c07

When I got to my mom's house three days ago, all I wanted to do was answer questions. Ask me everything. Anything. I would have told them everything there is to know about my sister. How she takes her coffee. The word she misspells constantly. Her most embarrassing stories. I would have answered it all if it would have been helpful. But now, I'm learning that more talking means there's nothing else to do. Today, for example, it means that Buxton and Williams and their team haven't been able to access the security footage yet. The system resets weekly, apparently, and they now have to access a separate hard drive for the archival footage. I want to say: You have one job. Figure it out. But instead I just keep answering questions, doing as I'm told, spinning my wheels, pushing myself into the most agreeable mold I can imagine.

"What is her relationship with your mom like?" Williams asks. "What can you tell us about that?"

"She's eighteen," I say. "It's complicated, I guess."

We're sitting outside, and it's so hot that I can feel my makeup slowly sloughing off my face, giving up.

"Define complicated," Buxton says, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, the armpits soaked in sweat.

I glance toward the house, my eyes roaming over the small window by my mom's bathroom, the one that sits right above the clawfoot bathtub that she had imported from a castle in France.

"She is literally bathing in the dead skin cells of, like, ancient, long-dead royalty," Evie told me when it arrived two years ago. "It is vile."

The truth was that Evie and my mom's relationship had all the hallmarks of a normal mother-teenage daughter dynamic. It could be explosive, emotional, frustrating, impossible. But it also wasn't as simple as Evie knowing she'd be off to college in a year, that soon she'd be an adult and the space would make it all easier. Evie's entire career was built through and around my mother.

"They grew up together, in a way, I guess," I explain, looking up toward the window again, the sliding glass door. Making sure my mom was away. "My dad died…the video happened…all of it happened. And suddenly they were doing this thing together, becoming internet famous together, getting brand deals together…even when Evie started to get way more popular than my mom ever was, my mom still managed her brand deals. Negotiated. Handled the money stuff. I mean, yeah. It was all complicated. It is complicated."

"Did Evie resent that?" Williams asks. "Not having control of her finances?"

I adjust in my seat, try to get comfortable. I feel a bead of sweat creep down my lower back. My mind says: Careful, careful, careful.

"Again, she's eighteen," I say. "She resents a lot of things."

"Like what, then?" Buxton says, his tone a little stiffer, like he's frustrated. "Being vague won't help us."

My eyes drift upward again toward the bathroom window, and I wonder what my mom had already told them.

"Lack of privacy, for one. From the world, but from our mom, too," I say, trying to walk the line between careful and honest. "My mom thinks most of Evie's personal decisions are business decisions, too. And I mean, she has a point. If Evie dyes her hair right before a hair campaign…yeah, it makes a difference. If Evie posts about how bad a day she's having right before a mood-boosting supplement ad, yeah, it doesn't play well. If Evie makes some political statement, sure, there are implications to everything."

"Sounds like a good manager to me," Buxton offers.

I roll my eyes.

"Maybe if that manager is not also your mother," I mutter. "And your friend."

"And your competition?" Williams suggests, but it doesn't sound like a question.

I don't reply.

"I understand how that could be…tense," Williams says. "I can see how it would lead to arguments. Disagreements. Work conflict."

"Sometimes." I shrug. "But their relationship was not one specific thing, and it never really has been."

"I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the most part…all they had was each other," Buxton says. "That kind of closeness can be intense. Doesn't mean it's bad, right?"

My eyes slice in his direction. It feels like a jab. I don't like remembering that Evie was only eight when I moved to Manhattan for college. That my dad was gone and then I was, too. Buxton doesn't say it directly, but he might as well have: At least my mom stayed. At least someone showed up for Evie.

"I never said it was bad," I reply. "I said it was complicated."

I want so badly to get into all of it, the levels of betrayal and mistrust, but I know I can't. Not without ruining everything. Not without hurting Evie.

"Let's talk about something else complicated, then," Williams says, sitting up a bit straighter. "Money."

"Money?" I ask, though I'm not sure why, because I knew the question was coming.

