The House on Chipman Street

Channon Christian was twenty-one and Christopher Newsom was twenty-three, and they had been dating only a few weeks. On the night of January 6, 2007, they had dinner out in Knoxville, Tennessee, and then stopped at the Washington Ridge apartment complex. They were standing beside Channon’s Toyota 4Runner in the parking lot when men with a gun took them both.

They were driven to a rented house at 2316 Chipman Street. Christopher was assaulted, then walked to nearby railroad tracks, shot, and his body burned; he was found on January 7. Channon was held and assaulted over most of two days, then bound, placed inside a garbage can in the kitchen, and left to suffocate. Channon’s father spotted her abandoned 4Runner on January 8, and a fingerprint on a bank envelope inside it belonged to Lemaricus Devall Davidson, whose last known address was the Chipman Street house.

Officers went into the house on January 9 and found Channon. Davidson was convicted in October 2009 and sentenced to death. His half-brother Letalvis Cobbins got life without parole and George Thomas two consecutive life terms; Vanessa Coleman was resentenced to thirty-five years in 2013; Eric Boyd, prosecuted separately years later, was convicted in 2019 and given two consecutive life terms plus ninety years. On December 12, 2025, a judge denied Davidson’s latest attempts at relief.