Lane was immersed in the digital chaos of reactionary culture and politics that has become an inescapable part of American life. Local news stories gestured at a dark conflict over Lane’s beliefs Chuck Davis had apparently called his son a racist and a Nazi just before he died. In the following days, people coming to pay their respects to Catherine saw hints of the reclusive life Lane had been living: dozens of empty beer bottles and piles of refuse hauled out of his wing of the house. And Samish Island, nestled dazzlingly between two bays and enclosed by a ring of thick Douglas firs, is a place where people don’t pry. Samish,” had almost never spoken publicly about their adult son, except to apologize to neighbors for the screaming arguments that sometimes came from inside the house, puncturing the island quiet. Catherine and Chuck Davis, whom the local paper referred to as “Mr.

The slaying shocked Samish, a remote, 2,000-person village of wealthy empty nesters, vacationing Seattleites, burrowed-in natives, and wind-chapped oyster farmers. The state of Washington charged him with first-degree murder, meaning it would have been premeditated. “I’m sorry.”Īt the sheriff’s office in Mount Vernon, Lane promptly confessed to killing his father. “I’m sorry,” she said as she looked into his eyes. As the sheriff’s deputy led Lane away, Catherine knelt over her husband’s body, a neighbor recalled. Chuck Davis lay on the back deck with his eyes open, dead, blood from the stab wounds in his chest and neck seeping between the slats. The woman wailing was his mother, Catherine. He ordered Lane to stop moving.Ī siren pealed, and Lane Davis went down on his knees at the edge of a grass driveway. One neighbor ran toward the Davis house, flashing a pistol. But almost no one on Samish Island had ever even seen Lane, Chuck’s 33-year-old son - until the sunny day last July when they heard a woman’s screams, and saw Lane come staggering out of the front door covered in blood.Īs his neighbors rushed outside, the pale, bearded, thickset man took a few slow steps into the street. Nearly everyone on Samish Island knew Chuck Davis, a bighearted retiree who lived in the handsome gray shingle house with the best view of Samish Bay.

Right wing pro weed