David Stephen Middleton was convicted of kidnapping and murdering two women in the Reno area of northern Nevada. Thelma Davila, 42, vanished from the Sparks apartment she shared with her sister in August 1994. Katherine Powell, 45, a third-grade teacher, disappeared from her Reno home in February 1995, and her bound body was found in a trash bin a week later. Middleton, a cable television technician who had once been a police officer in the Miami area, had serviced Powell's home days before she disappeared.
Detectives found him by following a stereo bought with Powell's credit card. An anonymous tip then led them to a storage unit he leased, which held Powell's belongings, restraints, and a refrigerator with its shelves removed and two air holes drilled into it. Hair and DNA evidence in the same unit tied him to Davila, whose remains had not yet been found. A Washoe County jury convicted him of both murders in 1997 and sentenced him to death twice. Nearly three decades of appeals have followed, and as of the latest court records he remains under sentence of death.
Few reliable records describe Middleton's early years. In a later appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court noted that he had finished high school, attended college and completed a police academy before becoming a police officer. His post-conviction lawyers argued that his upbringing had been marked by poverty and parental abandonment, and that a full investigation would have found psychiatric and substance abuse problems; the court treated these as his claims and found that the new evidence was inconsistent and could not outweigh the aggravating evidence. His stepmother testified for him at the penalty phase of his trial.
He served as an officer with the Metro-Dade police in Florida. In 1990, while on duty, he was charged with kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, the Las Vegas Sun reported in 1996. After a trial ended with a hung jury, he accepted a plea bargain. The Nevada Supreme Court records the outcome as convictions for aggravated battery and false imprisonment. The girl survived and is not named here. The case ended his career in law enforcement. Jeff Kaye, a retired Reno police sergeant who later wrote a book about the case, told the Reno News & Review in 2009 that he believed Middleton had not been prosecuted as fully as he could have been.
After his release, Middleton moved to Montrose, in western Colorado. According to the Reno News & Review, he told acquaintances there, some of them local police officers, that he was in a witness protection program. He lived with Evonne Haley, whom later court records variously call his girlfriend, his common-law wife and his ex-wife.
In November 1993 a young woman Haley had worked with disappeared in Montrose. Middleton was the prime suspect in her death but was never charged with it. That case is described below under the section on unproven and disputed matters. In a federal civil ruling, the Tenth Circuit later recorded that Middleton and Haley eventually moved to Reno.
Thelma Davila was 42. She shared a one-bedroom apartment in Sparks with her sister, Dora Valverde, and worked evening shifts at the Hickory Pit restaurant in the Circus Circus casino in Reno. The Nevada Supreme Court noted that she had not missed a day of work in more than six years.
The court's account of her last days is drawn from the trial record. On Friday, August 5, 1994, a city bus driver saw her, dressed up, get into a white or beige pickup at the Sparks bus station with a woman and a black man. On Saturday she went dancing at Cheers, a Reno club, with a friend. On Sunday she worked her usual shift. At about 8 a.m. on Monday, August 8, her sister saw her asleep on the couch. When Valverde came home that evening the door was unlocked and a plant had been knocked over. Davila missed work that day and a dental appointment. Her sister reported her missing on Wednesday, August 10.
A neighbor later said she had seen Middleton at the apartment stairs at about 6:45 that Monday morning, and a TCI Cable technician was seen on the stairs that day, although Middleton had never serviced the apartment. Her wallet and keys had been left behind, and her blankets were gone, according to the evidence summarized by the Nevada Supreme Court in 1996.
The jury heard evidence that Davila and Haley had been seen together on several occasions. In April 1996 the Las Vegas Sun reported that a Circus Circus employee had told investigators he saw Haley with Davila at a casino restaurant about six weeks before she disappeared, and at other places in Reno.
