FINAL OUTRAGE

By Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles

From the moment he was arrested for the murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas three years ago, Richard Allen Davis has seemed determined to become a poster boy for evil. Swaggering, unrepentant, Davis smiled often during his trial as details of the kidnapping and killing brought tears to many in the San Jose, California, courtroom. Last week, at the sentencing hearing that followed his conviction in June, Davis reached a startling new low when, moments before being sentenced to death, he accused Polly's father of molesting the girl.

A gasp was heard in the courtroom as Davis asserted that the reason he did not sexually assault Polly on the night he killed her was "a statement the young girl made to me while walking her up the embankment: 'Just don't do me like my Dad.'" A family friend yelled, "Burn in hell, Davis!" and Davis' lawyer covered her face with her hands. After a second of frozen shock, Polly's father Marc Klaas leaped from his seat, but he was restrained and led from the courtroom.

As outrageous as the charge was (prosecutors say there is no evidence of any parental abuse), it was not a wild, Manson-like outburst. A career criminal who has been in and out of jail since he was a teenager, Davis knows that child molesters are not popular in prison, and he has been eager to deny that he raped Polly before strangling her. But his defiant statement made it "very easy" to pronounce the death sentence, Judge Thomas C. Hastings said. And Marc Klaas vowed to get the ultimate satisfaction. "The last thing Polly saw before she died was Richard Allen Davis' eyes," he said. "The last thing Richard Allen Davis will see is my eyes, I hope."

--By Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles