Caucasian female Erin Davis, 31, was discovered deceased on the afternoon of December 16, 2014, inside an apartment located in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Officers from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department responded to the scene in the 300 block of Walsh Street, where they found the victim with fatal gunshot wounds to her head and neck.
She was pronounced dead at the scene, launching a homicide investigation that would eventually uncover a violent plot rooted in the local drug trade.
Detectives determined that Davis had become a target in a retaliatory scheme orchestrated by a known drug dealer named Dwane Taylor. In late 2014, Taylor had been robbed of narcotics and money, prompting him to seek revenge against those he believed were responsible or connected to the theft. He recruited an associate, Joe Moreland Edger, to assist him in hunting down his targets. Edger played a critical role in the conspiracy by helping identify and locate the victims, including Davis, and by providing transportation to the crime scenes.
Further investigation revealed that Edger supplied Taylor with the 9mm firearm used to kill Davis. The violence did not end with her death; the pair was also linked to the murder of another woman, Juanita Davis, in January 2016, though the two victims were not related. Federal authorities, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, collaborated with local police to bring charges against the men, exposing the calculated nature of the attacks.
In March 2018, Joe Moreland Edger appeared in federal court and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his involvement in the murders. He had been convicted of conspiracy to possess a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Dwane Taylor, who was already on state parole for a prior murder at the time of the killings, had his parole revoked by the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole as a direct result of these crimes.
