On April 15, a Travis County jury convicted former Austin music studio owner Dennis Davis of murder, in the cold-case slaying of Natalie Antonetti. Antonetti was found by her then-16-year-old son, Johnny Goudie, and her friend Susan Otten (also her son’s girlfriend) on the couch in her Barton Hills apartment on the morning of Oct. 13, 1985, clutching her head; she had been beaten with what the medical examiner said could have been a baseball bat. The case went unsolved until Austin Police arrested Davis in 2009. Prosecutors said Davis acted in a jealous rage, entering Antonetti’s apartment in the early morning hours and attacking her while she slept on the couch. Davis pleaded not guilty; his attorney argued in court that the police ignored other evidence that could have led to the real killer, notably, a sighting by one of Antonetti’s neighbors of a tall blond man – who looked nothing like Davis – skulking around the apartment complex at the time of the murder. Davis elected to have his sentence handed down by District Judge Mike Lynch, who on Monday gave Davis 36 years in prison for the crime. (For more on the story, see Austin Powell’s “Off the Record” Music column.)
This article appears in April 22 • 2011.