After 16 years on death row, LaMaricus Davidson now faces execution for killing a young couple
. It is one of the most shocking and horrifying murder cases to ever happen in East Tennessee. One that took two young lives full of promise and put their families through eight criminal trials. The tragic murders shocked the community and the families of these two young victims.
January 9th, 2007, 1:47 p.m. Knoxville, Tennessee. Detective Todd Childress had worked homicide for 16 years. He’d pulled bodies from the Tennessee River, scraped remains off I40, identified victims burned beyond recognition, but nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared him for what waited inside the sagging blue house at 2316 Chipman Street.
The SWAT team breached the door at 1:43 p.m. Four armored officers swept through rooms thick with the stench of bleach and decay. In the kitchen, beneath a window with torn curtains, sat a white plastic trash can, standard size, the kind you’d buy at Walmart for $12. One of the officers lifted the lid. Inside, wrapped in five black trash bags bound with electrical cords and bed sheets, was 21-year-old Shannon Christian.
Her body was curled into a fetal position, compressed so tightly her knees touched her chest. A white grocery bag had been cinched over her head. She was still wearing her pink sweater. She had been alive when they put her in there. Childress stepped outside, pulled off his mask, and threw up in the dead grass. 2 days earlier, another officer had made a different discovery 3 mi away.
A railroad worker spotted smoke rising from the Norfolk southern tracks off Cherry Street, a smoldering bundle wrapped in a comforter. When firefighters pulled back the fabric, they found 23-year-old Hugh Christopher Nuome Jr. shot three times, burned, bound at the wrists and ankles. A dog leash cinched around his neck. His face was charred beyond recognition.
The only way police could identify him was by the dog tag still hanging from his neck, glinting in the January frost. By the time SWAT kicked in that door on Chipman Street, Knoxville had already been searching for Shannon and Chris for 3 days. Missing person posters plastered every gas station, their faces broadcast on every local news channel.
Their parents sat in living rooms paralyzed by dread, replaying the last time they’d heard their children’s voices. Now the search was over, and the nightmare was just beginning. Shannon Gail Christian grew up in Fountain City, a quiet neighborhood on Knoxville’s north side where neighbors knew each other’s names and kids rode bikes until the street lights came on.
She graduated from Farragate High School in 2003. Honor role, student council, the kind of girl who always had a kind word for everyone. Her parents called her their sunshine girl. By 2007, she was a senior at the University of Tennessee, studying sociology and working part-time at a local clothing boutique. She wanted to be a social worker.
Wanted to help kids who’d grown up the way her boyfriend had. Rough childhoods, broken homes, second chances that actually meant something. Hugh Christopher Nuome Jr., everyone called him Chris. Grew up in Halls, a small community northeast of Knoxville. Baseball was his life. He pitched through high school, earned a partial scholarship to a junior college, and dreamed of coaching someday.
After graduation, he took a job as a carpenter to save money, building decks and framing houses with his father on weekends. He was 23 years old. His dog tags were from his grandfather’s military service, a family heirloom he wore every single day. Shannon and Chris had been dating for a few months. Nothing serious yet, just that easy early stage where everything feels possible.
On the night of January 6th, they’d gone to dinner with a friend, dropped him off at an apartment complex on Washington Pike, and were planning to head home. It was 9:15 p.m. They were parked in Shannon’s silver Toyota 4Erunner, saying good night. A last kiss, a last smile. They never made it home. To understand what happened inside that house on Chipman Street, you have to go back to Memphis, Tennessee.
June 13th, 1981. Laus Dval Slim Davidson was born into a world already collapsing in on itself. His mother was a teenager when she had her first child, overwhelmed by poverty and the revolving door of men who drifted through their cramped North Memphis apartment. By the time Davidson came along, second of six children, all from different fathers, crack cocaine had already crept into her life like a shadow.
Violence was the family’s first language. Fights erupted over spilled drinks, broken promises, missing money, belts cracked, doors slammed, fists landed. Davidson learned early that silence was safer than asking for help. He earned the nickname Slim before prison ever touched him. Not for swagger, but because hunger carved his frame down to bone.
