Christopher Leon Smith, the 50-year-old defendant to the 1986 killing of Carol Davidson, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Pierce County Superior Court Friday.

Shortly after noon on August 30, 1986, Tacoma Police responded to an apartment complex in Tacoma. Police found Carol Davidson, 46, deceased inside her apartment. Davidson sustained blunt force trauma to the head, her hands were bound behind her back, and she was gagged. The medical examiner determined she died from strangulation. On the ground below her apartment window, police found some of the victim’s belongings and a pack of Kool cigarettes.

The crime scene was forensically processed and biological evidence was recovered.  With the limited scope of scientific techniques available at the time, the original investigators were unable to identify a suspect and the investigation was suspended.

In July 2012, Tacoma Police created a Cold Case Unit, funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice, to collaborate with the Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Unit.  Detective Miller reopened the investigation, reviewed the evidence, and submitted biological samples to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab. A DNA profile was developed, and entered into the CODIS national DNA registry. The DNA profile matched the defendant whose DNA had been collected after his 2009 Pierce County convictions for Rape in the First Degree, Rape of a Child in the Second Degree, and Kidnapping.

In 1983 and 1984, Smith was a suspect in two separate Tacoma area rapes.  Both victims reported that they had been physically assaulted before being raped and one said the assailant purchased a pack of Kool cigarettes while they were together. Smith was interviewed during those investigations and told a detective that he had consensual sex with both women, and that he smoked Kool cigarettes.

On Nov. 26, 2012, Detectives Miller and Ryan Larsen spoke with the defendant at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he is serving a 50 year to life sentence for the 2009 sex offenses.  Smith denied involvement in the murder of Carol Davidson, and declared that any DNA result that linked him to the crime is the result of a conspiracy.