12-Year-Old Was Abducted and Killed During Sleepover: Inside the Case of Polly Klaas By Virginia Chamlee

Some 32 years later, the abduction and murder of Polly Klaas remains ingrained in the American psyche. Polly was 12 years old when she was kidnapped on Oct. 1, 1993, from her home in Petaluma, Calif., where she was having a slumber party with two other 12-year-old classmates.

The case sparked a nationwide search, made Polly a household name and led to California’s adoption of the “three strikes and you’re out” law, which called for increased prison sentences for repeat offenders.

Polly and her two friends were having a slumber party at home with her mother, Eve, asleep in one room, and her half-sister, Annie, sleeping in another.

At some point in the night, ex-convict Richard Allen Davis, then aged 39 and out on parole following a previous kidnapping, broke into Polly’s bedroom, bound and gagged her friends, and abducted her. 

She wasn’t found for 65 days, during which thousands of volunteers joined in the search as law enforcement agencies learned better ways to respond to kidnappings.

Actress Winona Ryder, who had been raised in Petaluma, became a vocal part of the case, offering a $200,000 reward for Polly’s safe return. The actress, then in her early 20s, even dedicated her appearance in the 1994 film Little Women to Polly, as it had been the tween’s favorite book.

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The search would end on Dec. 4, 1993, when Davis admitted he had strangled Polly just hours after abducting her. He then took the police to her remains in a shallow grave near Highway 101.

A year after her murder, California voters and lawmakers adopted the so-called “three strikes” law, which set longer sentences for repeat offenders like Davis.

Jurors in 1996 found Davis guilty of first-degree murder and of the “special circumstances” of kidnapping, burglary, robbery and attempting a lewd act on a child. Davis was sentenced to death row.

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In 2019, however, California Gov. Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on executions in the state, but a judge rejected his resentencing bid in 2024.

Per PEOPLE’s reporting from the time, Polly was cremated and memorialized in a private service, in which a chapel was decorated with lavender roses and ribbons of purple, her favorite color. The Klaas family took a boat out onto California’s Carmel Bay, where Polly’s three aunts — Juliet Klaas-Puleo, Marianna Ford and Elizabeth Klaas — scattered her ashes into the sea.

Speaking to PEOPLE on the 10th anniversary of her death in 2003, Polly’s mother, Eve, said, “We talk about Polly probably every day. We will read out of her journal in front of the fire. We will go through a photo album together. We tell stories all the time. It’s like we just take her with us. It’s not like we put her on a shelf and bring her out on an anniversary.”