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Written by Sally Kestin and Victoria A. Ifatusin, Asheville Watchdog.

In the three years before Marilyn Jean Davis was shot dead by her boyfriend in his Woodfin home, two other women had obtained domestic violence protective orders against him.

“He put me in a headlock,” one former girlfriend, who was nine months pregnant, wrote in a January 2017 court complaint against Sean Wilson. “He then opened the door and pushed me out while spewing profanity at me.”

“I do not feel safe,” another former girlfriend wrote in an August 2019 complaint. “There are bullet holes all over the house.”

Six months later Davis, 25, was dead. Wilson shot her and killed himself.

Davis is among more than a dozen people murdered by their partners in Buncombe in the 10 years since the county adopted a comprehensive plan to reduce domestic violence.

Key recommendations in that plan were not followed, including creating a team to identify and intervene in the highest-risk cases, a model that’s proved to reduce deaths elsewhere, Asheville Watchdog found.

And four Buncombe agencies that assist domestic violence victims are losing nearly $2 million in federal funding at a time when the need is only increasing.

Helpmate, which serves domestic violence victims, receives five times as many hotline calls as it did a decade ago, and its 20-bed emergency shelter is too small and frequently full, said Executive Director April Burgess-Johnson.

“We’re kind of playing God every day, trying to decide who gets the last bed,” she said.

Buncombe’s 2014 domestic violence plan included six strategies to better protect victims and stop offenders, four of which were adopted and remain in place.

“I think that this issue was a priority then, and over time it’s been overshadowed by other issues,” Burgess-Johnson said. “And so I don’t think we have the same laser focus as we once did, and I think that’s a sad thing for our community and the people who are trying to survive abusive relationships here.”

Holly Jones, a former Buncombe County commissioner who championed the 2014 plan, said Buncombe has made considerable progress, including better coordination of services and the opening of the Family Justice Center, which provides a single location for victim assistance.

“Where we were in ‘14 and what has happened, it’s pretty remarkable,” she said. “I am proud of our community’s progress.”

But Jones added, “We surely can’t declare victory … As long as people are in harm’s way, we need to get better.”

Burgess-Johnson said she believes lives could have been saved had the recommendation to create a high-risk team been followed.

“Having a system-level intervention that looks at specific cases where there are red flags, and we’ve seen some cases where there were extraordinary amounts of red flags, it only had the propensity to help,” she said. “I do think that there are deaths that we could have prevented.”

High-risk team stalls

The 2014 plan came about after Buncombe experienced a spate of domestic violence deaths.

Since then, another 15 people have been killed, a reduction of five from the decade before the plan was adopted, according to intimate partner homicides tracked by the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

This summer, Ryan Ricky Houston of Weaverville, who had a long history of domestic violence protective orders and arrests, killed his girlfriend, Malerie Crisp of Asheville. At the time, Houston was out on bond, despite being charged with shooting a Buncombe sheriff’s deputy at the jail where his wife had gone to file a domestic violence complaint in 2023.

Crisp, 41, a mother of two, was found bleeding to death from stab wounds in McDowell County on Aug. 1. The next day, Houston killed a newly retired police chief and himself in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 26.

In July, Gregory Holden critically wounded his partner and killed himself in his South Asheville apartment. Police had responded to multiple calls at the residence, including “prior incidents of domestic violence,” said Asheville police spokesman Rick Rice.

Such instances of extreme violence follow patterns that evolve over long periods, Burgess-Johnson said.

“You’ve got this abusive and controlling person in the household, the batterer, and they’re establishing the system of power and control and dominance,” she said. “When the partner tries to leave or interfere with that control in any way, going to get a protective order, trying to move out to their sister’s house, coming to our shelter, calling for help, then that victim’s risk of being murdered by their partner increases exponentially.”

But because those patterns are often predictable, Burgess-Johnson said, intervention can stop the violence from escalating.

