-old drunken driving arrest near Ukiah, Oct. 19.

It was a huge scoop for Randi, who got word late that afternoon that a suspect had been captured before any other media did.

ROSSMANN: Getting word of the arrest was a "wow" moment. It was a relief that this terrible event could be coming to a close and a bit scary to get the tip that a suspect was in custody. I'll never forget the call. I was standing in my kitchen. My husband was there as well. I was supposed to be off that day, but the information launched me and our team of reporters to secure the story and get it in the next morning's paper. There wasn't a lot of time.

Later that night, when the editors checked the San Francisco Chronicle headlines that previewed its next day's news, there was nothing about a suspect, so we felt pretty confident we were the only ones with it. To get that story in the paper, above the fold, as we called it (so it would show in the newspaper vending racks), was a massive victory in the world of reporting, and it alerted the public to a crucial, important break in the case.

The next morning Petaluma police held a press conference to announce the arrest. As I stood in the station parking lot with a crowd of other reporters, I realized virtually every one of them held a copy of our paper tucked under their arm.

MCCONAHEY: I remember that day with the reporters at the Petaluma Police Department, clutching our paper with her scoop. Alison Head, then-director of news research, told me about getting a call early in the morning from former editor Cathy Barnett, asking her to get a hold of Davis’ rap sheet. Alison’s contact at the state Department of Corrections asked her if she had “extra paper” in the fax machine. Alison watched, aghast, as it kept rolling off the fax and onto the floor and still kept spilling out.

CALLAHAN: An editor called me in Ukiah the night of Davis’ apprehension and told me to go out to the reservation in the morning to see if I could find Davis’ sister. The next two days are a blur, but I know that on Thursday, five days after the Pythian Road resident reported her discovery in the woods, I was at the reservation when I learned that Davis was being brought to court in Ukiah for arraignment. I can’t remember if I already had one of the early, huge and clunky mobile phones in my car, but I rushed back to town, unsure if the paper knew Davis was in court

I arrived just in time to see a clutch of court personnel escort Davis from the curb into the courthouse in very public view, with very low security. Two of our reporters were inside with about a dozen others, and I remember one from the Chronicle calling out as Davis was taken past the scrum, “Have you seen Polly, Mr. Davis? Did you take her?” I was mad I hadn’t thought of that myself.

Crowded inside for the brief hearing, we all craned our necks to try to read his heavily tattooed arms and try to detect any sign of emotion on his face. There was none.

It was impossible not to be more vigilant about personal safety after Polly was taken, and I know for sure I did. I lived alone and was always attentive about locking up.

But irrationally, my fear didn’t kick in until Davis was arrested nearby, and my own bogey-man nightmares began. It was clear he’d been hanging around the area, and even though he was locked up tight, I’d wake up at night and have to turn on the lights and walk through my tiny house to ensure it was sealed up and no one was there.

It was weird knowing he was a mile or so away, at the local jail — I felt vulnerable in a way I hadn’t previously.

During those few days in custody, Davis refused to make any admissions. But that Saturday, a former employer visited him at the Mendocino County Jail and alerted him to media accounts about a palm print lifted from Polly’s bunk bed that matched his.

Davis was soon ready to admit he’d taken Polly, claiming he’d been in a drug- and alcohol-induced fugue state. He said he decided to kill her “to cover my tracks.” He never admitted trying to rape her, despite evidence and statements that would later convince a jury he had.

That night Davis took investigators to Polly’s makeshift grave on the south end of Cloverdale.

I was about to order Thai food with John when his pager buzzed. We knew right away what that meant. Minutes later, I was driving south to check on the candle.

ROSSMANN: I am forever grateful to my husband, Rick, for understanding what the story took. Our little boy turned 1 year old about one month into the case. I hope he didn't feel my absence too much. One very embarrassing and frightening example of how my head was in the story and not at home occurred one morning as I drove my son to day care before work. I took the downtown Santa Rosa exit, thinking of all the calls I needed to make the moment I got to my desk. Instead of going to his day care I drove to the newspaper and parked the car. As I gathered my stuff to get out, I looked in the rearview mirror. There he was, quietly sitting in his car seat. I still feel guilty about that.

The trial

CALLAHAN: In 1996, nearly three years after his arrest, Davis stood trial for kidnapping and killing Polly. The case was moved to San Jose after a judge determined strong feelings about the case in Sonoma County would make it impossible to seat an impartial jury. I had assumed our regular court reporter would do the trial, but I was assigned. I had only days to prepare.