By age five, his earliest memories weren’t toys or birthdays. They were sirens, bruises, shattered glass. Nights when his mother’s screams spilled out into the street. By age 10, he was skipping school, wandering the streets, watching older boys hustle on corners. Teachers described him as quiet but angry. The kind of boy who stared at the wall like he was somewhere else entirely.
At 16, after a violent fight at home brought police and social workers, the state finally intervened. They placed him in Alice Ria’s group home in Jackson, Tennessee, an old brick building behind a Baptist church where rules mattered and meals came on schedule. Something strange happened. The boy raised in chaos softened under structure.
He mopped floors without protest, completed his GED prep, even helped younger boys with their chores. Ria later told a court that Davidson was one of the few who tried. He had a sharp mind for mechanics, could disassemble a lawnmower and put it back together clean. For 10 months, he bloomed. Then the state’s budget ran out.
At 17, Davidson was discharged and placed in foster care with the Rudd family in Jackson. They treated him like family. He ate dinner at a real table, slept in a clean room, celebrated a birthday with a cake for the first time in his life. His foster father enrolled him in a vocational program. Teachers whispered that he might have a future, but nothing holds forever when the streets raised you.
His half-brother, Latalis Cobbins, resurfaced, older now, drifting between Michigan and Tennessee, carrying stories of fast money, and easy thrills. Cobbins knew exactly how to pull Davidson back. Late night calls, visits behind stores, promises of a real man’s life. By 18, Davidson was slipping, missed curfews, nervous lies, petty theft.
By 20, he was holding a gun to a driver’s temple during a carjacking. The judge sentenced him to 5 years in West Tennessee State Penitentiary. Prison didn’t break Davidson. It sculpted him. The boy who once mopped floors for Alice Ria hardened into someone colder, more calculating. Fights toughened his knuckles. Solitary sharpened his hate.
When he walked out on parole in August 2006, the gentle version of him, whatever Ria and the Rudds tried to save, was gone. He drifted to Knoxville, crashing in a run-down rental at 2316 Chipman Street with Cobbins, their friend George Thomas, and Cobbins 18-year-old girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman. Add Eric Boyd, a Knoxville local with a violent streak and a willingness to do anything for fast cash.
Inside that house, the wrong people collided at the worst possible time. Jobless, restless, broke, and hungry for opportunity. By January 6th, 2007, they were ready to take whatever they could get. Washington Pike Apartments. 9:15 p.m. Shannon and Chris never saw the shadows closing in. From behind a row of parked cars, LaMaricus Davidson stepped forward with a 22 revolver. behind him.
Cobbins, Thomas, and Boyd moved fast. The couple was ambushed in seconds. Chris slammed into the back seat. Shannon dragged forward with a gun pressed to her ribs. The silver 4Erunner peeled away from the apartment complex, swallowed by the dark. Inside the moving vehicle, electrical cords bit into their wrists. Shannon whispered Chris’s name.
Chris tried to speak, but a pistol was pressed to his neck. Every turn brought them closer to 2316 Chipman Street, a place neighbors already feared, a place that would soon be known as hell on Earth. Dragged inside at gunpoint, the nightmare split into two separate horrors. Chris was beaten, stripped, raped with an object.
Then they marched him barefoot through freezing January mud toward the Norfick southern train tracks. His ankles were bound with his own belt, his hands tied behind him, a dog leash cinched around his neck like he was an animal. He stumbled over gravel as the men laughed behind him. At the tracks, they shot him once in the neck, once in the back, then execution style through the head.
His body was dowsted in gasoline and set on fire to destroy evidence. His dog tags, his grandfather’s dog tags, glinted faintly in the morning frost. They would be the only reason police could identify him. Shannon heard the gunshots from the bedroom. What followed was worse, slower, cruer, unimaginable. She was raped repeatedly, vaginally, orally, anally by Davidson and Cobbins over the course of hours.
Beaten so brutally her mouth tore, kicked in the groin, strangled until she passed out. When the men were done, they poured bleach down her throat, burning her from the inside out. Bleach on her skin, bleach on her clothes, bleach in her wounds. They wanted to destroy the evidence. They wanted to destroy her. Then came the final act.
