“There’s a significant amount of blood next to the bed, too,” one officer said quietly. Another looked closer and agreed that it was more than anyone could reasonably explain as vomit from a night of drinking. What had begun as a routine attempt to locate a missing 21-year-old man had suddenly changed. The officers standing in an upstairs bedroom in Rome, Georgia, were beginning to realize they might be inside the scene of a violent crime.
Earlier that day, Aaron Davies had been reported missing by his family. He had been traveling from his parents’ home toward Gadsden, Alabama, to see his girlfriend, with plans to stop overnight in Rome at the home of his longtime best friend, Brandon Risner. Aaron had made that trip before, and his family had no reason to believe a visit with Brandon would be dangerous. But by Saturday morning, Aaron had disappeared, his phone was going straight to voicemail, and his blue Toyota Prius had turned up in a place that made no sense.
The story began on a bleak November morning in 2022 when Rome police received a call about a suspicious vehicle in a local park. Officers found the Prius in a shallow ravine, partly in the water. The vehicle appeared empty, but several details immediately stood out: it was in neutral, there were no obvious skid marks on the embankment, and nothing suggested that the driver had accelerated off the roadway. One officer remarked that there was no sign of acceleration at all, as if the Prius had simply rolled off the edge. Another wondered whether it had failed to go fully into park, but the scene did not offer an obvious mechanical explanation. To the officers at the scene, it looked less like a normal crash and more like someone may have allowed the car to roll deliberately into the creek.
Before they could know what that meant, the car had to be pulled out and examined more carefully. Officers called for a tow rope and began documenting the vehicle where it sat. There was still no sign of Aaron nearby, and nothing about the quiet park explained why a 21-year-old on his way to see his girlfriend would abandon his car there. The Prius was becoming the first piece of a puzzle that would soon lead police back toward the last confirmed place Aaron had been alive.
After checking the plate, police learned the Prius belonged to Aaron Davies. Attempts to reach him failed, so officers contacted his father, Randy. Within hours, Aaron’s parents were in Rome, trying to understand how their son’s vehicle could be in a ravine while Aaron himself was nowhere to be found. Aaron’s girlfriend also came to the area, carrying the last messages she had exchanged with him before he vanished.
According to the family, Aaron had left his parents’ home Thursday afternoon, probably around 2:30. He was supposed to spend the night with Brandon because Rome was roughly midway along his route, then continue to Gadsden the following morning. His girlfriend had last spoken with him late Thursday night, shortly before 11:00 p.m., and they were excited about seeing each other the next day. Friday came, however, and Aaron never arrived.
What made the situation more unsettling was Brandon’s changing account of the night. Initially, he had reportedly said he went to sleep around 10:00 p.m. and assumed Aaron had left sometime afterward. Later, the story shifted: Brandon said he had awakened around 1:00 a.m., looked outside, and noticed Aaron’s car was gone. Meanwhile, Aaron’s girlfriend had tried to contact both men, and Brandon had responded on Aaron’s behalf, suggesting that Aaron’s phone had stopped working and that the plan had simply changed from Friday to Saturday.
Aaron’s parents knew that was not the original plan. They also knew their son had been eager to reach his girlfriend. Now his car had been found less than two miles from Brandon’s house, and Brandon appeared to be explaining Aaron’s silence for him. Police still hoped there might be a less sinister explanation. Perhaps Aaron had crashed the car after drinking, panicked, and gone somewhere to sleep it off. Two officers decided the fastest way to clarify things was to speak with Brandon again at his home.
At first, Brandon appeared willing to cooperate. He told officers that he and Aaron had started drinking around noon the previous day, later went out to bars, then returned home and drank red wine. Brandon emphasized that Aaron did not drink often because of his religious background. He said Aaron became sick upstairs and began vomiting in a bathroom, while Brandon went downstairs and accidentally dropped a bottle, cutting his pinky badly enough that he later sought medical treatment.
Brandon said he showered, bandaged the injury, and went to bed. He told police that he had gone to urgent care the next morning because of the cut on his pinky. When he awoke sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m., he believed Aaron had already left because the Prius was gone. Asked how long the two had known one another, Brandon explained that they had met around fifth grade and become especially close by their freshman year. Their families knew one another, and both had connections to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Brandon also tried to explain why Aaron might have become so sick. Aaron still identified strongly with the church and only drank occasionally, Brandon said, while Brandon himself had drifted away somewhat. In Brandon’s account, the combination of bars, red wine, and Aaron’s low tolerance could explain the vomiting. An officer acknowledged that alcohol poisoning was possible and deliberately kept the tone conversational, telling Brandon that police were still trying to find Aaron and that it did not necessarily mean he was in danger.