I spent most weeks between February and September in the South Bay during that time, living with my parents and working 10-hour days in a rented office trying to capture the day’s testimony for readers too far away to watch the proceedings themselves.

The assistance of the harried prosecution and defense lawyers was critical. They supplied comments on the day’s news and a heads-up on what was expected next. Retired Assistant District Attorney Greg Jacobs, who led the prosecution, was exceptionally helpful, though so, so busy himself.

Marc Klaas, his parents and fiancee were frequently in court, and it was amazing how they kept their sanity, especially with Davis right there. Some days were harder than others, but they were friendly and approachable throughout.

The trial was most remarkable for the day Davis was convicted of all 10 felony charges against him and all special circumstances — including attempting a lewd act on a child, the main charge he disputed.

It was June 18, 1996, and as the clerk finished reading the jury’s decision, Davis turned stiffly toward the only still and TV cameras allowed in the courtroom, winked one eye, blew a kiss and extended two middle fingers. It was an astonishing moment that not everyone in the courtroom caught, though Davis made sure it would be broadcast live on television. I was watching him through the space between the two cameramen, one of whom was by then my fiance, and had a direct view. I was stunned. John used film in those days, so he wasn’t sure he’d gotten the moment in focus until the film was processed. He nailed it. As the only still camera permitted in the room, all print media outlets were counting on him, though only some would run that photo.

Three-and-a-half months later, as the judge was preparing to sentence Davis to death, Davis doubled down — apparently seeking revenge for the public tirades against him by Marc Klaas. In a statement to the court, Davis said he knew he had not molested Polly because she had pleaded, “just don’t do me like my dad.”

There was a pause before Polly’s sedate and reserved grandmother let out a cry of agony, prompting her son to jump up and lunge toward the guarded defendant. “Burn in hell, Davis!” Klaas shouted before bailiffs hustled him out. He was sentenced to death on Sept. 26.

The suspension of executions in California means Davis is still alive. He’s pushing 70 and already has spent nearly 30 years on Death Row, segregated because of the nature of his crime.

When I went to interview him over several months in 2006, he remained defiant and full of bluster. He insisted his final crime did not include a sexual element and seemed to want credit for showing authorities where to find Polly.

He told about his awful mother, his harsh upbringing, his early crimes — and about his mixed feelings on the topic of fatherhood, though he knew he couldn’t stick a child “with the stigma of me.”

I’m not sure what I was looking for when I arranged to meet him, though I really hoped he might be willing to say something more about how he found himself at Polly’s house 10 years earlier.

Those words never came.

The ‘reservoir of grief’

ROSSMANN: Years of reporting on crime, disasters and a wide range of stories about people dying in many ways, including being a witness to a San Quentin execution, makes a mark. Some 15 years after Polly, I covered a car crash that killed a family of four. I'd interviewed the surviving grandparents who'd lost their only daughter and their only grandchildren. The next day, when I went to get my kids from school, the principal stopped me and told me how sorry he was that I'd had to write such a heart-wrenching story. I agreed. And then I started to cry. I remember crying specifically for Polly and the Salcido victims and so many other terrible things I'd covered. It lasted on and off for days.

CALLAHAN: Randi and I have talked many times about what I call the “reservoir of grief” we’ve both developed over years of law-enforcement reporting. There are long periods on the job where you’re talking almost every day to a grieving person whose loved one has died in a vehicle crash, fire, drowning or violent attack.

I’m not sure if it gets easier or harder with age — whether you become so effective at shunting aside your feelings that they don’t matter, or, conversely, you can’t do it any longer and feel everything more deeply. I kind of think the latter, though I cover grisly stuff infrequently these days, so it’s hard to test the theory.

I know it affected how I raised my now-grown daughter — especially the Polly Klaas case — and probably not for the better. I don’t go through life afraid, but I’m never unaware of the potential for things to go sideways and have been a pretty protective parent as a result.

As a reporter, you realize that tragedy is far less rare than you imagined. None of the people who experience violence or serious accident go through life thinking it will be their fate. Bad things happen to good people all the time, but no one thinks it will happen to them. I’ve heard a lot of victims wonder, “Why me?”

But my years of reporting on crime and tragedy have taught me to think, “Why not me?”