Hog tied with curtains and electrical cords, stuffed into five black trash bags, and forced into a kitchen garbage can. Alive, suffocating slowly in the dark, praying someone would find her. No one came. Medical examiners would later determine she survived between 3 and 12 hours inside that trash can before esphyxiation finally took her.
By morning, two young lives were gone. And Knoxville would never be the same. When the torture finally ended, the killers scattered like roaches under sudden light. Not remorse, fear pushed them. They wiped surfaces with dirty towels, burned clothes in the sink, sprayed cologne to mask the stench. Davidson scrubbed the floor with bleach, but the smell only made the house wreak worse. They stole what they could.
Phones, clothes, cash, and fled into the night. But by dawn, the truth was already clawing its way to the surface. January 7th, 2007. A Norfolk Southern Railroad worker spotted something smoldering beside the tracks, a burned bundle wrapped in a comforter. At first, he thought it was trash. Then he saw bare feet.
A dog tag glinting in the cold light. Hugh Christopher Nuome Jr. The call to police went out within minutes. Homicide, possible burning. Young male victim. Across Knoxville, Shannon’s parents sat in a living room full of dread. She hadn’t come home. Friends began searching the city. Flyers printed. Tears pressed back.
Her father kept calling her cell phone even though it went straight to voicemail every time. That same night, 1:30 a.m. on January 8th, Shannon’s silver Toyota 4Runner was found abandoned near a quiet neighborhood. Seats pushed back. Mud smeared across the floor. Inside an envelope carried one unmissable piece of evidence. Laus Davidson’s fingerprint.
Police widened the radius. Detectives pulled records, ran names, built timelines. The hunt began. January 9th. SWAT descended on Chipman Street. Neighbors watched from porches as officers with rifles breached the sagging blue house. The smell hit them first. Bleach. Rot. Death. In the kitchen, Detective Childress lifted the lid on a white plastic trash can.
Shannon Gail Christian, bound, suffocated, her body curled in a fetal position, her pink sweater clinging to her frame. Officers stepped back in silence. Even seasoned detectives cried. Knoxville exploded in outrage. Vigils lit the night sky. News stations broadcast updates every hour. Citizens demanded answers, demanded justice, demanded blood.
The killers knew the city was closing in. Cobbins, Thomas, and Coleman fled to Lebanon, Kentucky, where state troopers raided a house and arrested them without a fight. Shannon’s purse and clothes were still inside. Coleman had even written in her journal, calling the ordeal an adventure. Back in Knoxville, police tracked Davidson through phone pings.
They found him hiding in an abandoned house on Reynolds Street, curled on a filthy mattress, his .22 revolver under the bed. On his feet were Chris Newsome’s Nike sneakers. In his pocket, Shannon Christian’s diamond ring. He didn’t resist. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t ask why officers were there. He already knew.
When detectives dragged LaMaricus Davidson into the interrogation room at the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, he still believed he could talk his way out of murder. For hours, he spun lies like a man drowning. First, he claimed he wasn’t even home that night. Said he’d been selling dope somewhere else. When detectives mentioned Shannon, he snapped, “I ain’t never seen that girl a day in my life.
” Minutes later, he changed his story. Now Cobbins and Thomas had shown up with Shannon and Chris already tied up in the SUV. He admitted loaning them the gun. Admitted watching Chris get beaten. Admitted hearing Shannon beg, “I don’t want to die.” But insisted he didn’t touch nobody. Another hour passed. Another version. Another lie.
In total, Davidson gave five different stories, each one collapsing under the weight of forensic evidence. His DNA was everywhere. inside Shannon, on her clothes, on the trash bags, on the cords. His fingerprint was on the SUV. His gun fired the shell casings found near Chris’s body. He was finished.
October 2009, Knox County Criminal Court. Prosecutors laid out the brutality piece by piece. Binding marks on wrists and ankles, bleach burns inside Shannon’s throat, rape injuries documented by medical examiners, execution wounds on Chris, Davidson’s semen, fingerprints, [clears throat] footprints, and personal possession of Chris’s shoes and Shannon’s ring.
Every fact pointed to Davidson. Every detail screamed control, cruelty, and intent. Then came the families. Chris’s mother, Mary Nuome, took the stand and described identifying her son by his dog tags because his face was too burned. Her voice cracked when she said, “I gave those tags to him when he was 16. They were my father’s.