Middleton had leased a unit at a storage business in Sparks on June 30, 1994, under the name Hal Data Research. On the afternoon of August 8, 1994, the day Davila disappeared, he leased a larger unit there and moved out of the smaller one. The facility used a computer code system at its gate, and its records later allowed investigators to match his visits against the dates in the case.
Katherine Powell was 45, divorced, and lived alone in Reno. She held a doctorate in psychology and taught third grade at Sun Valley Elementary School. Her brother told the jury at sentencing that he could not give her killer any more respect, dignity or mercy than had been shown to "Kathy."
On January 28, 1995, Middleton, working as a TCI Cable technician, made a service call at her home. On February 1 a neighbor saw a TCI Cable truck parked in front of the house with Middleton and Haley inside.
Powell was last seen or heard from on Friday, February 3, 1995. She had planned to go skiing the next morning and did not go. On Saturday a TCI door tag dated that day was left on her door, and two neighbors saw a pickup parked outside early in the morning, one of them saying it was loaded with household items and had out-of-state plates. Both later said Middleton's pickup could have been the same truck.
On Monday, February 6, she did not come to school. Two school employees looked through a window, thought they saw a foot on the bed and called 911. Police went in and found nothing that looked wrong. A friend then noticed that her phone, camera, fax machine, laptop computer and laser printer were missing.
On Sunday, February 5, someone phoned the Good Guys electronics store in Reno and ordered about $1,900 in stereo equipment on Powell's credit card. The employee who took the call could not tell whether the caller was a man or a woman. The next morning the store's manager received another call about the order, from a caller he believed was male, saying that a courier would collect it. That afternoon a woman with a red hand truck picked up the equipment. Store employees later identified her as Haley. A witness's description of her vehicle led police to a red 1972 International Harvester pickup with Colorado plates, registered to Middleton.
On Wednesday, February 8, a downtown Reno hardware store sold a box of large yellow plastic bags and a box of 33-gallon garbage bags. It was one of only two stores in Reno that carried that brand of yellow bag.
At about 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 11, 1995, Powell's body was found in a trash bin at a Reno apartment complex. The Las Vegas Review-Journal later reported that a transient found it, in a bin near Virginia Lake. She was inside a sleeping bag covered by garbage bags and a large yellow plastic bag, and she was loosely bound with white braided rope. She was identified by her fingerprints.
The pathologist, Dr. Roger Ritzlin, found bruises, mostly on her elbows and knees, most of them caused before death, and estimated that she had been dead for at least two days. He could not determine a cause of death. Suffocation or a disturbance of the heart rhythm were both possible. A bite mark was found on her body, and a semen stain on her thigh. The DNA in the stain was later found consistent with Middleton's, in a profile shared by about one in 100 African-Americans, according to the Nevada Supreme Court.
Detective Steven Reed established that Middleton was the TCI technician who had serviced Powell's home. One of the neighbors viewed Middleton's pickup at his workplace and said it was probably the truck he had seen.
On February 23, 1995, Detective David Jenkins interviewed Middleton. He admitted the January 28 service call and that he owned the red pickup. He denied knowing anything about the Good Guys order or Powell's card. He said he did not know where the hardware store was, although he had shopped there, and when asked whether he had been there on February 8 he said that if he was on video, then he had been. He also told the detective that he did not have a storage unit.
He was arrested that day. Prosecutors later said the arrest was for being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm. On May 17, 1995, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit that offense and received a one-year jail term. The Las Vegas Sun later reported that he had told investigators he had consensual sex with Powell but denied killing her.
On March 4, 1995, an anonymous caller told police that Middleton and Haley had a storage unit. Officers searched it with a warrant the next day, March 5.