"How exactly does that work?"

I inhale, then quickly exhale while I consider where to begin. How to explain that part of things. How much they may already know. Because they have to know something, right? Even if my mom didn't tell them anything. There has to be a reason they're interviewing me out here, on my own, instead of in the cool, comfortable beige cocoon that is my mother's living room.

I tuck a curl behind my ear, smoothing it down with my own sweat.

"It's…" I start, but then stop when my eyes land on my mom's bathroom window.

This time, it's wide open.

Episode 349: "The Mysterious Appearance and Disappearance of Evelyn Davis" |Darker: A True Crime Podcast

Kira James:Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Darker: A True Crime Podcast. Today we are doing something that makes August's skin crawl. Who's excited?

August Cho:It really does. She's not lying.

Kira:We are talking about a case that…is…controversial.

August:Tell the people why it's controversial, Kira.

Kira:It's controversial because it's not, per se, an official case yet. Nothing is confirmed. Yet.

August:Enter: my intense, all-consuming fear of being sued.

Kira:Okay, okay, yes. August has a point. They do. But they've agreed to do this episode with me on one very specific condition.

August:Indeed.

Kira:So this episode is going to be more of a…let's say, more of a cultural deep dive than some of our episodes in the past. With some crime-ish aspects, depending on who you ask. But the most important part—and why August said yes to this—is that it will feature an exclusive source. Someone close to the Davises.

August:The second part is the only reason I've agreed to do this one. It felt too important. Like too much of an opportunity.

Kira:[laughs] But please let the record show that it still took days for me to convince August. Days of me telling them what I've researched and how important I think this could be. Usually when we do an episode, we surprise each other and do a case that the other one has never, ever heard about or researched, but this time it felt important to make sure August was fully on board and understood, you know, the stakes of everything beforehand.

August:Yes. Thank you for that, friend. I think people are going to want to buckle up for this one. So. Kira. Tell the good people what you've learned. Tell us everything you know about the wild world of Evie Davis and how, exactly, we got here.

Kira:Gladly. So, Evelyn Elliot Davis was born on May 15, 2005, to Chris Davis and Erin Elliot Davis. It's not talked about much, but Evie has an older sister named Hazel. They're ten years apart. You can see Hazel on some of their oldest vlogs and stuff, but by the time Evie is really sort of, like, center stage, Hazel basically fades away. And I don't want to invade her privacy here by, like, diving too deep into her life, which she has clearly chosen—unlike the rest of her family—not to publicize and monetize.

August:What a concept.

Kira:I know. It's wild. Almost as if not everyone is into having every moment of their life filmed.

August:Especially when you're an anxiety-ridden teenager.

Kira:I'm pretty sure I would have rather run into moving traffic than had my parents filming me for their YouTube channel when I was that age.

August:One hundred percent. But wait—they weren't always making money from this stuff, were they? What about before?

Kira:When it comes to what her parents did other than their blog and then some YouTube stuff, or what they did before Evie was born, it's hard to get any definitive facts. I think her mom said in one vlog she used to be an artist? Maybe a painter or something? And her dad was sort of a jack-of-all-trades…computer software salesman, personal trainer, motivational speaker—ha, I know—listeners, August is giving me the "Okay, now I'm skeptical" look but…yeah, well. Just wait. Juuuuust wait.

August:My spidey senses are automatically set off anytime the phrase motivational speaker is uttered. I can't help it. That and essential oils.

Kira:That's fair enough. But trust me, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

August:I'm ready. I mean, I'm not. But I am.

Kira:So, look, pretty early on—before Evie was even born, Chris and Erin started this blog called The Davis Family Scrapbook. Then when YouTube rolls around in 2005, they start filming pretty much everything. It's basically just a catalog of their life, with the first couple years spent traveling around in a school bus-turned-tiny home. Evie is freaking adorable. She's smart, she's charismatic, she's…all over their videos. She's the star of the show and it's pretty clear from the beginning.

August:Woof.