Now they’re all I have left.” Shannon’s father, Gary Christian, broke down describing the moment police told him they’d found her in the trash can. “I kept thinking she was going to walk through the door,” he said. “I kept thinking this was all a mistake.” A courtroom full of seasoned deputies cried quietly behind them.
After two days of deliberation, jurors returned with one verdict. Guilty. All 46 counts. Premeditated murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery, torture. During the penalty phase, prosecutors presented four aggravating factors. Each one enough to justify death. The torture alone sealed it. On December 10th, 2009, the jury delivered their final decision.
Death unanimous four times over. Co-fendants faced their own punishments. Latalis Cobbins, life without parole. George Thomas, life without parole. Vanessa Coleman, 53 years. Eric Boyd, 18 years for federal carjacking. But Davidson, the ring leader, the architect of terror, received the state’s ultimate sentence.
When the verdict was read, Shannon’s mother collapsed in her seat. Chris’s father stared straight ahead, finally exhaling after 3 years of holding his breath. Davidson showed no emotion. He simply nodded once and was led away in chains. When LaMaricus Deval Davidson stepped through the gates of Riverben Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, it was December 2009.
The death sentence had been spoken. The chains were locked. And for the first time in his life, the chaos of the streets vanished into a single sound. The metallic slam of a steel door. Death row at Riverbend isn’t loud. It’s quiet. Too quiet. For 23 hours a day, Davidson sat alone in a 6×9 cell, no cellmate, no movement, no chaos to hide behind, just a bunk, a toilet, and the kind of silence that forces a man to meet himself.
Guards said he adjusted quickly. No outbursts, no fights, no anger. He followed orders, kept to routines, and rarely spoke unless spoken to. But he never apologized. not to guards, not in letters, not in court. His silence became its own kind of confession. Years blurred together. Legal binders filled his cell.
Appeals, motions, transcripts, handwritten notes in the margins. He studied his case like a man trying to rewrite fate. But every petition hit the same wall. The evidence was overwhelming, the cruelty undeniable. His 2013 direct appeal failed. His 2016 Tennessee Supreme Court review failed. His postconviction petitions failed.
Claims of ineffective counsel, judicial bias, flawed jury selection. None of it moved the courts. Riverbend became his world. In 2016, he asked to be baptized. A volunteer chaplain lowered him into a plastic tub in a small room while two guards watched. After that, he kept a handdrawn cross on his wall. He aged in the cell, gained weight, hair grayed, eyes dulled.
The swagger of slim faded into the shuffle of a man waiting for a clock he couldn’t see. His world shrank to breakfast trays through a slot, three showers a week, one hour of recreation in a cage, and the long, slow grind of time. Meanwhile, outside those walls, the families of Shannon Christian and Chris Nuome spent 16 years living in grief that never softened.
Birthdays passed. Holidays came and went. Their chairs at the table stayed empty. Every hearing, every delay, every new appeal reopened wounds they were never allowed to close. In 2025, Davidson’s lawyers filed yet another motion, arguing racial bias and constitutional flaws. It sits on a desk somewhere now, waiting, just like him.
Today, 2316 Chipman Street is gone, bulldozed. A vacant lot where grass grows over the foundation. But on clear nights, neighbors still cross the street to avoid walking past that empty space. Shannon Christian would have been 39 years old this year. She wanted to be a social worker. She wanted to help kids who’d grown up the way her killer had.
Rough childhoods, broken homes, second chances that actually meant something. Chris Newsome would have been 41. He wanted to coach baseball someday. His grandfather’s dog tags, the ones that identified his burned body, sit in a box his mother still can’t bring herself to open.
Laus Davidson sits in a cell in Nashville, counting days he stopped marking on the calendar years ago. Justice was pronounced 16 years ago. The verdict was clear. The sentence was final. But for the family still living this nightmare, no sentence will ever be enough. Some scars, it seems, go deeper than concrete, deeper than steel, deeper than any punishment a court can pronounce.
Shannon Christian and Chris Newsome were real people. They had dreams, plans, futures. They were 21 and 23 years old. Remember their names, not just
