Courtesy of Metropolitan Police Department, City of St. Louis
Walter David Kemp
In July, Walter David Kemp was arrested for allegedly murdering a young woman in Benton Park West. If he pleads guilty, he'll add first-degree murder to a record of murder, rape, assault, and theft.
He is now 64, and in the 46 years of his adult life, he has never been off probation for more than a year without re-offending.
Yet in 2017, when he violated parole for unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful use of a firearm, and possession of a controlled substance (marijuana), the judge suspended execution of each sentence and released him on probation.
A year later, on July 20, he was arrested and charged with murdering 30-year-old Haley Davis.
Her father, Eric Davis, got the call from a homicide detective. He still finds it “hard to believe that the judicial system let something like this happen.”
Eric says Haley was “funny, free-spirited. She wasn’t beyond helping anyone. She didn’t care who you were. She would try to help you if she could.”
Her roommate told Eric that Kemp had come to their apartment the night before, looking for the father of a guy Haley once dated. The former boyfriend had overdosed, but Haley was kind to his father, Eric says, and somehow Kemp must have thought he’d be there.
That night, Kemp raged that the man owed him money. Haley and her roommate chased him off. The next morning, Kemp allegedly returned to the Pennsylvania Avenue apartment with a handgun after Haley’s roommate left for work.
Haley had been working as a housekeeper, trying to pull her life together. She used to talk nonstop about her 9-year-old son, now in her father’s custody. Lately she’d also been asking about her mom, who died young. When someone close to the family described how Charlene used to gaily toss pasta noodles at the wall to see if they’d stick, rather than do a simple fork test, Haley lit up. “Oh my God, I do that too!”
Her little boy walked around the funeral home chapel, pale and aimless. Older mourners gathered around the pictures, heartbroken that “she wasn’t even there.” No coffin, no urn. Nothing to say goodbye to. Haley’s body was still in the crime lab.
If Kemp killed her (so far, the case is bolstered by his limp, distinctive tattoo, and a security-camera video), he did so by proxy; his rage was with someone else entirely.
But Haley weighed about 100 pounds, with big brown eyes, and she was wide open to the world.
Maybe she looked like one of the other women he’d hurt.
Kemp's criminal record stretches back 45 years:
1973: Walter David Kemp, age 19, is convicted of burglary and placed on probation.
1974: His probation is revoked when he is convicted of assault and resisting arrest. He serves 14 months at the Algoa State Reformatory.
1975: It’s said he then participated in the rape of the daughter of a police officer, but this can’t be substantiated. What can is that four police officers, including the Ellisville chief of police, were indicted after Kemp accused them of kidnapping him and treating him brutally.
1976: In February, Kemp robs and beats an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Casey, on a restaurant parking lot in Frontenac. He is accused of taking $82, rings, and a bracelet.
On June 2, he kills Charles McKinnon with a shotgun blast in a drive-by on Route 66, allegedly because of jealousy over a woman.
Two days later, Kemp robs the Golden Kettle Restaurant near Six Flags. William Dudley, the assistant manager of a restaurant, is abducted and found dead in a remote area, shot in the back of the head. Police say that he confesses to the killing, says it was an accident, and tells them he threw one of the weapons he used into the river and the other into the bushes along the highway.
1978: Kemp, represented by legendary defense attorney Charlie Shaw, is acquitted of Dudley's murder. He plea-bargains a 29-year sentence for McKinnon's murder and the robbery and assault of the elderly couple.
1979: Kemp is charged with capital murder and armed robbery for allegedly shooting a security guard to death while robbing the Speedy Food Mart in Villa Ridge in 1976.
1981: In prison for the plea-bargained cases, he is convicted of assaulting another inmate, but the sentence is made concurrent with the time that he’s already serving.
1982: The Missouri Supreme Court blocks Franklin County from trying Kemp for the February 1976 armed robbery and killing (the security guard at the Speedy Food Mart) because the prosecutor exceeded the 180-day limit to begin the trial after arraignment and did not request an extension.
