Remember \Rip\ Bell?

The man who was arrested in the Territory in January 1989 after being on the run for seven years and living in American Samoa — where he worked as a pilot for Samoa Air  — has died in prison. He lived in the Territory under the name of David "Rip" Bell.

 

David Davis, 70, died November 9 of congenital neuromuscular disease.

 

He was infamous for drugging his wife, Shannon Mohr, in 1980, with horse tranquilizer and masking her murder to look like a horse-riding accident. The case was so widely publicized that it became the subject of not only a TV movie, but also a 1992 book.

 

Davis fled the country, evaded authorities for nearly a decade, and almost got away with the perfect crime until a woman in Hawai’i saw his case featured on "Unsolved Mysteries" and tipped investigators to his whereabouts.

 

Davis allegedly killed his wife to collect on insurance policies totaling more than $300,000.

 

While on the run, Davis had moved to American Samoa to be a local airplane pilot and had married a Samoan woman.

 

A jury convicted him in 1990 of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to life in prison, where he died last month.