The officers listened without openly challenging him. If Aaron rarely drank, alcohol sickness was plausible. Brandon’s injured hand also had an explanation. Yet the story seemed almost too complete, conveniently accounting for the vomiting, the cut, and the unusual night before the officers had even seen what was inside the house. Brandon’s detached behavior also stood out, although none of that alone was enough to establish that a crime had occurred.
When police asked whether they could look around the residence, Brandon agreed. “No problem at all,” he said. An officer clarified that he was consenting to them entering and walking through the home, and Brandon again said yes. Because Brandon’s parents were away, he guided one of the officers through the rooms himself.
The officer moved first through the common areas and then upstairs. Brandon explained which rooms belonged to his parents and which one was normally used for guests. Aaron, he said, had slept in the upstairs guest room. Almost immediately, the house began telling a very different story from the one Brandon had described outside.
Brandon pointed out his parents’ bedroom and admitted that he occasionally used their upstairs bathtub, then showed the officer the guest room where Aaron had supposedly slept. The officer had Brandon step aside while he looked more carefully. What had initially seemed like a simple welfare check was becoming a scene that demanded much closer attention.
Officers noticed a washing machine or dryer loaded with soiled bedding, large amounts of strong cleaning products, blankets with dark stains, and the unmistakable odor of bleach. Upstairs, the guest room was even more troubling. Near the bed, police found a significant amount of blood on the floor and additional staining on nearby items and a rug. Some of it appeared older, and there was far too much to fit comfortably with Brandon’s explanation that Aaron had simply been vomiting after drinking.
One officer tried to consider innocent possibilities. Perhaps Aaron had become violently ill and vomited blood. But that possibility raised its own questions. If Aaron had been suffering from alcohol poisoning severe enough to produce that scene, how had he supposedly gotten up later, left the house alone, and disappeared without anyone noticing? The more the officers looked, the less Brandon’s account held together.
One officer called another upstairs. “You might want to come over here,” he said, pointing out the blood on the floor, the nearby furniture, and the rug. The second officer agreed that the amount was significant. They also noted signs that someone had tried to clean the room, including the heavy bleach smell and the washed bedding. Rather than continue searching under the consent they had been given, they decided the safest legal course was to step out and seek a warrant.
They withdrew from the bedroom and decided they needed to stop the consent search and secure a warrant. One officer noted that Brandon did not appear to have cleaned very effectively because traces remained throughout the room despite obvious attempts to wash the area. They saw no clear drag marks downstairs, but at that point the scene was serious enough that they wanted to preserve it and return with the proper legal authority for a full forensic search.
Then the investigation took another sudden turn. Before officers could secure Brandon, he ran.
“Dispatch, he’s running,” an officer called as Brandon bolted away from the property. Three officers pursued him through the neighborhood, but he managed to get away. Multiple units converged on the surrounding streets, yards, and alleys as police warned that a possible homicide suspect was now loose somewhere in Rome. Radio traffic tracked Brandon through backyards and connecting streets, with officers calling out directions as they tried to contain him. One witness reported seeing a man with long light-colored hair and a red shirt walking nearby, and an officer believed the description matched Brandon.
The sudden escape sharpened every earlier concern. Brandon had voluntarily allowed police into the house, yet he fled as soon as the discussion turned toward the laundry and the blood evidence. Officers began comparing notes and concluded that he may have overheard them talking about the sheets being in the dryer. One officer said bluntly that he now believed Brandon had killed Aaron or disposed of his body somewhere else.
Witnesses reported seeing a young man matching Brandon’s description moving through nearby streets. Officers searched behind houses and along connecting roads. One officer radioed that someone had mentioned blood in a trunk, while another told colleagues about the amount of blood in the upstairs room and the bedding that appeared to have been washed. An officer later said he believed Brandon may have overheard them discussing the sheets and realized the search was closing in on him just before he fled.
As the manhunt widened, detectives began looking more closely at Brandon’s background. He worked as a scare actor at a haunted-house attraction, portraying a violent, animalistic character, and he wrote and produced music that sometimes dealt with death and killing. Those interests were not proof of a crime, but in the context of the bloody room and his sudden flight, investigators began asking whether his fixation with horror might have any connection to what they were seeing.
Police also contacted Brandon’s father, Jeremy Risner, who was returning to town after hearing about the commotion from a neighbor. Jeremy initially cooperated and tried to understand what officers believed had happened. Police told him they had found evidence inside the home that suggested something more serious than a night of drinking and vomiting, though at that moment they were still trying to determine exactly what had happened to Aaron.
