Maury Davis Kills Jo Ella

In January 1975, 18-year-old Maury Davis stabbed and nearly decapitated 54-year-old Sunday school teacher Jo Ella Liles in her Dallas apartment, a killing no one disputed. On trial, he claimed a jailhouse religious conversion and pursued a defense that blamed the crime on insanity, drug abuse, and the devil, yet a jury still convicted him of manslaughter, which carried a maximum 20-year sentence.

Because of prison overcrowding and good behavior, he served only about eight and a half years before his release. Davis later became the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church, a large megachurch in Madison, Tennessee, and even delivered the opening prayer in the Tennessee Senate at the start of a legislative session.

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