INTERVIEW WITH MELISSA HIPPLE
Collin Davis with his mother Melissa Hipple
On June 18, 2025, Melissa Hipple was informed that her son, Collin Davis,
had taken his own life in his prison cell. It was particularly heartbreaking
because Collin had been making so many contributions from prison. He was
training dogs to assist disabled people and had recently founded a hospice program
for ill and elderly prisoners at the Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo, where he was confined. He continued drawing and painting, and had a girlfriend who was a civilian on the outside, part of the dog program. Collin was making the best of a bad situation. He was given a sentence of 45 years to life in a case where the actual killers were never arrested or charged. Collin was prosecuted on a theory of aiding and abetting that in 2019, was declared by the California legislature to be illegal. He was nearly acquitted in the first of two trials in 2008, when the jury indicated, during deliberations, it was going to acquit him. At that point, the judge immediately stopped the deliberations and told the jury to consider a different theory, a theory later declared invalid with the enactment of California Penal Code §1170.6. A series of appeals and resentencing efforts brought mixed results, with the sentence unchanged at the time of his death.
On August 6, 2025, I had the following conversation with Melissa Hipple.
RITKES: My sincere condolences, Melissa.
HIPPLE: Thank you.
RITKES: How did you find out?
HIPPLE: Lieutenant Valencia called me around 5:30 [p.m.] on June 18th and told me that my son had hung himself in his cell. They tried to revive him for 30 minutes, and he was pronounced DOA at the hospital. and then that was it.
RITKES: Was June 18th the day that it happened?
HIPPLE: Yes.
RITKES: Did they tell you what time?
HIPPLE: No. I found out later, from the coroner. I also found out much later from the coroner that there was a suicide note, but I wasn’t told when the lieutenant called me.
RITKES: He never mentioned there was a note?
HIPPLE: No, he never did.
RITKES: Did you ever get the note?
HIPPLE: The coroner is sending it to me.
RITKES: When was your last communication with Collin before he passed away?
HIPPLE: I was text messaging with him that day, and around noon, he sent a text message that said, “I’m sorry,” and I messaged him back, but he didn’t respond after that.
RITKES: Before the text saying he was sorry, what was the communication like?
HIPPLE: He told me not to have Everett [Collin’s brother] send him money. He was mostly talking to his girlfriend. They were texting back and forth. He had had a few panic attacks because they were moving him from one yard to another.
RITKES: Tell me about the move. What was that all about?
HIPPLE: He had gotten a write-up, and he hadn’t had a hearing yet, but they moved him, I guess, as a punishment. I’m not sure why they moved him.
RITKES: When the person gets a write-up, they’re entitled to a hearing to dispute the claims made in the write-up — is that your understanding?
HIPPLE: Yes, it is now. He had not had the hearing yet.
RITKES: Did he tell you why he received the write-up?
HIPPLE: Yes, Collin told me that it was for “overfamiliarity.”
RITKES: “Overfamiliarity”?
HIPPLE: Yes, it referred to him having a relationship, a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with a girl who had been in the dog program but had already quit 19 days before the write-up.
RITKES: Was this relationship purely via text?
HIPPLE: Yes, and phone. There was no physical contact at all. It was through me for the most part.
Sometimes I would forward my phone to her number, so he could talk to her directly.
RITKES: Did Collin’s girlfriend work with the dog program on the outside?
HIPPLE: Correct.
RITKES: She was a civilian, not an employee at the prison?
HIPPLE: Correct.
RITKES: Did they have a working relationship?
HIPPLE: Yes, they had a working relationship for a year.
RITKES: Have you seen a copy of the write-up?
HIPPLE: No, it was missing from his belongings, as far as I can tell. I’ve been through all of his belongings, but I can’t seem to find that write-up, or a necklace that he had from my father.
RITKES: The dog program, where Collin worked, is it located in a preferred part of the prison?
HIPPLE: Yes, he was on C-Yard, but not everybody on C-Yard is in the dog program.
RITKES: C-Yard is a place for people who are doing well?
HIPPLE: Yes. It’s a Level-2 yard. You get a certain number of points, and when your point level drops, you go to a lower level where you have more privileges.