Inside they found the stereo equipment from the Good Guys order, and Powell's house and car keys, camera, computer, printer and other belongings. They found boxes of yellow plastic bags and garbage bags with the hardware store's price tags, one yellow bag missing from its box and some garbage bags missing from the other. A refrigerator lay on its back. Its shelves had been removed, the freezer floor cut and folded down, and two air holes drilled through it. Inside were blue fibers similar to fibers found on Powell's body. The unit also held a switchblade, a stun gun, a foam ball with what appeared to be tooth marks, rope similar to the rope that bound Powell, clamps, belts, wire ties, handcuffs, duct tape, chains, several blankets, and a speaker box with a hidden space behind the speaker. The gate records showed that Middleton had entered the facility on February 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 11, 1995.
Saliva on the foam ball contained DNA that matched Powell, and hair likely from her was found on restraints. Other items pointed to the woman who had been missing since August. Hairs on pieces of duct tape and on blankets were consistent with hair from Davila's hairbrush, and DNA from one hair on duct tape and one on a blanket matched her, at a rate the court gave as about one in 690,000 among Hispanics. Her sister and a friend identified a blanket, a black lace top and a red hair tie from the unit as hers.
On April 9, 1995, a man walking his dog in a secluded area near Verdi found a skull and other bones. The remains had been scattered over several hundred yards, along with trash bags and rope. A matted hairpiece lay with rope of the same diameter as the rope around Powell's body. A dental bridge identified the remains as Thelma Davila's. A Verdi resident had noticed a foul smell in the area in 1994 and seen remnants of a sleeping bag. The cause of her death could not be determined.
When Jenkins questioned Middleton again on June 7 and June 20, 1995, he said he had been to Davila's apartment complex but did not know her, denied that her blanket could be in his unit, and said Haley had never been there.
Middleton was formally charged on June 22, 1995, with two counts of murder, two of kidnapping, grand larceny, fraudulent use of a credit card, possession of stolen property and the firearm counts. After a preliminary hearing he was bound over for trial.
His lawyer, C. Frederick Pinkerton, then attacked the most unusual feature of the case: no cause of death had been found for either woman. He argued that the State had not shown the corpus delicti, meaning proof that each death was caused by a criminal act. The district court first rejected the argument, then reversed itself on June 6, 1996, and threw out the charges. The State appealed. On July 25, 1996, the Nevada Supreme Court reinstated them. It held that the State did not need to prove a specific cause of death, only evidence supporting a reasonable inference that each woman died by criminal means, and that the court had to look at all of the circumstances, not just the condition of the bodies. Here, it said, both women had been found in remote places, tied with rope and wrapped in garbage bags, and one had been bitten.
Haley was prosecuted separately. She was later convicted of burglary, possession of stolen property and obtaining property by false pretenses in connection with Powell's card.
The joint trial on both killings opened in Washoe County on August 11, 1997, about two and a half years after Middleton's first arrest. The Nevada Supreme Court later found that most of the delay came from his own pretrial litigation. Some of his statements to police had been suppressed before trial: those made on February 23, 1995, after he asked for his truck keys back and was refused, and those made on March 1, 1995, before a prosecutor read him his rights.
The State's case was circumstantial. It rested on the storage unit, the gate records, the stolen property, the Good Guys purchase, the hair and DNA findings, the rope, and the bite mark. Dr. Raymond Rawson, a professor of dentistry, compared the bite on Powell's breast with a mold of Middleton's teeth and testified that Middleton made it and that she was alive when it was made.
The defense called two physicians, who testified that Powell had heart disease, that lithium carries some risk of heart rhythm problems, and that the cause of her death was uncertain. Middleton did not testify. Outside the jury's presence he said he wanted to testify about the Davila case, but could not testify on one without looking bad on the other.
The jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree kidnapping, grand larceny and fraudulent use of a credit card. At a bench trial the following month, the judge found him guilty of two counts of being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm.
At the penalty phase the jury found four aggravating circumstances for Davila's murder: two prior convictions for violent felonies (the Florida battery and false imprisonment), murder committed during a kidnapping, and conviction of more than one murder in the same proceeding. For Powell's murder it found those four and a fifth, torture or depravity of mind. It found no mitigating circumstances strong enough to outweigh them and returned a death sentence for each murder. The court added consecutive prison terms on the other counts, including two of life without parole.