Kira:I know. Same. But, it is fair to mention that back then, in the early aughts…I don't know. People didn't think about how they put kids online the same way they do now. I mean, people don't even think about it that much today, so you can imagine what it was like almost twenty years ago. So, you know, we can maybe cut them a little slack? Maybe? It's tough. But look, what I can say for sure is that most of the videos—if you take the glaring issue of a child possibly being exploited or used for entertainment—are pretty wholesome. It's a hard task to separate the two ideas, I know, but for the sake of giving them the benefit of the doubt here, it's fair to mention that the videos seem, to many people, harmless. She's the cutest kid I've ever seen. I get why her parents were like, "The world needs to see this child!" And she seemed to like the spotlight, people seemed to like the family content, so there it was.

August:Sure, sure. Let's go with that for now.

Kira:So as the years go on, the Davises build up a tiny bit of a following. I think they had, like, maybe ten thousand subscribers by the time Evie was about five. Not terrible, but not mind-blowing, either. They might have been making some money from it, but serious cash? Not a chance. It's not until 2010 that that happens, thanks to this super-viral video—or, well, just a clip, really—of Evie and Chris. It's of the two of them dancing together before one of her recitals. He's memorized the entire routine, kind of half performing it himself, half coaching her through it. It feels very natural, very off the cuff. They do this little coordinated pirouette thing. Evie is wearing this adorable tutu.

August:That's…sweet…I guess.

Kira:It honestly is. Here, I'll send it to you now so you can watch.

August:Fuck. It is cute. I wanted to despise it so much, Kira!! So much! I still disagree with putting it on the World Wide Web, but it's really cute!!

Kira:I know. But…well, the story gets much darker at this point.

August:Oh, no.

Kira:So, right after this video was taken…just a couple hours after it, I guess, Chris was killed in a car accident.

August:What! No. Oh my God. That's horrible.

Kira:It's very sad. He was only thirty-seven. And so, when Erin uploads the video—

August:I don't like where this is going at all. I do not like it one single bit.

Kira:—she basically positions it as a…"you will cry when you learn the whole story behind it" kind of thing. And it explodes.

August:Jesus Christ, this is dark.

Kira:I know. It becomes this weird combination of "aw, look, how cute" and trauma porn. Ellen DeGeneres ends up having them on the show, like, a month later, talking about their experience, the video, how great Chris was…

August:Just so I'm understanding…so…a five-year-old is forced to relive her trauma on national television? Like, what, mere weeks after she's lost her dad?

Kira:Yeah. But…even in that first TV interview, the audience loves her pretty much immediately. She's like this little comedian slash talk show host in a tiny person's body. You can probably guess what happens next.

August:When was this, 2010?

Kira:Yup. For those who were just kids then—God, this makes me feel old—it's important to know that this was such a weird era of the internet. And such a weird time in the country…the world. It was the middle of a recession. Viral videos were newish and fun and exciting, and I feel like cute videos were the only thing getting us all through. I mean, when you're faced with deciding between thinking about the collapse of the housing market or watching a video of a cat playing the piano on YouTube…the choice is very clear.

August:That makes a lot of sense. I'm twenty-five, so not that much older than Evie, but ohhhh, I can still remember this time. Watching YouTube videos after school. The concept of viral videos. It was a thing.

Kira:Totally. And I was watching the same shit but while stoned in my college dorm room with all my friends crowded around one laptop.

August:Same difference, really.

Kira:Anyway, because of all of that, unsurprisingly, the Davises' channel explodes. Within a year, they have a million subscribers—one of the first few channels to hit the number, actually. And from there things get…intense. Erin goes from posting one vlog a week or so to three or five a week.

