Trial Begins For Alleged Serial Killer Charged In Cold Case East Bay Double Murder From 1986

By Hamilton Team

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Trial Begins For Alleged Serial Killer Charged In Cold Case East Bay Double Murder From 1986

Since 1990, David Misch has been in jail for murder. He has not been tried for three killings that happened in the Bay Area in 1986 and 1988. But one of those cases began on Monday in Dublin.

Misch, who is now 63 years old, was charged six years ago with killing Michelle Xavier, 18, and Jennifer Duey, 20, in a cold case. On February 2, 1986, both women were found naked and brutally killed on a lonely stretch of Mill Creek Road near Fremont. Duey had been shot, and Xavier’s throat had been cut.

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According to Bay Area News Group, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Allyson Donovan showed the jury a picture of the two women that was taken at a family gathering the night they were killed during opening comments on Monday.

You can see the picture below. “Little did they know as they stood here smiling that Michelle’s car would be taken up a horrifying mile-and-a-half drive to where they were murdered,” he said.

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Misch is also accused of taking nine-year-old Michaela Garecht from her home in Hayward and killing her two years later. Everyone in the Bay Area was scared after hearing about the case. For older Millennials who were growing up here at the time, it probably made their parents stress the importance of being afraid of strangers and taking extra safety steps when they met them.

Late in 2020, Misch was charged with Garecht’s murder. The county court has been debating whether to try her case separately from the killings of Xavier and Duey. The judge said that would happen, and Misch will have a second hearing after this one is over.

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There was a planned double date that February night, but Xavier and Duey’s men called them off. They were best friends. Instead, they chose to rent a movie and split a pizza. They were reportedly in a Fremont shopping center when they ran into Misch.

Investigators have never been able to figure out how and when the two women met Misch. Last year, a judge said he thought there might be a second suspect: a former Fremont and Union City police officer who was dating one of Duey’s relatives at the time.

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The judge said this because he thought the women would never have gone to that remote place unless they were with someone they trusted.

It is still not clear how or why they may have been taken there, though. Their naked bodies were found with their underwear and clothes hanging from a barbed wire fence. Pictures of the scene were allegedly shown to the jury on Monday, which made them gasp.

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And each of the two women left their own proof. After what looked like a fight, DNA from Misch’s skin cells was found under Duey’s fingernails. Police were later able to connect the numbers and letters that Xavier had written on her hand with a motorbike license plate that belonged to Misch at the time.

As Bay Area News Group previously reported, Misch’s defense lawyer has tried to say that the DNA exchange happened while Misch was selling drugs to Duey and having a cigarette with him. However, Misch may have admitted guilt in a 2017 police interview.

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Investigators say that Misch told them he saw the women being raped while he was pumping gas that night and jumped in to try to help, which is how the skin got under his nails.

Then, investigators tried to call him out on giving a shopping center as the place where the women were last seen, even though that wasn’t what they had told him.

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A few days later, Misch allegedly tried to kill himself in jail and wrote in his brother’s cell, “Sorry it had to be this way.” What the circus would have done, though, it keeps you and your mom safe. “None of you deserve all the questions and shame,” he said, adding, “They’d never let me out now.”

It is likely that the hearing will last a few weeks.

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For killing 36-year-old Margaret Ball in 1989, Misch has been on a life sentence with the chance of parole. As Misch admitted to his father, who testified for the prosecution, that he killed Ball, whom he knew from doing small jobs at her Oakland home, while high on methamphetamine.

As a child, he was found guilty of raping a housekeeper at knifepoint in 1977, but he only spent two years in prison for that crime. He was later found guilty of assaulting and trying to rape a foreign exchange student in Oakland in 1982. He spent four years in prison for this crime and was released just before Xavier and Duey were killed.

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