Deaths have plummeted in places that have created high-risk teams consisting of representatives from law enforcement, the courts, and victims’ advocates. The teams meet regularly, develop safety plans for victims most at risk, and closely monitor compliance with court orders and treatment plans.

In Massachusetts, counties with high-risk domestic violence teams reported no deaths during one six-year period while those without such teams had 249 deaths, according to a PowerPoint presentation on Buncombe’s comprehensive plan.

The plan included a high-risk team modeled after the Massachusetts program with 14 members handling up to 75 cases a year. The first meeting was set for January 2015, but the team was never formed.

“It was not well received by folks in the civil and criminal justice systems,” Burgess-Johnson said.

Criminal defense lawyers worried about restrictions being imposed on offenders who had not yet been charged with a crime, and others raised confidentiality concerns about sharing information among agencies, she said.

A high-risk team has also twice been recommended by Buncombe’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team, created in 2018 to analyze deaths and recommend improvements.

“There’s not just been the political will to do it,” Burgess-Johnson said. “The recommendations keep coming out, but there’s not been a push from county government or any other person with an official amount of power to be able to carry that forward.”

Assistant County Manager Sybil Tate said while the county remains committed to raising awareness and preventing domestic violence, the formation of such a team “would need to be brought forward through the budget process.”

County spokeswoman Lillian Govus said she could not speculate on the reason the team was not created as intended in 2015 but that the opening of the Family Justice Center the following year and recent increases in its budget “speaks to the county’s significant investment in responding to and working to prevent domestic violence in Buncombe County.”

“I don’t see any of this as a failure,” said Jones, the former county commissioner. “Other things got prioritized.”

A high-risk team is a “great model,” Jones said. “I’d love for Buncombe County to do that.”

Some progress, ‘room to grow’

Another recommendation from 2014 involved a deterrence program for abusers modeled after one in High Point, near Greensboro. That program included stern letters from law enforcement to offenders that domestic violence will not be tolerated and a warning that their co-workers, neighbors, family, and friends could be interviewed. The letters said police may conduct safety checks of their homes and would strictly enforce restrictions on firearm possession.

The program also included speaker panels for repeat offenders that included law enforcement, domestic violence survivors and others to reinforce the message and offer assistance.

Buncombe initiated only the speaker sessions, and “they were much more focused on trying to make the offenders that were there aware of the available resources for career counseling and therapeutic counseling to deal with their own trauma,” Burgess-Johnson said. “It was supposed to be kind of a carrot and a stick. We had a lot of carrot and very little stick.”

The program was discontinued about five years ago, she said.

The county followed other recommendations that came out of the 2014 plan: creating a Coordinated Community Response to domestic violence by law enforcement, advocates, and courts; keeping victims safer by tracking offenders through electronic monitoring; conducting “lethality assessments” to evaluate victims’ risk of harm; and offering online assistance through the “eNOugh” campaign.

The Family Justice Center opened in 2016, providing a single location for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault to seek assistance and protections from the courts. Before, victims had to complete 61 forms, travel to a dozen places, and speak with more than 20 people.

“I think there are some things that I’m really proud of that we’ve done well, and I think that there’s a lot of room left to grow,” Burgess-Johnson said.

She said Buncombe could benefit from speeding up arrests of offenders for violating court-imposed orders such as having no contact with victims, a red flag indicating potential harm.

Currently the county’s pretrial services division supervises offenders and reports violations to a judge, who signs a warrant that then goes to law enforcement for an arrest.

In some places like Pitt County in the Inner Banks region of the state, the sheriff’s office enforces court conditions and can make immediate arrests for violations, said John Guard, the sheriff’s office chief deputy.

“If we did what Pitt County did, I know it would help,” Burgess-Johnson said.

