Stephanie C. Gibson, a 48-year-old Caucasian woman with graying brown hair and green eyes, was last seen in the early hours of July 8, 1995, leaving Memories Tavern in Peoria, Illinois. She departed around 2:30 a.m. in the company of Arlie Ray Davis, riding in his light blue, four-door 1979 Dodge Dart with license plates numbered MMJ 296. Gibson was wearing a tight-fitting black blouse with diamond-shaped designs, black spandex pants, black sneakers, and earrings. Notably, she had a tattoo of a broken heart on her upper left arm and was known to have a mental disability.
Davis later claimed that after leaving the bar, he and Gibson traveled to Kingston Mines, Illinois. However, authorities found no evidence to substantiate this claim. Gibson has not been seen or heard from since that night. At the time of her disappearance, she resided in the 600 block of Voris Street in Peoria.
In the late 1990s, Arlie Ray Davis was convicted of the murder of another Illinois woman and sentenced to death. Reports from prostitutes in the Peoria area during the early 1990s indicated that Davis had a propensity for strangling and beating them. Investigators suggested that he suffered from sexual dysfunction and harbored feelings of inferiority toward women.
Gibson's disappearance is among several cases of missing women from the Peoria area during that period, including Loretta Tinkham and Cheryl Murray. Another woman, Sheryl Murwin, went missing in 1994; her remains were discovered in 2001 and identified in 2003. While authorities have not definitively linked these cases, it is possible that the women had interactions with Davis. Davis consistently maintained his innocence regarding these disappearances. He died of a heart attack on death row in October 2002, five days before a scheduled clemency hearing.
As of now, Stephanie Gibson remains missing, and no further developments have been reported in her case. Several unidentified female bodies have been found in the Peoria area in recent years, but none have been linked to the cases of the missing women.
