Marc klaas biography

Born: ?

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation:Activist

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Lobbied to get bad Three Strikes law passed

Military service: US Army (medic, 1969-72)

After the death of his daughter Polly Klaas to a sexual predator, Marc Klaas lobbied in California to pass an ill-conceived "Three Strikes" law, in which even a trivial, insignificant "technical" felony is capable of incarcerating an individual 35 years to life. He also lobbied for anti-"murderabilia" laws.

Father: Joe Klaas (d. 25-Feb-2016)
Mother: B.J. Klaas
Brother: (d. alcoholism)
Wife: Eve Nichol (m. 1977, div.)
Daughter:Polly Klaas (victim, b. 3-Jan-1981 Fairfax CA)
Wife: Violet Cheer

    High School: (1969)

    Hertz Corporation Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, CA
    Polygraphed

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Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter’s abduction and murder launched him into an unexpected career as a victim’s advocate and activist three decades ago, has decided to shut down the nearly 30-year-old organization he and his wife started with the aim of protecting other children.

The KlaasKids Foundation will still operate through the coming year, before phasing out at the end of 2024, Klaas said.

But at age 74, after nearly 30 years of travel, speaking engagements and aiding searches for missing kids, Klaas said he’s ready to take time for himself.

“We’ve been doing it for 30 years,” Klaas said Monday, a day after the 30th anniversary of his daughter’s Oct. 1, 1993 kidnapping. “I’m 74, and I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life.“

(Photos: A look back at the Polly Klaas case)

Klaas and his then-fianceé, Violet Cheer Klaas, launched the nonprofit foundation in 1994, soon after Polly Klaas was taken at knife-point from her mother’s Petaluma home by Richard Allen Davis, a longtime criminal named who had only recently been paroled.

During a commemorative event Sunday at the Acqua Hotel overlooking the bay in Mill Valley, Klaas reflected on the decision he and his wife made in starting the foundation so soon after Polly’s disappearance and death.

He said they acted with urgency, figuring they had about 90 days left on the public’s radar before some other high-profile tragedy or news event took the spotlight. (He noted that the shocking murder of O.J. Simpson’s wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, came soon after in June 1994.)

Violet Klaas, he recalled, told him to “do what you need to do” — that she would keep working in real estate, and they could live frugally, so he could pursue the foundation’s work. Marc Klaas had been operating a car rental agency at San Francisco’s tony Fairmont Hotel.

Davis’ long rap sheet, increasingly violent history and

American murder case

Polly Hannah Klaas (January 3, 1981 – October 1, 1993) was an American murder victim whose case garnered national media attention. On October 1, 1993, at age 12, she was kidnapped at knifepoint during a slumber party at her mother's home in Petaluma, California, and strangled to death. Richard Allen Davis was convicted of her murder in 1996 and sentenced to death.

Background

On October 1, 1993, Polly Klaas and two friends were having a slumber party. Around 10:30 pm, an intoxicated man named Richard Allen Davis entered her bedroom, carrying a knife from Eve Nichol's kitchen. He told the girls that he was there to do no harm and was only there for money. Davis tied up both of her friends, pulled pillowcases over their heads, and told them to count to 1,000. He then kidnapped Klaas. Over the next two months, about 4,000 people helped search for Klaas. Davis was arrested two months after the kidnapping and led the police to Klaas' body, which was buried in a shallow grave in Sonoma County.

Conviction

After a long and tumultuous trial, Davis was convicted on June 18, 1996, of first-degree murder with four special circumstances (robbery, burglary, kidnapping, and attempted lewd act on a child) in Klaas's death. A San Jose Superior Court jury returned a verdict of death. At his formal sentencing, Davis provoked national outrage by taunting his victim's family, extending both middle fingers at a courtroom camera and later saying that Klaas's last words just before he killed her implied that her father molested her. Judge Thomas Hastings then formally sentenced Davis to death, telling Davis that his conduct in the courtroom made the decision to pass the death sentence significantly easier. Davis has been on death row since 1996.

Winona Ryder

Actress Winona Ryder, who had been raised in Petaluma,

Of all the crimes in recent Bay Area history, few have been so horrific as the murder of 12-year-old Polly Hannah Klaas on Oct. 1, 1993.

Polly, the only child of Sausalito resident Marc Klaas, was kidnapped at knifepoint from her mother’s home in Petaluma, where she and two friends were having a sleepover. Her mother slept in a bedroom nearby.

On Sunday, 30 years after the crime, Klaas and his second wife Violet plan to hold a gathering in Mill Valley to offer gratitude to friends, family and others for their support year after year. They also want to say thanks for the knowledge they gained in the aftermath of Polly’s case to produce positive change in the world.

“Violet and I want to surround ourselves with people who are meaningful to us on this anniversary,” Klaas, 74, said this week.

The killer, later identified as 39-year-old Richard Allen Davis, held a large knife that he had retrieved from the mother’s kitchen, according to news reports. He had been released from prison only months earlier after serving eight years for a prior kidnapping.

In 1996, three years after Polly’s kidnapping, a jury convicted Davis of first-degree murder with four special circumstances: robbery, burglary, kidnapping and attempted lewd act on a child. Davis, 69, remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison.

Klaas is also announcing that the nonprofit KlaasKids Foundation, which he founded and has operated full-time for almost three decades, has updated its website — KlaasKids.org — to offer what he says is a new community workbook for families, law enforcement, volunteers and other groups to use if they are faced with similar circumstances.

Klaas will be closing the foundation’s operations by the end of 2024, he said.

“The foundation has been my therapy for 30 years,” Klaas said. “Knowing that we’re doing something to try keep Polly’s memory alive, to try to make sense of her untimely d