On Oct. 26, 1970, Nancy Bennallack, a 28-year-old Sacramento court reporter, was found brutally stabbed to death in her apartment. A friend of the victim and the apartment manager found Bennallack deceased in her bedroom after she failed to arrive to work that morning.
Bennellack was engaged to marry Chief Public Defender Farris Salamy the following month. They were together on the evening of October 25. At approximately 11:30 pm, Salamy left Bennallack’s apartment to return to his own residence. According to Salamy, when he left the apartment, the victim was in bed and the sliding glass door, which opened to the second story balcony, was slightly ajar to allow her cat to go outside.
Sometime between 11:30 pm on October 25 and the early morning hours of October 26, the suspect made entry into the victim’s apartment by climbing up the second story balcony and through the open slider. The suspect stabbed the victim over 30 times and nearly decapitated her. When investigators arrived and began processing the crime scene, they located a blood trail which began on the balcony, continued to the sidewalk below, around the apartment complex buildings, ending at the parking lot. The investigators determined the suspect cut himself during the murder and possibly left the scene in a vehicle.
The case was investigated thoroughly at the time of the crime; however, no suspect was identified. In 2004, a forensic DNA profile was developed from the blood drops found at the scene. The unknown, male profile was uploaded to the state and national CODIS data bases but there was no match to an offender.
In November 2019, investigators from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case team and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office began their Forensic Genetic Genealogy investigation.
On July 21, 2022 investigators identified the suspect as Richard John Davis (27 years old at the time of the murder). Davis died in Sacramento County on Nov. 2, 1997. He lived in the same apartment complex where Bennallack was murdered.