1990: After only 12 years of his 29-year sentence, he goes to live in a halfway house and gets a job working as a dockhand on Produce Row. Police hear him threatening to kill witnesses who testified against him. He is returned to prison—but back at the halfway house by May.
In June, he is arrested for allegedly abducting a 20-year-old woman from a parking lot near Peerless Park and sexually assaulting her nine times in his brother’s trailer. She escaped by climbing out the trailer window when he fell asleep. Her feet were cut and bloodied from running barefoot to her car; she drove to St. Louis County and called police.
“In view of Mr. Kemp’s background, I find it hard to believe that they would let him go after 12 years,” says St. Louis County Prosecutor Buzz Westfall. “It didn’t take him long to get back to his life of violence.”
1991: Kemp is acquitted. His attorney told the jury that the sex was consensual and the young woman made up the abduction story to avoid confrontation with her parents. (She testified that he forced his way into her car and threatened to slit her throat. The defense maintained that she had ample opportunity to escape when they stopped for beer at a convenience store.)
He is, however, sent back to prison on a parole violation. He assaults other inmates.
1997: Kemp is sent to a halfway house then released on parole.
1998: One year later, he holds a woman for 11 hours in his Plaza Square apartment downtown, sodomizing her seven times, beating her, holding a knife against her throat, and threatening to kill her and put her body in storage in the basement, where no one would ever find it.
When I interview him in prison, he tells me he always “kept the ladies a cold drink” and said, “Shit escalated, but not like she said.” He adds, “I’ve done three homicides, a couple stabbings in the joint—so I'm just wondering why this lady would say all this and not have a scratch on her. She wasn't chained or gagged or hangin’ off my balcony. My background, I would've had her in a garbage can.”
2015: Kemp is released from prison. He goes home to live with his mom in Eureka but soon moves to the city.
2017: He is arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful use of a weapon (he discharged a gun while alone in his apartment), and possession of a controlled substance (marijuana). A psychiatric evaluation finds him mentally fit. The city prosecutor asks for eight years incarceration. Judge Steven Ohmer sentences him to 25 years total but suspends the execution of each crime’s sentence and releases him on probation.
2018: In February, the judge modifies Kemp’s probation, ordering him to receive sex offender evaluation and follow all recommendations of the evaluation.
Five months later, he is arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Haley Davis.
Why the leniency? In 1991, St. Louis County Prosecutor Buzz Westfall blamed the parole system and used Kemp’s case to say it should be abolished. “He should never have gotten out. Now we have another victim on our hands.”
Ohmer is well respected, known for making reasonable, judicious decisions on the bench. Yet he, too, released Kemp on probation. When Doyle Murphy of The Riverfront Times recently called about this case, Ohmer said he didn’t remember the 2017 details, had only just then learned of the murder, and couldn’t comment because he’s presiding over Kemp’s current probation, which he has since suspended.
Susan Ryan, spokesperson for the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office, says the prosecutor requested a sentencing assessment report from the probation and parole board, and it was placed before the judge along with the request for eight years of incarceration. These reports normally contain background, criminal history, and a risk assessment score that indicates a statistical risk for re-offending.
Michael Wolff, former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, chaired the committee that developed the current sentencing assessment report, emphasizing the risk of re-offending. Wolff can’t comment on the specifics of this case, though he does point out that “the Missouri parole board has never been known to be lenient.” In terms of offenders who seem to win probation against all odds, he says, “Your ordinary person wouldn’t be able to pull that off. Some of these guys have a talent for saying the right things to parole boards and sentencing judges. They talk themselves into jobs, into looking low-risk… About 5 to 15 percent of the criminal population have attributes of a psychopath. Most of the good studies have been done in Canada. They found that people who scored high on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist tended to serve less time in prison, because they were charming. One of their chief characteristics is lack of remorse.”
In the U.S., the criminal-justice system doesn’t attempt to measure psychopathy. “I don’t think we’re willing to invest the money,” Wolff remarks.
Even former inmates and other members of the St. Louis Motorcycle Club chatroom were bemused at Kemp’s release. One calls Kemp “a stone cold killer… He live for pay back.”