The situation became more complicated when Jeremy revealed that he had Brandon’s phone. Officers asked him to turn it over. Jeremy hesitated and asked whether they had a warrant authorizing them to search it. Police acknowledged they would need additional legal authority before examining its contents themselves, but Jeremy’s reluctance made them wonder how he had obtained the device after teams had already searched the neighborhood.
Jeremy said he had found the phone and had looked through it himself. He told police that Brandon had been messaging friends throughout the day, asking whether anyone had heard from Aaron. Investigators questioned when those messages had been sent and whether they were part of an attempt to create the appearance that Brandon, too, was worried about Aaron. They also wondered whether Jeremy or another family member had encountered Brandon after his escape.
Officers openly discussed how strange it was that an entire search team had failed to find the phone, only for Jeremy to appear with it later. They considered whether Brandon had met his parents or whether someone had picked up the device for him. At the same time, police were developing information suggesting that blood might also be associated with a vehicle, deepening concern that Aaron had been moved after whatever happened inside the house. The warrant process for the residence and electronic evidence became increasingly important.
Suspicion was growing that Jeremy might be protecting his son, but that interpretation soon changed. Jeremy made a devastating announcement: Brandon wanted to surrender. That evening, Jeremy and his wife brought Brandon to the Rome Police Department themselves.
At the station, officers identified Brandon, took his wallet and keys, patted him down, and placed him in a secure area. Then Jeremy told detectives they needed to send someone to find Aaron’s body. What police had viewed as obstruction from a defensive father was, in reality, the anguish of a parent who had found something on his own son’s phone that confirmed his worst fears.
The phone contained a trail of searches and notes that transformed the case. Shortly before midnight on the night Aaron arrived, Brandon had searched the internet for information about cleaning blood from carpet, whether Walmart sold duct tape, secluded locations, and how to drain a washing machine. His phone also contained disturbing written material and notes describing predatory thoughts and actions from that night. In one note, Brandon described climbing onto the roof and stalking his “prey,” then seeing Aaron lying in bed. Another entry reflected surprise that he had been capable of carrying out what he had imagined.
Police also found dark song lyrics that now took on a new meaning in light of the physical evidence. Investigators were careful not to treat artistic material alone as proof of murder, but the writings sat beside search history, a cleaning list, surveillance footage, and the blood evidence inside the guest room. Together, those pieces created a chronology that was increasingly difficult to explain away as coincidence.
Investigators found a to-do list that included cleaning, showering, and creating a false alibi. Surveillance footage later showed Brandon calmly purchasing cleaning supplies at Walmart only hours after Aaron was killed. That same day, he had messaged Aaron’s girlfriend and even Aaron’s own phone, acting as though he was concerned about where Aaron might be.
The digital evidence suggested this had not been a sudden argument that spiraled out of control. Police found material indicating Brandon had been fantasizing about killing for months and had been actively thinking about committing a murder since early fall. He would later claim that he had experienced visions or what he described as prophecies from God instructing him to kill his best friend. When Aaron called to say he was passing through Rome, investigators believed Brandon took the opportunity to act on thoughts that had already been developing.
Before Jeremy left the station, he tried to help police locate Aaron. He provided a general area near Old East Road, along a road north of King Street near an old cemetery. “There’s a body out there somewhere,” he told them. Detectives immediately organized a search.
Following Jeremy’s directions, officers combed a wooded area at the edge of town. There, in a shallow grave, they found Aaron Davies. His body had been wrapped in plastic and secured with duct tape. The medical examination documented more than 40 sharp-force wounds across his upper body, evidence that an attempt had been made to dismember him, and another disturbing internal injury. An internal section was missing, which investigators believed was connected to that attempted dismemberment. Most tellingly, Aaron had no significant defensive injuries, indicating he likely had little or no opportunity to protect himself before the attack began.
The lack of defensive wounds mattered because it weakened any suggestion that two young men had fought and that the killing happened impulsively in the middle of a struggle. The evidence instead pointed toward a surprise attack against a sleeping or otherwise unsuspecting victim. Aaron had entered Brandon’s home as a friend, expecting only to spend the night before continuing to Alabama. Investigators now believed that trust had made him especially vulnerable.
That finding supported the prosecution’s eventual position that this was not a fight between two friends that suddenly became lethal. Aaron appeared to have been taken by surprise by someone he had trusted since childhood. The same friend whose house had been a familiar stop on his way to see his girlfriend had become the center of the homicide investigation.
