Richard Rice, a 63-year-old male, was a garage owner in Elbert County, Georgia, and on February 13, 1984, what began as an ordinary workday turned into a trap. According to the court record, someone called Rice’s grandson and reported that a green Chevrolet was sitting near trash dumpsters on Bobby Brown Road and needed to be picked up. The message was passed along to Rice, who climbed into his wrecker and headed out to the spot, likely expecting nothing more than another routine towing job. Witnesses later saw him at the dumpsters, backing his wrecker up to the green Chevrolet and moving around it as he prepared the tow, with nothing outwardly unusual to suggest that violence was only moments away.
After Rice pulled away with the Chevrolet in tow, the quiet of the road shattered. A witness traveling behind the wrecker saw a black male lean out of the driver’s-side window of the car being towed and fire two or three shots. Even then, the scene was confusing enough that the witness initially thought the gunfire might have been some kind of signal, because the wrecker did not immediately swerve wildly or crash. It continued on for a short distance before pulling to the side of Woodlawn Church Road. Not long after, another resident came upon the stopped wrecker and found Rice slumped over inside with the engine still running, the windshield wipers still moving in the rain, and the driver’s-side door open. He was dead where he sat, still clutching an automobile bumper jack in his hand.
The autopsy described a brutal, close-range killing. One bullet passed through his face, another struck his neck and lodged in the skull, and a third grazed his shoulder. The medical testimony said the head wounds were potentially fatal and had been inflicted from only a few inches away, making the crime feel not only violent but intimate, the kind of sudden, desperate encounter that leaves behind a terrible stillness once it is over. The image left by the evidence was of a man who had gone out to answer a call for work and instead met his killer on a lonely road in the middle of a rainy afternoon.
Authorities soon focused on George Bernard Davis Jr. Acting on information gathered from several sources, officers found him in Lincoln County, brought him to the sheriff’s office in Elbert County, advised him of his rights, and questioned him. After first denying involvement, Davis confessed. In his written statement, he said he had driven the green Chevrolet to Rice’s garage earlier that day because he was angry over a dispute involving repair work and money he still owed. He admitted that he then placed the false call about the abandoned car, waited for Rice to arrive, and set the encounter in motion himself. Davis claimed that after Rice hooked the Chevrolet to the wrecker and drove away, he fired into the truck, then shot Rice again after the vehicle stopped. He also admitted taking Rice’s wallet, which held more than $800, before driving off. Investigators said Davis led them to both the murder weapon, which matched the ballistics evidence, and Rice’s wallet.
As for arrests, suspects, and the outcome of the case, the online record points squarely at Davis as the identified suspect. The Georgia Supreme Court stated that George Bernard Davis Jr. was convicted by a jury in Elbert County of both the armed robbery and the murder of Richard Rice. The court upheld the conviction on direct appeal in 1986, finding the evidence sufficient. The same online case record shows that Davis had been sentenced to death for the murder at that stage, while later summary-style online sources indicate that sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. In the public online sources reviewed, no other suspects are described as being arrested or charged in Rice’s killing.