August:Whoa. That is… so much filming. And this is just, like, them going to the dentist or whatever? Or more cutesy shit? Or…God, don't say it's more stuff about her dead dad? That's so fucked-up…

Kira:It's honestly a little bit of everything. I think the newly single mom aspect of it, the uniqueness of their lifestyle…it all kind of works together to make people want to root for them. And, I mean, they had just lost Chris—Erin's husband, Evie's dad. I don't think anyone really wanted to be the person who questioned if all the exposure was good for Evie or not. Who criticized the widowed mom who was making the best of a horrible situation. And then, I mean, it was the fact that their daily life was just…different from most people's. That first year, they become super well-known for their US travel content, traveling around in their school-bus house with Evie every summer—Hazel is there, too, but it's more of the Evie and Erin show, really. They were really some of the first people doing the tiny home thing, and people loved it. The way they decorated the house. The renovation stuff they'd highlight. The trip itineraries. They made everything look, well…fun. Easy. Beautiful.

August:So they were truly the OG van lifers, then?

Kira:Exactly. And overall, even as the money was clearly pouring in—the ads and sponsored videos and eventual paid Instagram content, I think people were just happy to see the adorable little girl from the sad video…well, happy. I think people liked this so much that even when things started to really change—when they moved into an apartment, then a giant McMansion in Phoenix, or when Evie got older and the filming only got more and more intense, they already had a soft spot for her, you know?

August:And then…

Kira:And then, well, I mean, it all just continued to grow. At first, Erin was kind of the main event, at least when it came to followers. That mom who seems to have it all together, who makes you think that you can, too. But then, after Evie got her own Instagram account—

August:Do I even want to know how old she was then?

Kira:Seven.

August:Nooooo…

Kira:I know. Erin claims that she monitored or ran the account herself until Evie turned twelve, but…it's hard to say.

August:I mean, still! Why! That is so young. So, so, so young. Like, imagine you at twelve just having FULL access to the internet?? And a whole-ass personal brand?

Kira:I know. It's terrifying. But also, like, imagine having access to a whole business…a career that is… you. She was basically an influencer by the time she was thirteen. One of the first, really, if you really go back far enough. By the time she was a teenager she had a built-in audience of hundreds of thousands of people on Instagram…and then TikTok. You get the idea.

August:The ultimate early adopter of new social platforms.

Kira:Basically, yeah. Thanks to her mom.

August:Thanks is an interesting word…

Kira:Right, well, that's the thing. There's been a significant amount of pushback to the sort of Kris Jenner–esque, stage-mommy feel to this whole thing. The issue isn't really that Evie seems to hate the spotlight—she continues to find new ways to monetize it and grow her platform—but rather that she never really had a choice. I mean, a lot of people argue that this was inevitable. That she was so clearly born for fame of some kind.

August:Like she was bound to become an actor or a singer anyway, right? A performer? So what difference does it make? Especially if this just makes any other performance-focused jobs that much easier for her now?

Kira:Yeah, that's the argument. The counterpoint being that…

August:She never had the chance to tell them, or decide, otherwise. Right?

Kira:That's what a lot of people think, yes.

August:I mean, it makes sense. From what you're saying, she was basically conditioned from a young age to only know this life. Of course she wants the attention and fame to keep coming. How could she not? And that doesn't even begin to cover the other stuff…the constant stream of outside validation that she had become completely used to. I'm sure she couldn't even think about tying her shoes without wondering how the world would perceive it, let alone, I don't know…puberty, relationships, core values…anything! All those eyes on you all the time…It makes my skin crawl.

Kira:Same. I know. Actually, this is kind of a good way to lead into the…I don't want to say crime, because it's unclear if a crime has even taken place here…but the…mystery that's currently surrounding the Davises.

August:This is where I usually start to get nervous, Kira. This is where I have to start every sentence with allegedly.

Kira:Well, this time you don't have to be nervous, because we have a source.

August:And before everyone starts screaming at us in the comments, no, Reddit is not a source! We have a real source.

Kira:Yes. A real person. A guest. An exclusive interview.

August:Dun, dun, duuuun…

Kira:Yes, in the second part of this episode, we will have someone who is close to the Davises on the pod to confirm what, exactly, has been going on. What's true and what's not. A Darker exclusive.

August:Cue the entire world freaking out.

Kira:Cue me freaking out.

August:Personally, I'm ready.

Kira:Well, that makes one of us. But first, let's take an ad break.