Asheville will soon receive more assistance from the federal government. The U.S. Justice Department announced Sept. 13 that the city was one of 78 in the country selected to partner with federal agencies on a plan to reduce domestic violence with firearms.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of North Carolina will train law enforcement and agencies on responding to domestic violence, improving victim safety, and holding perpetrators accountable, and will review cases involving firearm violations for possible federal prosecution.

Funding loss strains services

The assistance comes at a time when agencies across the country, including in Buncombe, are losing federal funding for domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse services.

States receive money from the national Crime Victims Fund, made up of fines and penalties collected from federal criminal cases, to distribute to agencies that provide victim services. The fund’s amount fluctuates and has been decreasing; North Carolina’s share dropped 42 percent in 2024.

Helpmate is losing about $650,000 in reductions that began in July and has eliminated five positions, with more cuts expected next year, Burgess-Johnson said. The agency was already struggling to keep up with the need.

Helpmate’s shelter serves victims at extreme risk of being killed by their partners. It should have 36 beds, nearly double its current 20 based on Buncombe’s population, Burgess-Johnson said. Victims are sometimes sent to shelters 17 counties away.

“That’s just unacceptable that a survivor should have to leave their work, their kid’s school, their grandma, their family’s land, to have to move halfway across the state to get help,” she said.

Helpmate is building a new shelter with 43 beds that’s expected to open at the end of 2025 with funding from the Dogwood Health Trust, the city of Asheville, Buncombe County, and others.

The nonprofit Mediation Center will run out of money at the end of October to supervise child visitation by non-custodial parents in families with histories of domestic violence or child sexual abuse, said Executive Director Laura Jeffords.

The center did not receive federal victim assistance funding in two of the last three years, and COVID relief money provided by Asheville and Buncombe County expires next month, leaving the agency $180,000 short, she said.

The center’s Family Visitation Program serves more than 60 Buncombe families, supervising court-ordered visits and ensuring that “adult victims of domestic violence are not forced to have contact with their abuser every week for visits and exchanges, and children do not witness conflict or violence between parents,” Jeffords said.

The center has applied for funding from more than two dozen sources, but “it is unlikely that the private sector will be able to make up for the large-scale loss of federal funds,” she said.

Without the visitation program, she said “custodial parents will have to choose between not allowing visits/exchanges and potentially being at risk of being held in contempt [of court] or visiting in unsafe locations, where law enforcement can respond only after violence or abuse happens.”

Pisgah Legal Services, a legal aid agency for low-income residents, lost about $1 million in funding for domestic violence, managing attorney Julia Horrocks said in a July interview. That included funding for three of the four attorneys handling domestic violence court cases.

“We’ve had to focus our work on those cases that we think are the most safety risk, but you never know who needs help or to what extent for sure,” Horrocks said. “We have to very much limit our services much more than we have in the recent past.”

Pisgah has identified or secured grants that reduce the $1 million gap by about half for 2025, said spokeswoman Evie White.

“We are still working to address the loss so we can continue to serve local people who need our help to escape domestic violence,” Horrocks said this month.

The impact to Our Voice is not yet known, but if the victim’s assistance fund shrinks as anticipated, the agency would have fewer advocates and possibly fewer counselors for victims of sexual violence and human trafficking, said Executive Director Rita Sneider-Cotter.

Escalating warning signs fail to stop murder-suicide

Margaret Belcher of Hickory wishes more would have been done to stop the man who killed her daughter, Marilyn Davis.

Davis had moved to Asheville and loved the culture, her mother said. She was a “modern hippie, a bohemian gypsy-type” who traveled to outdoor music festivals and sold hand-crafted jewelry, candles, and soaps to pay for the trips, she said.

Davis worked at a restaurant and took leftover breads and biscuits to hand out to unhoused people she encountered on her bicycle ride home.

“Everybody kept telling her, ‘Be careful,’” her mother said. “Instead of being afraid of these people, Marilyn befriended them by bringing them food, and that meant a lot to her.”

