Matthew Davis avoids further jail time for abandoning Amber McGathey’s corpse
In the summer of 2004, Matthew Davis wrapped a sheet around the dead body of 22-year-old Amber McGathey and used a shopping cart to dump her into the back of his Jeep Cherokee. Then he drove it from his River Market apartment to West 39th Street to pick up another girl, intent on continuing his night of partying. When his new companion asked what was in the back of the Jeep, he told her it was his laundry.
McGathey’s decomposing body wasn’t discovered until a week later, still in the back of the Jeep, parked at 5th and Delaware. The county’s medical examiner determined that she’d died of an accidental drug overdose.
On July 20, 2005, Davis pleaded guilty to the felony charge of abandonment of a corpse and to two additional drug charges. In consideration of Davis’ past drug offenses, Circuit Judge J.D. Williamson, Jr. sentenced Davis to 15 years for the drugs and seven years for abandoning McGathey’s corpse, ordering the sentences to run consecutively for a total of 22 years in prison.
Davis hired attorney Pat Peters to file an appeal. Peters unearthed the fact that, in the trial in front of Williamson, Jackson County prosecuting attorney Dan Miller had failed to turn over more than 100 pages of discovery to Davis’ original defense attorney, John Picerno. Because of that prosecutorial misconduct, Davis’ guilty plea was thrown out, and he was granted a new trial.
Yesterday, Davis appeared in court again for the same crime (though it’s not hard to see why some readers of this Kansas City Star article were led to think Davis had abandoned a second corpse). Circuit Judge Robert M. Schieber sentenced Davis to two consecutive, four-year prison terms for abandoning a corpse and for the drug charges, with credit for time served. Because he’d already spent more than five years in prison, Davis left the courtroom yesterday a free man.
Last September, Miller resigned from the prosecutor’s office in exchange for $70,000.
As for the victim, her name is easily lost in these confusing twists of the justice system. Where would McGathey be today, had she never met Davis? Those of us who counted her as a friend will never get an answer.