The penalty phase produced one lasting dispute. The prosecutor, Thomas Viloria, cross-examined Middleton's stepmother about the Florida case even though a pretrial ruling had limited that evidence. The judge refused a mistrial and told the jury to disregard the question. The matter was referred to the State Bar of Nevada. The defense also called the executive secretary of the state Parole and Pardons Board.
Middleton was represented on appeal by the Washoe County Public Defender, Michael R. Specchio, and Deputy Public Defender John Reese Petty. On November 25, 1998, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed everything in a published opinion.
The court held that the circumstantial evidence was enough to prove that both deaths were criminal and that both women had been seized alive. It upheld the decision to try the two killings together, finding them part of a common scheme, with evidence of each admissible in the trial of the other. It rejected the speedy-trial claim. It found the prosecutor's question about the Florida case improper but not grounds for reversal, given the judge's warning to the jury and the strength of the evidence. It held that the torture finding was supported by evidence that Middleton held Powell bound and captive for an extended time, bit her while she was alive, gagged her, and finally let her suffocate.
Middleton filed his first state petition for habeas corpus in May 1999. The case went badly for him procedurally. The district court removed his first appointed lawyers over a perceived conflict in May 2000 and appointed Robert Bruce Lindsay and Ian Silverberg. In March 2002 they filed a 305-page supplemental petition. In June 2002, at the start of an evidentiary hearing, the court dismissed most of the claims, and it denied the rest by early 2003.
On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court issued six orders telling Lindsay to file his overdue brief, the Las Vegas Sun reported. When he did, it ran 88 pages; ordered to cut it to 80, he removed the last eight pages, deleting half of one argument and four others. On October 14, 2004, the court called his work "wholly substandard and unacceptable," removed him from the case, barred him from practicing before it without permission, and referred him to the State Bar. It vacated the denial of relief and sent the case back for new counsel and a fresh start.
The new proceedings ended in another denial. On June 16, 2009, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed it. Middleton had argued that his due process rights were violated, that he should have had a competency hearing, that his lawyers had been ineffective, and that his death sentences should fall under the court's 2004 McConnell decision, which bars using the felony behind a felony-murder conviction again as an aggravating circumstance. The court struck one felony aggravator for each murder but found that the rest still stood, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It called the remaining aggravators "compelling," described Powell's torture as "nothing less than sadistic," and concluded that the jury would have imposed death for each murder anyway. The court described Powell being bitten, shocked with a stun gun and forced into the refrigerator, where she suffocated.
Middleton filed a second petition on September 2, 2010. Judge Steven P. Elliott dismissed it in February 2013. One issue, whether a lawyer then working for the State had earlier had an implied attorney-client relationship with Middleton, was sent back for a hearing in 2014. The case was argued before the full Nevada Supreme Court on September 8, 2016, with Assistant Federal Public Defender David Anthony arguing for Middleton.
On December 21, 2016, the court affirmed again. It found the petition untimely and successive, and it rejected each ineffective-assistance claim on its merits: on venue, jury selection, a stun belt worn at trial, the handling of his police statements, a shared public defender's office with Haley, mitigation, victim impact testimony and several prosecution arguments. It agreed that one argument, suggesting that Middleton deserved the same mercy he had shown his victims, was improper, but held that the choice between life and death had not been close. It rejected his claim of actual innocence, noting that three aggravators remained for Powell's murder and two for Davila's.
In 2014 the Washoe County Sheriff's Office received anonymous letters, forwarded from law enforcement in another state, suggesting that Middleton and Haley had taken part in additional killings in Nevada and elsewhere. On April 15, 2014, the district attorney's office asked to withdraw clothing from the storage unit, trial exhibits 164 and 164A, for newer DNA testing to see whether DNA from other victims could be found. The court granted the request on April 21, 2020. According to Middleton's later petition to the US Supreme Court, an August 31, 2021 report by the sheriff's forensic laboratory found DNA from Haley on the clothing in exhibit 164, not from Davila, Powell or any unsolved case. His lawyers argued that this supported his position that items identified as Davila's had been Haley's.
