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DUBLIN – David Misch has waited more than six years for the chance to tell his side of the story, and on Tuesday afternoon he finally did so before a jury.
Misch, 63, had to explain how his DNA ended up among the DNA fingernails of 20-year-old Jennifer Dueywhose naked body was found on February 2, 1986, just steps from that of her best friend, 18-year-old Michelle Xavier, in a remote part of the hills above Fremont. Misch also had to convince the jury that an The assortment of handwritten letters and numbers found on Xavier’s hand was not a partial license plate of a Honda motorcycle he was riding at the time, as prosecutors claim.
Misch spoke out loud for the first time during his six-week double murder trial on Tuesday morning, launching his version of events. He painted a picture of his life in the 1980s as an ex-con living in a Hayward motel, selling cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and “a little acid” to anyone who would buy it, and hanging out with prostitutes, addicts and whoever whatsoever. he called them “boosters” – people willing to pay Misch to take them to shoplifting locations in the East Bay.
“You had everyone from the local bars, to yuppies, to the average person who just wants some drugs for work,” Misch said, when asked to describe his drug clientele in the 1980s. He later added that he even had a few “housewives” who bought methamphetamine for “weight loss.”
His explanation for Duey’s DNA under his fingernails was simple enough. Misch claims the two shared a cigarette while he sold her and Xavier and a bag of cocaine – known as an “eight-ball” – just hours before the two were kidnapped, driven onto Mill Creek Road and shot dead in an apparently sexually motivated crime. If true, this was all just terrible luck for Misch, who had it at that point in his life already convicted of one rapea burglary that appeared to have a lewd motive and a random attack on a woman that angered Misch by picking flowers and appearing too arrogant for his liking, according to court records.
Misch testified that he had a system with local “boosters” who would pay him $100, fill the tank in his “bright red” Volkswagen Beetle and give him the profits to drive them around and shoplift. These professional shoplifters included a woman known as “Snaggletooth,” a handful of random drug customers, and a woman named “Gertrude, Gretchen, or Giselle,” who accompanied him on one particular day.
It was the day he met Duey, claimed Misch, who was working at a local shopping center at the time. Misch testified that his companion had paid off another employee as part of the shoplifting scheme and that Duey went to Misch and asked for cocaine. He gave her his pager number and then sold her drugs “10-12” more times, including on that fateful day in February 1986, he said.
During that last meeting, Misch said Duey and Xavier asked him for a much larger quantity of cocaine than he was used to selling. Feeling suspicious, he says he agreed to meet at a local gas station, but he questioned them before picking up his bindle and handing it over for a price of $250. He says that while counting shared a cigarette with the money and passed it back and forth until he said good night to them and left.
“I walked away with her cigarette,” Misch said with a California Okie accent and a sheepish grin on his face. When asked if he took them to Mill Creek Road, Misch categorically denied this.
“I had never even heard of Mill Creek Road until this case,” Misch said, adding that Fremont simply “wasn’t one of my haunts.”
“The Fremont Police Department was known as the Gestapo,” he said of the department that ultimately linked him to Xavier and Duey’s deaths.
As for the motorcycle, Misch claimed that he stopped riding it in early 1986, having destroyed it in an accident months earlier. His attorney, Ernie Castillo, had police paperwork showing that Misch was indeed involved in a motorcycle accident in 1985, but it was left to Misch’s word that he never had the bike repaired or rode it again after that day.
The story Misch told was very different from what he told cold case detectives in 2017. When confronted with DNA evidence, he said he was at a gas station when he witnessed Duey’s kidnapping and then sprang into action. playing tug-of-war with her captors before pulling her away and heading off into the night. Castillo now says that story was simply an example of Misch playing games with police, who noted in their report that Misch took long pauses during the interview before speaking.
If Misch convinces a jury to acquit him, his legal troubles are far from over. He is also accused of murdering 9-year-old Michaela Garecht after allegedly kidnapping the young girl by leaving her scooter next to his car while she bought candy at a Hayward store. He then grabbed her when she went to pick it up, authorities say.
Xavier and Duey were best friends who planned to watch a movie and share a pizza the night they were killed. Prosecutors have alleged that they were unlucky enough to encounter Misch that night, and that he used a gun and a knife to force them into the remote area to rape them, then killed them when they began to fight back. By the time Misch was charged in the cold case double murder in 2018, he was already serving 40 years to life for the 1989 murder of a woman named Margaret Ball in Oakland, an attack that also appears to have had a sexual motive.
Originally published:
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