Insets: Joseph Davis (Ramsey County Jail) and Christine Morris (GoFundMe). Background: Home in St. Paul, Minn., where he killed Morris, his girlfriend (Google Maps).
A Minnesota man who flew into a rage after he learned his girlfriend was cheating on him with a married man and stabbed her to death before putting their child to sleep like normal has entered a plea.
Joseph Davis, 35, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 33-year-old Christine Morris at their home in St. Paul. He faces 40 years in prison — the maximum allowed under the law — when he is sentenced on Oct. 26.
According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, St. Paul police officers in the early morning hours of May 2, 2025, conducted a welfare check at a home in the 300 block of Edmund Avenue after Davis called a family member and said he killed Morris and that he was "sorry."
Cops entered the home and heard a dog barking and child coughing. They found the child — the 2-year-old daughter of Davis and Morris — sitting on a couch in the living room. In an upstairs bedroom, they found Morris' body covered by a blanket. She had suffered several stab wounds to her head, neck, chest and back, the affidavit said, with sharp force injuries piercing her lung, kidney and spleen.
Morris' friends, who were interviewed at the scene, apparently said she told them if she or her daughter ended up dead, Davis was responsible. Davis had at least three domestic violence arrests with Morris as the victim, per the affidavit. The suspect's ex-girlfriend also had a restraining order against Davis and feared he would hurt her.
Officers also spoke with a friend who was with Morris the night before the slaying. The friend relayed that Morris said Davis accused her of cheating on him. Morris arrived home around 11 p.m. and texted the friend she had made it home safely, cops noted.
After police recovered the victim's phone at a nearby park, they focused on Davis, eventually locating him at an apartment in Minneapolis. The SWAT team coaxed Davis outside.
The tenant at the apartment said she met Davis about a month earlier on a dating app and they had been talking. She said Davis contacted her earlier in the day and said he was running from the cops and asked her if he could stay at her place. He refused to tell her why he was in trouble, the affidavit said.
After giving Davis his Miranda warnings, detectives said they told Davis that they found Morris and she had been "pretty messed up."
When asked how it happened, Davis said Morris "had been f—ing him over for 5 years by cheating on him, manipulating him, and lying to him," detectives wrote. He also claimed he had set up a recording device in the home that captured Morris having sex with someone a few days before the murder. Davis said it was a married man.
The defendant stated an argument turned physical when he confronted her about lying.
"Davis said, 'I should have never did that to her … That s— was brutal. I—I definitely feel bad,'" cops wrote.
He said the stabbing started on the bed and then the victim rolled off. Davis watched Morris "take her last breaths" before he covered her body with a blanket.
"She suffered, bro, she definitely suffered," Davis told detectives, adding that the stabbing wasn't planned.
After he "did the s—," he lay down with the baby for a half hour or so until she fell asleep, and then he left the home. He drove to the park and threw Morris' cellphone out the window, according to the affidavit.
A GoFundMe described Morris as "loving mother, sister, and friend." It went on to say that Morris' greatest legacy is her daughter, who is a "bright, strong young girl who now faces life without her mother."
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