His third state petition attacked the case on several fronts: the reliability of the hair evidence, an allegedly withheld forensic report, information about a court interpreter used at the preliminary hearing, and the bite-mark testimony, which he called junk science. Judge David A. Hardy dismissed it as procedurally barred. On December 2, 2022, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. It found the claim about the withheld report speculative, held that the interpreter's record had been public at the time of trial and that Davila's sister had testified at trial through a different interpreter, and held that criticism of bite-mark evidence had been available long before 2014. Even without that testimony, it said, Powell's hair and DNA in the storage unit, her property and the credit card purchases, and Middleton's DNA on her body supported the conviction. It called the anonymous letters inculpatory, not favorable to him. On December 8, 2022, it also refused to order the district court to allow further testing of exhibit 164A. Both rehearing requests were denied on April 17, 2023.
Justice Elena Kagan extended his time to seek review on July 10, 2023. His petition, filed September 14, 2023, asked whether the Nevada courts had violated due process by ignoring evidence from his earlier petitions in deciding his innocence claim, and whether they had arbitrarily denied him access to biological evidence for DNA testing. Nevada opposed it. On November 20, 2023, the Court denied review.
The 2023 petition described Middleton as a death row inmate at Ely State Prison. In September 2024 the Nevada Department of Corrections moved its highest-risk prisoners, including everyone under sentence of death, from Ely to High Desert State Prison, leaving the execution chamber at Ely. In December 2022 a court blocked an attempt by the outgoing governor to have the state Pardons Board consider commuting every death sentence in Nevada; there were then 57 people on Nevada's death row, ten of them sentenced in Washoe County.
As of November 20, 2023, the date of the latest court record found in his case, David Middleton remained under two death sentences. No later court ruling, execution order or report of his death was found when this was checked on October 20, 2026.
Davila's sister, with whom she shared her home, became a central witness, identifying the blanket and clothing found in the storage unit; years later, Middleton's lawyers challenged her identification, and the courts rejected those challenges.
Jeff Kaye, the retired Reno police sergeant who was called to secure the scene where Powell's body was found, published Beware of the Cable Guy: From Cop to Serial Killer in 2009. He told the Reno News & Review that he waited until after retirement partly because he feared repercussions, and he criticized the decision in Colorado not to prosecute Middleton for Buffy Donohue's death.
Proven and final: the kidnappings and murders of Thelma Davila and Katherine Powell, the theft and credit card counts, the firearm counts, and the earlier Florida convictions for aggravated battery and false imprisonment.
Never charged: the death of Buffy Rice Donohue. She was a young newlywed in Montrose, Colorado, who had worked with Haley at a Sizzler restaurant and socialized with her. On Sunday, November 21, 1993, she left home to run errands; her locked car was later found in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Her bones were found on May 24, 1995, in the mountains near Norwood, in San Miguel County, and an autopsy confirmed that she had been killed, the Tenth Circuit recorded. Middleton was the prime suspect. In 1999 the district attorney, Wyatt Angelo, filed 12 counts of accessory to murder against Haley, who was then serving a seven-year Nevada sentence for fraud; prosecutors said she was last seen leaving the parking lot with Donohue. Angelo did not charge Middleton, citing the cost of a trial when he was already facing execution in Nevada, although Colorado authorities said they had physical evidence linking him to her death, the Las Vegas Sun reported. The Reno News & Review reported in 2009 that Haley was convicted as an accessory after the fact and testified at her trial that Middleton killed Donohue, and that the case remained open. Donohue's parents, Walt and Bonnie Rice, fought the Montrose police over the investigation for years; a federal appeals court found in 2004 that an officer's display of private family photographs violated her husband's privacy but that the claim was filed too late. Middleton has never been tried for her death, and it is not counted among his convictions here.
