O.Z. Davis, Sr. remembers getting the news that May day in 2002.
“I was pre-commissioning the [USS] Ronald Reagan at the time,” he told Dateline, explaining that he was stationed in Virginia as a member of the U.S. Navy that year. “It wasn’t even an active aircraft carrier yet.”
Word got around that officers were looking for him on the weekend of May 11. “I knew a lot of people on my command. They were like, ‘Hey, man — man, they looking for you,’” he remembered. “I knew I wasn’t in trouble. So I’m like, ‘Why is everybody looking for me?’”
On Monday, May 13, during morning muster, O.Z. was told to report to the commanding officer’s wing.
“They gave me the news and they read off — they read the Red Cross message,” O.Z. said. “They said, ‘At Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, Mahogany Denise Davis was pronounced dead.’”
21-year-old Mahogany Davis. A mother of three.
O.Z.’s sister.
“On May 11th, 2002 at approximately 0415 hours the Fairbanks Police responded to 1910 Turner St outside of apartment #15 for the report of a stabbing,” Fairbanks Police Department Public Information Officer Teal Soden wrote to Dateline in an email. Mahogany “was transported by Fairbanks Fire Department EMS to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital and was pronounced deceased.”
O.Z. remembers Mahogany as a fiercely protective older sister — a funny, outgoing girl who marched to the beat of her own drum. “She was, like, always there to support me,” he said. “She recorded all the basketball games that I played that my family couldn’t be at.”
According to O.Z., Mahogany had been attacked near the doorway of her Fairbanks, Alaska, apartment. Her three young sons, ages 4 to only 19 days, were inside at the time.
O.Z. flew home to Fairbanks the day he found out his sister had been murdered. He was picked up at the airport by his other sister and Mahogany’s best friend when he landed. “They said, ‘Where you want to go drop off your stuff?’” O.Z. recalled. “I said, ‘Nah, take me to the, you know, to the crime scene.”
When O.Z. got to the apartment door, blood told the story. “There was like a few small drops and then it just start going to big drops and then even bigger,” he remembered. “I followed the blood all the way from her front door all the way to where she collapsed.”
Mahogany collapsed in the parking lot outside the building, according to O.Z. She was later transported to the hospital in an ambulance where she was pronounced dead.
Unable to process his emotions, looking at his sister’s blood on the floor, O.Z. remembers feeling overwhelmed by anger and grief. “I lost it,” he said. “I’m just looking down at the ground, and I’m following it, and I’m just getting even more enraged and more enraged.”
O.Z. says his sister’s death affected the whole community. “That rocked the city of Fairbanks when it happened, you know, and it — it affected a lot of people,” O.Z. said. “Everybody’s heart was broken when she was murdered.”
Soon after her death, Mahogany’s three children went to live with their great-aunt in Oakland, California. For 23 years, they — as well as the rest of Mahogany’s family — have been living without answers.
“Someone knows exactly who did it — what, when, where, and why,” O.Z. said. “I know that for sure.”
No one has ever been arrested or charged in connection to the murder.
Dateline requested an interview with the Fairbanks Police Department regarding Mahogany’s case. “After speaking with the lead detective on this case, we’d rather hold back on releasing any information at this time,” PIO Soden wrote in an email. “When cases are still open there are sometimes reasons that we don’t put info out to the public at certain times.”
Soden noted that the Fairbanks Police Department “may be able to reach out to [Dateline] in a few months” and provide information about the investigation.
“I understand why the police is like, ‘We can’t comment on the open case,’” O.Z. told Dateline. “But how long is this open case gonna be an open case?”
Twenty-three years after the murder, O.Z. is still hoping for justice for his sister. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to just get some answers and to get some closure,” he said.
“My life has changed so much and it’s messed me up because I don’t have answers for my nephews,” O.Z. said. “They all look like different parts of my sister. They’re all different pieces of my sister.”
Mahogany’s youngest son, Demetrius Fleming-Davis, was killed by a stray bullet in Oakland, California on April 10, 2021 — just weeks before his 19th birthday. The Oakland Police Department told Dateline that his case is still unsolved. Anyone with information about Demetrius’s murder is asked to call the Oakland Police Department at 510-238-3821.
O.Z. now keeps photos of Demetrius next to the photos of Mahogany in his home. “It’s a reminder to me. And it’s like, don’t forget me. Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Find out. There’s clues,” he said.
Anyone with information about Mahogany’s murder should contact the Fairbanks Police Department at 907-450-6500.
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