Michael Green pleaded no contest to second-degree murder Friday for the 1985 killing of Jane Anker Hylton — a crime once thought committed by another man, Ricky Davis, who undeservedly served 15 years in state prison.
Green’s plea comes 37 years after Hylton’s death and two years after DNA evidence led authorities to the now 54-year-old man, who was arrested in Roseville in 2020. Hylton’s body was discovered at 2848 Stanford Lane in El Dorado Hills on July 7, 1985. At the time of the murder Green was 17 years old, according to Savannah Broddrick with the El Dorado County District Attorney’s office.
Green is said to be one of three young men who hung out with Hylton’s then 13-year-old daughter Autumn Anker the night of the murder. Hylton, 54 at the time of her death, and Anker were staying at the El Dorado Hills home of Davis’ mother after Hylton sought a safe haven from her husband, to whom she had been married for about a year. Hylton’s husband had a solid alibi, according to investigators.
On the night of July 6, 1985, Davis and his girlfriend Connie Dahl went to a party and when they returned to the home they found Hylton brutally murdered. A knife was used to stab the victim nearly 30 times.
The mid-’80s murder investigation went cold until 1999, when cold case detectives with the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office picked up the trail, starting with an interview with Dahl as she sat in an Oregon jail on drug charges.
Based on evidence given by Dahl against Davis, the case was taken to trial. An initial jury declared impasse and the panel was dismissed. The DA’s Office refiled charges and after a second trial, as well as a near impasse with the second jury, Davis was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Dahl died in 2014.
Davis always maintained his innocence and in February 2020, after a motion was filed by the the Northern California Innocence Project out of Santa Clara University, he walked out of an El Dorado County Superior courtroom a free man. DNA recovered at the El Dorado Hills crime scene had been processed using modern techniques and the results pointed to Green.
Because he was a minor at the time of the crime, Green had to first go through the juvenile system before the case was moved up. Nearly two-and-a-half years after his arrest he sat in front of Judge Suzanne Kingsbury and pleaded no contest to second-degree murder.
By making the plea, Green gives up his right to a jury trial — at which he would have faced a first-degree murder charge — and will not be allowed to challenge the plea or the consequences — 15 years to life in prison. He will be sentenced in El Dorado County Superior Court Department 3 at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 30.
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