By james art David Misch, a man who has been in prison for murder since 1990, has yet to be tried for three Bay Area murders in 1986 and 1988. But one of those trials just began Monday in Dublin.
Misch, now 63, was charged six years ago in the murders of Michelle Xavier, 18, and Jennifer Dway, 20. Both women were found naked and brutally murdered on a deserted stretch of Mill Creek Road near Fremont on February 2, 1986, Dwaye with gunshot wounds and Xavier’s throat slashed.
As the Bay Area News Group reports, during opening statements Monday, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Allison Donovan showed jurors a photo of the two women taken at a family gathering the night they were killed, seen below. “They didn’t know as they stood here smiling that Michelle’s car was going to be driven a horrific mile and a half to where they were killed,” Donovan said.
Misch is also charged with the abduction and murder, two years later, of nine-year-old Hayward girl Michaela Garecht. It’s a case that sent chills across the Bay Area, and for the older Millennials who grew up here at the time, it probably caused their parents to drill into their heads more fear and safety precautions when it comes to strangers.
Misch was charged in Garecht’s death in late 2020, and hearings are ongoing in district court on whether her case should be heard separately from the murders of Xavier and Duay. The court decided to do so, and Misch will face a second trial after this one is over.
Xavier and Dwaye, who were best friends, were canceled by their boyfriends that February night for a planned double date. Instead, they decided to go rent a movie and share a pizza, and were apparently at a mall in Fremont when they ran into Mish.
Investigators were never able to determine when or how the two women met Misch. A judge last year suggested he believed a theory that a second suspect might be involved — namely, a former Fremont and Union City cop who was dating one of Dwaye’s relatives at the time — saying the women would never go in that remote location unless they were with someone they trusted.
But it remains unclear how or under what duress they might have been brought there. Their bodies were found stripped and their underwear and clothes strung on a barbed wire fence – images of the scene were reportedly shown to jurors on Monday, prompting gasps.
Both women left behind evidence. DNA from Misch’s skin cells was recovered from under Duey’s fingernails, after an apparent struggle. And Xavier had scrawled several numbers and letters in pen on her arm, which investigators were later able to match to a motorcycle number registered to Misch at the time.
As the Bay Area News Group previously reported, while his defense attorney tried to characterize the DNA exchange as something that happened while Mish was dealing cocaine and sharing a cigarette with Dwaye, Mish may have implicated himself in a police investigation. interview in 2017. Misch reportedly told investigators that he witnessed the women’s abduction while he was pumping gas that night and jumped in to try to help, leaving his skin under nails.
Investigators then tried to call him out on the fact that he offered the location of a shopping center where the women were last seen, which was not information they had given him. Days later, Misch reportedly tried to kill himself in his jail cell and left behind a note for his brother that read: “I’m sorry it had to be this way. Still, it protects you and mom from what a circus it would be. All the questioning and embarrassment none of you deserve,” and added: “They would never let me go now.”
The process is expected to last several weeks.
Misch is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for the slaying of 36-year-old Margaret Ball in 1989. Misch killed Ball, who he knew while doing odd jobs at her Oakland home, during what he admitted was a meth-fueled robbery of his father – who testified for the prosecution. He was previously convicted as a juvenile in 1977 of raping a cleaner at knifepoint, a crime for which he served just two years. He was later convicted of the assault and attempted rape of an exchange student in Oakland in 1982, for which he served four years, being released shortly before the Xavier and Dway murders.
Related: Suspected Bay Area serial killer David Misch could face one or two trials in the murders of two women and a nine-year-old girl