spreading the sadness

I am in a melancholy state of mind right now because I just finished listening to "no country for old men" on my ipod (that sounds kind of embarrassing. i swear i don't usually listen to books on tape) and even though I had some real problems with the cornpone wisdom aspect of it, it's really fucking sad. way sadder than the movie, although I think the movie is better than the book overall. I thought I'd spread the sadness by sharing this story from the Bee. It reminds me of that part in the movie "Adaptation" where the screenwriting teacher yells at Nic Cage when he said that nothing dramatic happens in real life.

Ask Sacto 9-1-1: Dad of raped, murdered girl killed in confrontation

Q: I saw the question on Troy Adam Ashmus who killed Marcie Davis, but I think her father met a tragic end too. Is that right? - JoAnne, Sacramento

A: Robert "Bob" Davis, whose daughter was found raped and killed in a Sacramento Park in 1984, was shot to death in 1988 in a confrontation with a tow truck driver, The Bee reported.

Davis' life had spun out of control after his daughter, 7-year-old Marcie Davis, was murdered in Santa Anita Park. Troy Adam Ashmus was convicted of the murder and is on California's death row.

Friends and family told The Bee that the murder changed Bob Davis from an outspoken, congenial and enthusiastic man to an inconsolable and angry one.

On the afternoon of May 25, 1988, Davis and another man were beating a man and then attacked a tow-truck driver who came to the man's aid in the parking lot of the Country Club Plaza shopping center on Watt Avenue, police said.

A second tow-truck driver arrived and shot Davis to death after the driver said Davis and the other man moved toward him.

Tim Frawley, the prosecutor who sent Ashmus to death row, remembered Davis as "a volcano smoldering."

"His life went into a tailspin after Ashmus killed his daughter," Frawley said. "He might have been held together kind of loosely to begin with, but at the time prior to his daughter's death he was making a good life for himself and his family."

Frawley said the burly man burned with rage -- enough so that the judge ordered him frisked each time he entered the courtroom to watch the Ashmus trial.

"There was always concern that Bob might blow up and go after Ashmus in the courtroom, " Frawley said.