Posted on 12/21/2020 2:59:09 PM PST by nickcarraway
Suspected serial killer David Misch was charged Monday with the abduction slaying of Michaela Garecht, a nine-year-old who vanished from a Hayward street corner in November 1988 and has been one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most high-profile missing children’s cases, authorities said.
Misch has been incarcerated at the state prison medical facility in Stockton for the December 1989 stabbing death of 36-year-old Margaret Ball at her home in unincorporated Hayward. He has also been charged with the 1986 cold case murders of two young Fremont women whose bodies were found alongside Mill Creek Rd.
“Today is about family, community and healing,” Hayward Police Chief Toney Chaplin said. “We can announce that 59-year-old David Misch has been charged with the murder of Michaela Garecht … The disappearance of Michaela Garecht is a tragic story that has gripped the Bay Area for decades.”
Chaplin said his department continued to follow any new leads that appeared even as the years and decades rolled by. The break came from investigators in the double cold case homicide in nearby Fremont and a partial palm print in the Garecht case.
“The breakthrough in the case occurred earlier this year as the result of new leads that pointed us in the direction of Misch,” the chief told reporters. “We had the opportunity to follow those leads patiently as Misch has been in state prison since 1989 convicted of murder.”
Alameda District Attorney Nancy O’Malley told reporters Misch has been charged with murder and two special circumstances. If found guilty, he could be given a death sentence. Misch was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.
“There are no words that can adequately describe the horror of a kidnapped child,” she told reporters. “Especially when the child or the child’s remains are never found…They were just kids. Carefree and certainly not suspecting the danger that lay ahead. Michaela’s kidnapping devastated her family. Paralyzed them with grief and terrorized them with the unknowing of what happened to Michaela. Their pain was and remains indescribable.”
Chaplin said his department remains hopeful that they will be able to locate Garecht’s remains. He also read to reporters a statement from Michaela’s mother — Sharon Murch.
“In the last year, I had to come to a place of acceptance that Michaela was probably no longer alive, but somehow that acceptance was far more wrapped up in the idea of Michaela sitting on a fluffy thin cloud, walking on streets of gold, dancing on grassy hills, soaring among the stars,” Murch wrote. “What I did not envision was my daughter as a dead child. It was only when I heard this news that this vision of reality appeared and I have honestly not figured out what to do with it.”
“A chill set in which had nothing to do with the snow outside my home in southwest Iowa,” she continued. “I feel as though I am looking for Michaela but now I don’t know where. I honestly feel lost in the dark. Over the years I have often wonder whether I really wanted to know the truth about what happened to Michaela. I wondered if I would be able to take it.”
Garecht and a friend rode their scooters to the Rainbow Market located in her Hayward neighborhood on the morning of November 19, 1988 to buy some candy and sodas. After they came out of the store, investigators said Michaela noticed that her friend’s scooter had been moved in the parking lot.
When she went to retrieve it, an unidentified Caucasian male who appeared to be 18-to-24 years old grabbed her and forced her into his older model American-made sedan and sped away from the scene.
Michaela’s friend went inside the market calling for help. By the the time, the store clerk rushed out of the store, both Garecht and her abductor had vanished.
Over the decades that have followed several notorious serial killers including Curtis Dean Anderson, who was convicted of the kidnap-slaying Xiana Fairchild, and the infamous Speed Freak serial killers, Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, have been investigated as possible suspect in Garecht’s disappearance.
Misch was already in prison when technological advances in DNA forensic analysis linked him to the 1986 murders of Michelle Xavier and Jennifer Duey in Fremont.
He was charged with murder but prosecutors also filed five special circumstances murder allegations against Misch: two for allegedly killing the two women during the course of a rape and three for allegedly committing multiple murders.
He currently is in Santa Rita Jail awaiting trial on the two Fremont murders. Investigators said the charges in that case stem back to February 2, 1986.
Shortly after midnight on that day, Duey and Xavier, who were best friends, were found dead along the side of Mill Creek Road in Hayward, a little more than a mile east of Mission Blvd.
A motorcyclist driving on Mill Creek Rd. discovered the bodies at about 12:30 a.m., and immediately called police.
The women had been shot and stabbed in the hours prior. Xavier was 18 and Duey was 20 at the time. The deaths of the two women were highly publicized and left many in the community shaken and fearful in their own neighborhoods.
Earlier in the evening the women had attended a birthday dinner for a family member and were last seen together around 8:00 p.m. at a convenience store in the area of Farwell Dr. and Mowry Ave.
The purpose already in prison although I’m not sure if it’s clear the person is in prison in California. It wouldn’t be surprising if this person got the death penalty, but it may not be carried out.
Sorry, this person is imprisoned in California.
Considering his age (59), he may die of old age before his appeals ran out.
Today @ACSOSheriffs safely transported suspect David Misch to Santa Rita Jail where he was booked on two charges of murder with special circumstances in the 1986 Fremont cold case homicide of Michelle Xavier and Jennifer Duey. Full story - http://nixle.us/9YJPZ
I doubt very much that the victim's family feels very healed.
I’m 100% sure that they have a real sense of relief about the fact that their child’s killer has been identified.
it looks to me that the lawyers are lining up for big pay days to keep defending this POS on each new charge.
If he’s already doing life, get him to plea to 10 years for each new count, to be added to his sentence and save the taxpayers some money. The please must also require he help locate the bodies.
I wonder if he knows Wesley Shermantine.
IIRC, there hasn’t been an execution on Calif’s death row since Caryl Chessman——Over 35 years ago.
OVER 750 convicts reside there-—at more than $`100,000 cost a year, not counting medical.
There are two sides to murder, just as there are two sides to a coin: Heads, you kill another human being. Tails, you live on, to smugly gloat over it. All wanton murderers should be executed. Their property confiscated and given to the victims. Any and all accessories to the crime should be proportionately charged as well for they to bear some responsibility for the crime. But, the government, that fails to kill the murderer, is in fact the most evil accomplice because it enables the continuation of the murder. When the perpetrator of murder is allowed to keep living the second element of the crime is still alive, vibrant in its flourishing hatred. This is the quintessential denial of Justice. The blood of the dead cries out from the earth in anguish to this very moment. On Judgement day those who deny justice and thereby spit in the face of God will face his infinite wrath. Like Hitler and his minions they will not escape.
You are a little bit off on that one. 39 criminals have been executed in California since Caryl Chessman was executed 60 years ago in 1960. Chessman didn't murder anyone, he was convicted of robbery, rape, and kidnapping.
26 more were executed between then and 1967.
In 1972, the California Supreme Court said the death penalty law was unconstitutional, but the law was changed, then the U.S. Supreme Court ended the death penalty.
In 1976, the death penalty was brought ack in California.
The California Chief Justice Rose Bird was nixing the death penalty in the state, but in 1986 she was voted out 67% to 33%, and two other justices were voted out.
1992 the state started executing again. The first two in the gas chamber, then the last 11 by lethal injection. The last execution was in 2006.
I will say, from everything I've read, California death row is distinctly less pleasant that it's standard prison experience.
What payday?
The payday they get from the state for providing the defense. I doubt their working pro bono.
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