RITKES: Someone with a serious charge like Colin’s would be, what, a level four?
HIPPLE: Yes, he started at a level four. And then when they moved him, they moved him to a level three.
RITKES: When did he get the write-up?
HIPPLE: A week before he died.
RITKES: What happened to Collin once he got the write-up?
HIPPLE: They took him out of the dog program right away.
RITKES: Colin told me what it meant to him to be in the dog program…
HIPPLE: He was taken out of the dog program and transferred to a different part of the prison. All the people that he knew and was comfortable with were in C-Yard. He suffers from depression and high anxiety, and he doesn’t do well with change. He’s been on medication for depression for several years.
RITKES: Was the depression medication prescribed by a prison doctor?
HIPPLE: Yes, they were aware of his depression. He’d been in the dog program and the C-Yard for four and a half years. After the write-up, they transferred him to a Level 3 Yard, which is more active with gang members and similar activities, as opposed to being in the C-Yard, a Level 2, where he was mostly with people he knew and who were involved in the dog program.
RITKES: Was Collin’s depression a concern for you?
HIPPLE: He mentioned it a few times over the years, and then his best friend on the outside committed suicide a few years ago. I think he’s been depressed since that happened. But then he met this girl from the dog program, and I saw him happy for the first time in a really long time.
RITKES: When did he meet her?
HIPPLE: He met her a year ago, but they started talking and whatnot a few months ago. And then she quit her job so that they could have a relationship. And I think that taking him out of the program and moving him was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
RITKES: After he was transferred, was his ability to communicate restricted compared to before the write-up?
HIPPLE: I’m not sure, because he was only there one day before June 18. They had already turned off his phone for phone calls, but they were still allowing him to text.
RITKES: Did Collin communicate with his girlfriend after the write-up?
HIPPLE: They were communicating the whole time, until around noon on June 18th. He was paranoid because his phone kept going on and off, which meant they were reading all of his messages.
RITKES: They do that?
HIPPLE: Oh, sure. It’s a prison-issued phone. It’s a tablet. So, all their phone calls and text messages are handled through that tablet. They went through and listened to all his phone messages and viewed all his text messages. So they should have known that he was in a bad place, especially because he had those panic attacks.
RITKES: Did he mention having panic attacks?
HIPPLE: He told his girlfriend that he was having them. And the guards, when they were moving him, knew. That was apparent from his texts.
RITKES: Collin had just turned 18 when he was arrested. What was his life like before he went into prison?
HIPPLE: He was born in Lakewood, and we lived in Long Beach. We moved a lot. We also lived in Norwalk, Huntington Beach, but mostly in Long Beach. Collin didn’t see his dad very much, and when he did, his dad was mostly yelling at him. So eventually, he stopped wanting to go see his dad.
RITKES: Did Collin have siblings?
HIPPLE: He has two brothers, one older and one younger, and he also had a stepbrother who was older.
RITKES: What were Colin’s interests growing up?
HIPPLE: He liked to play cowboys, and when he got older, he liked roller hockey, volleyball, karate, and playing basketball. And then he worked with kids. He worked for the City of Long Beach with after-school kids, and he worked at UCLA for one football season. He and I did it together. He was an usher for the games. That was in high school. It was fun. And he got his job as a pizza driver until he totaled my car. His grandma gave him a car for his birthday.
RITKES: What birthday was that?
HIPPLE: It was his 16th birthday. He was the only one among his friends who had a car, and he didn’t drink; he never drank. He never did drugs. But he would go to all the parties and the girls would all drink, and he would be the person to make sure they all got home safe, that no boys took advantage of them. And when he didn’t have a car, he would walk them all home or drive my car. Sometimes, even when I went out with my friends and I knew I was going to be drinking, he would take me and drop me off and pick me up later.
RITKES: He went to high school in Long Beach?
HIPPLE: He went to Wilson High, and when we moved to Huntington Beach, he didn’t like the school, so he went to the homeschool program through Long Beach, but he didn’t finish. He got his GED in prison. I think he was most proud of the hospice that he set up [in prison], though.
RITKES: Tell me about that.
HIPPLE: He implemented a hospice program in the prison and coordinated it with the dogs going into the hospice program with him.
