Toddler suffers violent death

It's been 20 years since detectives from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department first called Chandler. "You have a likely homicide victim down here," the Las Vegas detective told Chandler.

Chandler knew the boy. He knew the family. He'd watched a dozen times as little Ronnie Davies huddled at the feet of Jan and Harley Davies as Chandler and other Washington police officers came to call about domestic disturbances at the family's Washington residence.

"What's the prognosis?" Chandler asked the Las Vegas officer.

"Not good. This child is probably going to die."

Twenty years later, Chandler remembers the investigation's tiniest details.

"This case, I get lots of mixed feelings about it," he said last week from his Salt Lake City office. "It angers me to the point that I want to explode. The next minute, I want to sit down and cry."

He calls Ronnie's story a heartbreaker.

Looking back, he says although he paid for pursuing the case as aggressively as he did, he'd do it again just the same.

"It got me, politically, to do this case. Big time," Chandler said. "But you know what? I sleep very well."

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Coming Tuesday: The legal and medical difficulties in identifying child deaths.

E-mail: lucy@desnews.com; romboy@desnews.com