Insets: Joseph Davis (Ramsey County Jail) and Christine Morris (GoFundMe). Background: The St. Paul, Minn., home where Davis killed Morris, his girlfriend (Google Maps).
A Minnesota man accused of fatally stabbing his girlfriend after learning she had been unfaithful — then putting their young daughter to sleep as if nothing had happened — has pleaded guilty in the killing.
Joseph Davis, 35, admitted to second-degree murder in the death of Christine Morris, 33, inside the couple’s St. Paul home. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 26 and faces up to 40 years in prison, the maximum penalty allowed under the law.
The case began in the early morning hours of May 2, 2025, when St. Paul police were sent to a residence in the 300 block of Edmund Avenue for a welfare check, according to a probable cause arrest affidavit. Davis had called a family member, said he had killed Morris and apologized, authorities said.
When officers entered the home, they heard a dog barking and a child coughing. They found the couple’s 2-year-old daughter sitting on a couch in the living room. Upstairs, police discovered Morris’ body in a bedroom, covered with a blanket. The affidavit said she had been stabbed repeatedly in the head, neck, chest and back, with sharp-force injuries puncturing her lung, kidney and spleen.
Friends of Morris who spoke with investigators at the scene said she had previously warned them that if she or her daughter were ever found dead, Davis would be responsible. The affidavit also noted that Davis had been arrested at least three times in domestic violence cases involving Morris as the victim. An ex-girlfriend had also obtained a restraining order against him and feared he would harm her.
Police interviewed another friend who had been with Morris the night before she was killed. That friend told investigators Morris said Davis had accused her of cheating. Morris got home around 11 p.m. and sent a text saying she had arrived safely, according to police.
Investigators later recovered Morris’ phone at a nearby park and turned their attention to Davis. Authorities eventually found him at an apartment in Minneapolis, where a SWAT team persuaded him to come 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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