Davis got another job at a dispensary, Clover CBD on Patton Avenue, where Sean Wilson was an owner. They began dating, and Davis often stayed in Wilson’s Woodfin home. She brought him to a family Thanksgiving, and Belcher said she found him to be kind and polite.

Belcher said her daughter did not disclose any problems with Wilson in their nightly FaceTime calls. The day before Davis was killed, “she called me and she was so happy and so excited,” Belcher said. “She said, ‘Mom, I finally got my own health insurance all on my own.’ That meant the world to her, that she was taking care of herself.”

On Feb. 28, 2020, Woodfin police conducted a welfare check at Wilson’s home after Davis’ grandmother could not reach her. They found Davis, 25, and Wilson, 36, dead from gunshot wounds.

“The police told me that she had her bags packed at the door, so I think she was trying to leave,” Belcher said. “I didn’t learn until after her death that he was violent with other girlfriends.”

Wilson’s mother declined to comment.

One former girlfriend obtained a temporary protective order against Wilson on Jan. 6, 2017, writing in a complaint that after a text argument, Wilson put her in a headlock, took her phone, and pushed her outside. She was pregnant with his child.

She wrote that she “heard him smashing things” and found her guitar and record player destroyed and a potted plant strewn across the living room. She called the police, she wrote, because it was not “the first time he had damaged my things or threatened me.”

A judge extended the temporary order on Jan. 12, 2017, but a week later, the girlfriend dismissed the complaint. “Plaintiff no longer wishes to pursue this matter,” a court document states.

Three weeks later, she gave birth to a baby girl.

On Aug. 30, 2019, another girlfriend, who also worked at the dispensary, wrote in a court complaint that Wilson choked her when she was moving out of his house. “He has been texting me threats to hurt me further and knows my address,” she wrote. She said she didn’t feel safe and had observed bullet holes throughout the house.

A judge granted a temporary protective order. A hearing on a permanent order was postponed three times and on Nov. 7, 2019, the girlfriend dismissed her complaint.

The protective order in that case required Wilson to surrender his firearms. The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office removed two handguns, 9 mm and .22-caliber, that were not returned to Wilson, said spokeswoman Christina Esmay.

The gun Wilson used to kill Davis and himself was a 9 mm, according to their death certificates.

Buncombe’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team conducted an extensive review of the circumstances leading to the murder-suicide and presented its findings to county commissioners in June. Their report does not name Wilson or Davis, but Asheville Watchdog confirmed that was the case reviewed.

The review found that Wilson had extensive legal interactions over eight years, civil complaints and criminal charges but no permanent protective orders or convictions, and “nearly uninterrupted access to firearms despite multiple intimate partner complaints.”

“Colleagues observed increasing paranoia, depression and homicidal thoughts,” and Wilson had exhibited jealousy, spying, and escalating violence, the report said. “Source of the handgun used in the murder unknown.”

In its presentation to county commissioners, the fatality review team said common themes had emerged with domestic violence deaths in Buncombe, including “inefficient information-sharing across jurisdictions,” a lack of permanent protective orders, perpetrator access to firearms, and community members who did not report concerns about domestic violence.

The team said it would focus its efforts on public awareness campaigns. In July, the county, Helpmate and Our Voice launched the PorchLight Project, a network of Buncombe businesses and organizations that have undergone domestic violence training and designated their space for victims to call for help and wait for assistance.

Belcher said that after her daughter died, friends poured in from Asheville to her funeral in Hickory, including some who had seen signs she was in trouble. “Some of them said that they tried to warn Marilyn,” she said.

She said help for domestic violence victims in Buncombe needs to be better publicized, and everyone should report warning signs.

“I had no clue,” Belcher said, “until it was too late.”

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email [email protected]. Victoria A. Ifatusin joined us through a 12-month fellowship as part of the prestigious Scripps Howard Fund’s Roy W. Howard Fellowship program. You can reach her via email at [email protected]. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service please visit avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.