An elderly man was stabbed and tortured to death in Houston by a 23-year-old who has been charged with murder. Around five in the morning local time on July 19, Richard Davis, 67, was discovered dead inside an abandoned apartment on Hillcroft Avenue. According to court documents, the suspect, Richard Plata, tied up Davis and repeatedly stabbed him in the bottom of his feet with push pins.
The 23-year-old allegedly tied up Davis before sticking push pins into the soles of his feet. Davis had stab wounds and other blunt force injuries, according to the police. On August 4, the Houston police detained Plata, who was already free on bail following a misdemeanor criminal trespass charge. Plata was taken into custody after posting a $1 million bond, and his court date is August 29.
In 2017, the Rosenberg police detained Plata, who was 18 at the time, along with a number of other people for allegedly delivering a controlled substance in a drug-free area. A dead body had been found at the complex in May 2021, before Davis was murdered there.
Officers were called when there was a report of a dead body in a dumpster at the apartment building. The victim, later identified as Leondra Addis, 41, was discovered with numerous stab wounds while wrapped in a tarp. In August 2021, the police accused Walter Michael Oliver of murder. Oliver had already served time for an aggravated assault when authorities connected him to the death of the 41-year-old.
Davis was murdered in Houston around the same time that a grandfather and his four grandchildren were killed on June 2 in Texas by an escaped prisoner. The five victims were killed after traveling to the family’s ranch in Centerville, about 100 miles north of Houston, where Gonzalo Lopez, a Mexican Mafia hitman, was reportedly hiding out after escaping from a prison transport van in the region three weeks earlier.
The hitman was shot and killed by police following his prison break and the murder of five family members: Mark Collins, 66, brothers Waylon, 18, Carson, 16, and Hudson, 11, and their cousin Bryson, also 11.
