25 years after North Las Vegas teen’s slaying, confession may bring closure to his family

A few phone calls involving 15-year-old Xavier Crockett’s slaying had deeply affected his mother and sisters for years.

Shanreka Frost distinctly remembers the last time she spoke to her brother, even if it was more than 20 years ago when both were children.

Crockett asked his sister to save him some peanut M&Ms and Snickers Halloween candy. He was “so excited about candy all the time,” said Frost, who was 12 at the time.

Less than two weeks later, their mother, Debra Simms, got a call from a neighborhood acquaintance telling her the bodies of two unidentified boys had been found in the desert in North Las Vegas.

Already worried because Crockett had missed his regular check-in, her motherly instinct sensed something terrible had happened. She knew Crockett was dead.

Later in the day, Frost called another sister to deliver the somber news. Ashley Schneider, then 9, remembers wishing, “I just hope he’s OK, even if he’s paralyzed.”

Nine days ago, the family received an unexpected, different call.

This time a North Las Vegas Police detective was on the line telling Simms that her son’s alleged killer had confessed to firing the bullets that killed Crockett and Jason Moore, 14, whose bodies were found Nov. 8, 1996.

“Finally, almost 25 years, finally,” Simms said Feb. 13, the day after she heard the news. “Finally, really, I’m elated.”

During a traffic stop Feb. 12, police in North Las Vegas found a gun on Willis King Davis and detained him, according to his arrest report. In custody, according to police, he said he wanted to “confess to killing people.”

Davis, the arrest report said, first spoke about a May 1996 drive-by shooting of a teenage boy he and his friends suspected was a rival gang leader. The teen was hit multiple times, said police, noting that the slaying had been unsolved.

Davis then started talking about the early morning of Nov. 8, 1996, in a desert area near Clayton Street and Cheyenne Avenue where two boys were hanging out.

Davis said someone handed him a gun and he shot one of the boys, according to the report. As the other one ran, Davis chased him and also killed him with a .380-caliber gun, police said.

STEVE MARCUS A photo of Xavier Crockett and a pamphlet from his funeral service are displayed Feb. 13 in Debra Simms’ apartment. Crockett, then 15, and friend Jason Moore were killed in 1996. Nearly 25 years after the two were killed, a man has confessed to the slayings, North Las Vegas Police report.