St. Joseph man charged with murder after remains of missing Missouri woman found in Texas

A Missouri man was arrested last week after the remains of a Missouri woman were found at a Buffalo, Texas home more than two years after she and her son went missing.

Michael Dean Davis Jr., 27, originally of St. Joseph, was arrested on Nov. 12 in Laredo, Texas and charged with murder in the death of Mahogany Washington, 25. Washington and Davis began dating in high school and shared an 8-year-old son, who was found alive in Texas during the investigation leading to his father's arrest.

Washington and her son had not been in contact with relatives or friends since July 2022, according to the Leon County Sheriff's Office in Texas. The search for the missing woman and child escalated after Washington's family reported the two missing to the Leon County Sheriff's Office on July 19, 2024.

Washington and her son were then entered into the National Crime Information Center database as missing persons, kicking off what the department described as a "thorough investigation."

On Oct. 22, the sheriff's office executed a search warrant at a property in Buffalo associated with Davis. At the home about 110 miles southeast of Dallas near Interstate 45, the search team discovered human remains, according to the sheriff's office. A team at the University of North Texas Health Science Center positively identified Washington's remains last week.

Davis was arrested in Laredo, a city on the Mexican border six hours southwest of the Buffalo home where Washington's remains were found.

Multiple law enforcement agencies were involved in the investigation and arrest, including the U.S. Marshals and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

"You were a beautiful woman with a beautiful soul," Washington's friend Elle Hendrick wrote on social media Tuesday, addressing her friend. "May whatever lay on the other side welcome you with a warm embrace and may your son be forever protected."

Francesca Valente, who identified herself as Washington's childhood best friend, described Washington as "brilliant and beautiful" in a heartfelt tribute shared on social media Tuesday.

Washington, who Valente called "Woodi," struggled with a fractured home life at times, according to Valente. As a child, she was briefly placed in foster care before living with various relatives. However, Washington remained energetic and vivid throughout difficult periods, Valente said, harboring ambitions of growing up to be a lawyer.

"Woodi was so expressive and weird in all the best ways," Valente wrote. "...She could laugh at herself at an age when kids tried so hard to fit in. She was adventurous, imaginative, and fully herself no matter what she was going through."

Valente wrote that Washington began to distance herself from family and friends when she began seeing Davis, whom she "never felt at ease around." This sentiment has been echoed by other friends of Washington's as news of her death reached her home community.

"She trusted you even tho [sic] her family didn't," Dariah Mclean, another friend of Washington, wrote on Facebook after her death.

Davis is currently being held in the Webb County Jail in Laredo on a $3 million bond.

The Leon County Sheriff's Office has not released Washington's cause of death, nor spoken publicly about when forensic investigators believe Washington was killed.

"The only hope I have is that her son will be cared for the way she would want," Valente wrote.

Washington was previously reported missing at least one other time before 2022. In 2014, when Washington was 15, she vanished from her Independence home for 10 days before she was discovered at nearby Eastside Baptist Church.

At the time, Independence police also suspected that she was with Davis, then 17.