Man Arrested 32 Years After Woman Killed in Dallas Home

Blood Preserved From 1993 Led to a New Name

A man has been arrested more than three decades after 55-year-old Tommie Davis was found killed inside her Dallas home, police announced Saturday. Gary Len Ross, 56, is charged with capital murder after detectives said DNA from blood preserved from the 1993 scene matched an alias he had used.

Davis was found dead on May 18, 1993, inside her residence on Haskell Avenue. Police said the initial investigation produced few leads beyond minor damage to the front door and missing property, and the case was eventually archived as a cold case.

The break came when Detective Andrea Isom reopened the investigation and submitted evidence for new forensic testing. According to Dallas police, blood collected from a wall inside the home did not belong to Davis. A DNA profile developed from that evidence was entered into the national CODIS database.

The database returned a match to the name Tommy Lynn Jones. Investigators then determined that Jones was an alias used by Ross, police said. That connection turned a piece of evidence stored for decades into the lead that eventually produced an arrest warrant.

An Alias Connected the DNA Match to a Suspect

Dallas police said investigators combined the DNA result with evidence about Ross’s connection to Davis and the circumstances of the killing. Ross was located and arrested on Oct. 2 and is being held at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center on the capital murder charge.

The police department has not publicly released a full account of how Ross knew Davis or what investigators believe happened inside the home. The charge is an accusation, and the department said the case remains under investigation.

NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported that the arrest came after the cold-case detective obtained new forensic testing on several items. The most consequential result was the blood on the wall, because testing showed it came from someone other than Davis.

The original investigation had not identified a suspect who could be charged. For more than 30 years, Davis’s case remained in the files while forensic technology and national DNA databases expanded. Police said the preserved evidence ultimately allowed detectives to compare a profile from the home with records that did not exist in the same form when Davis was killed.

The alias added another layer to the investigation. Police said the DNA profile matched Tommy Lynn Jones before they determined that name was being used by Ross. Investigators then worked from that identity link toward an arrest warrant.

A Family Has Waited More Than Three Decades

Dallas police described the arrest as part of the department’s commitment to pursuing old homicide cases even when many years have passed. Major Bobbie Epperson of the department’s CAPERS Unit said investigators hoped the development could bring some measure of closure to Davis’s family.

An arrest does not resolve every question that followed Davis’s death. Police have not publicly described a motive, and Ross’s defense position was not available in the initial reports. The capital murder case will now move through court, where prosecutors will have to prove the allegations.

What has changed is the status of a case that had sat without an arrest since 1993. Davis is no longer only the victim in an archived file; her death is now the subject of an active capital murder prosecution built in part around biological evidence saved from her home.

The department continues to ask anyone with information about the case to contact investigators. For Davis’s relatives, the arrest arrives after a wait measured not in months or years, but in more than three decades.

References: Arrest Made on 32 Year Old Cold Case | Man arrested for capital murder in 1993 Dallas cold case

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