Never proven: the anonymous letters received in 2014, which suggested further killings by Middleton and Haley in Nevada and other states. No charges followed, and the DNA testing they prompted, as described in his 2023 petition, found no link to any unsolved case.
Contested in his appeals: the bite-mark identification, the hair and DNA evidence tying Davila to the storage unit, and the identification of her blanket and clothing. Every court that has ruled has rejected these challenges.
Details that vary between sources: Davila's apartment is placed in Sparks by the 1998 opinion and later press, but in Reno by the 1996 opinion. Donohue's age is given as 18 (Las Vegas Sun, 1999) and 19 (Las Vegas Sun, 1996). The Florida offense is dated 1990 in court records and the conviction 1989 in the Reno News & Review; the second Florida count appears as aggravated battery (Nevada Supreme Court), battery (Las Vegas Sun) and aggravated assault (Tenth Circuit). A 2004 news report said the two women were apparently strangled; the courts record that no cause of death could be determined.
1990: While a Metro-Dade police officer, Middleton is charged in Florida with kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl; after a hung jury he is convicted of aggravated battery and false imprisonment under a plea bargain.
November 21, 1993: Buffy Rice Donohue disappears in Montrose, Colorado; Middleton later becomes the prime suspect but is never charged.
June 30, 1994: Middleton leases a storage unit in Sparks under the name Hal Data Research.
August 5 to 7, 1994: Thelma Davila's last known outings and her last shift at work.
August 8, 1994: Davila disappears from her apartment; Middleton leases a larger storage unit that afternoon.
August 10, 1994: her sister reports her missing.
January 28, 1995: Middleton makes a cable service call at Katherine Powell's Reno home.
February 3, 1995: Powell is last seen or heard from.
February 5 and 6, 1995: stereo equipment is ordered on Powell's card and picked up by Haley; Powell misses school.
February 11, 1995: Powell's body is found in a Reno trash bin.
February 23, 1995: Middleton is interviewed and arrested on a firearm charge.
March 5, 1995: police search his storage unit after an anonymous tip.
April 9, 1995: Davila's remains are found near Verdi.
May 17, 1995: he pleads guilty to conspiracy on the firearm charge; one year in jail.
May 24, 1995: Donohue's remains are found near Norwood, Colorado.
June 22, 1995: formally charged with both murders.
June 6, 1996: district court dismisses the charges on corpus delicti grounds.
July 25, 1996: Nevada Supreme Court reinstates them.
August 11, 1997: trial opens in Washoe County.
1997: convicted of both murders and sentenced to death for each.
November 25, 1998: Nevada Supreme Court affirms.
May 1999: first state habeas petition filed.
July 1999: Haley charged in Colorado as an accessory in Donohue's death.
October 14, 2004: Nevada Supreme Court removes his post-conviction lawyer and orders a fresh start.
2009: Jeff Kaye's book is published.
June 16, 2009: Nevada Supreme Court affirms denial of relief; one felony aggravator per murder struck, death sentences upheld.
September 2, 2010: second petition filed.
April 15, 2014: State seeks new DNA testing on storage-unit clothing after anonymous letters.
December 21, 2016: Nevada Supreme Court affirms denial of the second petition.
April 21, 2020: court allows the clothing to be withdrawn for testing.
August 31, 2021: laboratory report on exhibit 164.
December 2 and 8, 2022: Nevada Supreme Court affirms denial of the third petition and refuses a writ on further testing.
April 17, 2023: rehearing denied.
November 20, 2023: US Supreme Court denies certiorari.
September 2024: Nevada's condemned prisoners are moved from Ely State Prison to High Desert State Prison.
October 20, 2026: no later ruling or change in status found.