RITKES: The hospice program was for the older prisoners?
HIPPLE: It’s for anybody who’s sick. Some of them end up going out of hospice, and some of them die. He wrote a proposal, got it approved, and set up that program, which is now a part of the prison. He had just started it only a few months ago. And I think he was more proud of that than anything.
RITKES: Was he in the dog program at the same time?
HIPPLE: Yes.
RITKES: What did his suicide note say?
HIPPLE: His note said that he just couldn’t take losing like this anymore.
RITKES: Do you know what he was referring to about losing?
HIPPLE: Yes, he lost court battle after court battle after court battle. And I think he thought that his girlfriend was going to leave him because he had to do five more years. I think he thought that he wasn’t going to be able to get out after his first parole hearing.
RITKES: When was the parole hearing coming up?
HIPPLE: It would’ve been December, 2029. He had been saying, “I can do one more year, Mom. I can make it through one more year, but I can’t do five more years. I just can’t.” He would say that to me.
RITKES: So, he hoped that through re-sentencing, he would be able to get out before the parole hearing?
HIPPLE: Yes. But after the write-up, he thought he was going to get more time because of the write-up, or not get out on his first parole hearing. But I spoke to a parole lawyer later, and he said it’s no big deal. It’s an administrative write-up, and if he doesn’t get in trouble from now until his parole hearing, that’ll be fine.
RITKES: It did take him out of the dog program, and it put him in a different yard. Did it get him in trouble with his girlfriend?
HIPPLE: No, it didn’t get him in trouble with his girlfriend. She kept telling him, I’m not going anywhere. But I think he thought she would eventually leave him, because of the extra time that he thought he would get. Everybody leaves. Everybody left him.
RITKES: What do you mean?
HIPPLE: All of his friends from high school — none stayed in touch. None of them, except Joey. He came around and started talking to him. And then to me. His previous girlfriend, who said she was never going to go anywhere, ghosted him and then told him it was because she was lonely. But people go on with their lives, they get busy, and they don’t keep in touch. I wish he had known that the guys who had gotten out of prison, who were in the dog program with him, were all out there waiting for him. I wish he had known that, and I wish they could have been in contact with him, but I don’t think they’re allowed to when they’re out on parole.
He was tired and couldn’t do it anymore. I always told him from the first day he went into Pelican Bay [prison], if it ever gets to that point where you just can’t do it anymore, it’ll kill me. It will absolutely kill me. But if you decide to take your own life, I understand. And I won’t be mad at you.,
RITKES: You were there for him his whole life. I know how you stood behind him through all the court stuff, spending all your money on lawyers, on the two trials, the appeals, everything. You went up to see him in Pelican Bay.
HIPPLE: My sister and I did. We saw him twice a year. The COs up there in visiting were so nice.
RITKES: Really?
HIPPLE: Yeah. They never get anybody up there. I really miss Collin. His good morning texts. He would text me every morning — “Morning, mom.”
RITKES: How’s the rest of the family doing?
HIPPLE: Okay. Jared [one of Collin’s brothers] is finally going to therapy because this brought up my nephew’s suicide for him. He never dealt with that. He just shoved it all down, and it brought it all back up. He’s dealing with two suicides now. He can’t shut it down anymore.,
RITKES: Was Collin close to his cousin who committed suicide?
HIPPLE: Nobody realized how much he idolized his cousin, my nephew. Jared was close to Jeff, but Collin just idolized him. I had no idea.
RITKES: Did they both grow up in Long Beach?
HIPPLE: No, my brother [Eric Hipple, quarterback for the NFL Detroit Lions, 1980-1989] had a house in Laguna Beach when he was playing football. They would spend the summer there and would see each other a lot. Jared would spend two weeks in Michigan with them every summer. Collin never got to go. Collin was really angry when Jeff [her brother Eric’s son] committed suicide, because he thought Jeff had the perfect life. He had a mom who loved him. He had a dad who loved him and took care of him and spent time with him, and he just didn’t get it
RITKES: He also had a father who was a quarterback in the NFL for 10 years.
HIPPLE: Yeah. But just the fact that my brother loved him so much was the main thing. He was there for him, and he loved him. 
