Florida Man Wanted For Proposing To One Girlfriend With Rings Stolen From Another, Met Both On Dating App
ORANGE CITY (CBSMiami/AP) – A Florida man is a wanted man for stealing an engagement ring and wedding band from a girlfriend and using them to propose to another lover, according to the Volusia County Sheriff's Office, and he met both women on the same dating app.
Investigators have issued an arrest warrant for Joseph Davis, 48, who had not been found as of Friday.
Their investigation started earlier this year when a woman from Orange City, located halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach, told detectives she had discovered her boyfriend was actually engaged to someone else. When she looked up the fiancée's Facebook page, she noticed a photo of her wearing a wedding band and engagement ring that was identical to her own from a prior marriage, the sheriff's office said in a news release.
When the Orange City woman checked her jewelry box, she found her rings were missing, as were several other pieces of jewelry, including a diamond ring that belonged to her grandmother. The total value of the stolen property was about $6,270, according to the sheriff's office.
The Orange City woman reached out to the fiancée, who returned some of the items, and they both called it off with Davis, who also went by the names "Joe Brown" and "Marcus Brown," the sheriff's office said.
The fiancée, who lives in Orlando, told detectives she had been duped too.
Davis once took the fiancée to a house that actually belonged to the Orange City woman, while she was at work, and claimed it was his. He then asked the fiancée to move in with him, but he then disappeared. By that time, the fiancée discovered her laptop computer and jewelry were missing, the sheriff's office said.
Both women reported they met "Brown" on the same dating app, OKCupid, in 2015 and 2016. Even though they did not have his real name, the jilted women remembered he had a relative in North Carolina and detectives were able to track down the relative who identified Davis, according to the sheriff's office.
Davis, it turned out, had a record as a convicted felon out of Oregon and North Carolina, and has an active arrest warrant out of Oregon for a hit and run crash with injuries. His prior arrests include possession of fictitious ID, filing a false police report, domestic assault and possession of cocaine with intent to sell, the sheriff's office said.
According to the sheriff's office, the jail where Davis previously was booked noted he had a tattoo on his left arm that said, "Only God can judge me."
(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