With Brandon in custody, Detective York prepared to interview him. He began by confirming Brandon’s identity and employment, then read him his Miranda rights carefully. Brandon was told that he had the right to remain silent, that anything he said could be used against him, and that he had the right to speak with a lawyer before and during questioning.
Detective York then reached the waiver. Brandon listened and answered simply, “I would like a lawyer.” The interrogation ended before detectives could ask substantive questions. Brandon had invoked his right to counsel, and the officers respected the request rather than pressing forward. By then, the physical and digital evidence had already provided them with an extensive account of what had happened.
Before Brandon was moved, officers photographed and documented him and explained that the case had progressed beyond the earlier obstruction charge arising from his flight. He was now facing murder, aggravated assault, obstruction, and an allegation of hindering the murder investigation. Additional charges would follow as prosecutors reviewed the evidence involving Aaron’s body and the effort to conceal his death.
Brandon was initially told he was being held for obstruction because he had fled from officers. After the homicide evidence was assembled, police informed him that he would also face murder and related charges, including offenses connected to concealing Aaron’s death and hindering the investigation.
A court-appointed psychiatrist later evaluated Brandon and found him competent to stand trial. The case did not ultimately depend on whether Brandon had experienced mental-health problems, unusual beliefs, or visions. Competency concerned whether he was able to understand the proceedings and assist in his defense, and the evaluation concluded that he could.
Brandon eventually pleaded guilty to malice murder, felony murder, assault, concealing a death, and abusing a corpse. In court, prosecutors laid out the sequence they believed the evidence established. After a night that included drinking and karaoke, Aaron had gone upstairs to sleep in the guest bedroom. Sometime before midnight, Brandon took a knife, climbed onto the roof, and entered through a window before attacking Aaron where he lay. Prosecutors tied that sequence to Brandon’s own notes, the blood pattern in the room, and the absence of defensive injuries.
The attack was prolonged and severe. Afterward, prosecutors said, Brandon attempted to dismember the body in the bathroom, wrapped Aaron in plastic, placed him into luggage, and transported him to the wooded area where police later found the shallow grave. He then began trying to erase what had happened inside the house, washing bedding and cleaning the bloody bedroom with strong chemicals.
Aaron’s Prius became another part of that effort. Investigators concluded that Brandon moved the car away from the residence and left it in the ravine, apparently hoping it would misdirect the search for Aaron or suggest an accident. The fact that the vehicle was in neutral and lacked the marks of a normal crash had been one of the earliest clues that something about Aaron’s disappearance was wrong.
The digital trail filled in the rest. Searches about cleaning blood, buying duct tape, finding secluded locations, and operating the washing machine were made around the same period. The Walmart surveillance footage documented the purchase of cleaning supplies. Messages to Aaron’s girlfriend and to Aaron’s own phone provided evidence of an effort to build a false appearance of concern after the fact.
The case carried a particularly painful betrayal because Aaron and Brandon were not casual acquaintances. They had known each other since childhood. Their families had shared years of history. Aaron had trusted Brandon enough to stay at his home on the way to see the woman he loved, with no apparent reason to believe his friend posed any danger to him.
At sentencing, Aaron’s girlfriend described what that loss meant. “Aaron Davies was and is the love of my life,” she told the court. She said she would never be the same for having known him, and that no one had ever understood her the way Aaron did. To him, she said, she had felt seen for her soul.
Aaron’s mother, Sarah Davies, spoke about a betrayal that extended across both families. She told the court she had cooked and served Brandon thousands of dinners over the years, only to learn that he had been planning to murder her son. Her statement captured why the crime had been so difficult for the family to comprehend: the person responsible for Aaron’s death had spent years inside their circle of trust. The history between the boys meant that Brandon had not needed to lure Aaron with a stranger’s deception; Aaron had simply gone to the home of someone he believed was his friend.
In June 2024, the judge imposed the case’s final sentence. On the principal count, Brandon Risner was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The court made clear that, based on the evidence and the nature of the crime, justice required a sentence that would ensure Brandon would never be released on that conviction.
For Aaron’s family, the ruling could not restore what had been taken from them. What began with a car sitting quietly in a ravine had led officers to a best friend’s house, a bloodstained bedroom, a sudden escape, a father’s painful decision to turn in his own son, and a digital record that revealed the planning behind a crime Aaron never saw coming. Aaron Davies was 21 years old when he was killed, on what should have been an ordinary overnight stop before continuing to see his girlfriend.