Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Abduction of Michaela Garecht

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

In Hayward, California, in 1988, the unthinkable happened – 9-year-old Michaela Garecht was abducted by a stranger, witnessed only by her best friend. Her mother endures decades of stalled-out investigations and false leads, until the abduction is linked to a possible serial killer. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast and Tiktok @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So due to the nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of child kidnapping, suicide, murder, and the sexual assault of minors. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. On a weekend morning in November of 1988, a nine-year-old girl named Michaela Garrett wakes up at 5 o'clock a.m. The sun isn't even up yet, but she pads down to the living room, takes out a piece of paper, and starts writing. a poem. It seems like Michaela has some thoughts she needs to process. Michaela lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in 1988, eight children are abducted by strangers in Northern California, a new record compared to an average of two in previous years. Maybe Michaela's seen some of the news coverage, maybe it's been in the back of her mind because she writes a poem that includes these lines. The people knock on doors of steel. The people knock, the people kneel. They think of things that aren't real outside those doors of steel. Remember, Michaela's just

nine years old. When her mom Sharon reads this, she doesn't really know what to think. But just one week later, Sharon will come to view it as much more than a poem. It'll strike her as a premonition. Hi, I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is serial killers, a Spotify podcast. Today we're covering the disappearance of nine-year-old Michaela Garrett. What happened to Michaela is incredibly rare. She was abducted by a stranger in broad daylight, with witnesses standing just a few yards away. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find

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or who you told your deepest secrets to. I think back on the friends I grew up with and in a lot of ways they felt like siblings to me. Today's story involves a friendship like that. Two fourth-grade girls who were attached at the hip. They lived right across the street from each other. Sometimes they pretended to be twins because they were just that close. But childhood friendships don't always last.

People grow up, they grow apart, they move away. That's all normal. Except in this case, the girls didn't drift apart with age. They were torn apart by a kidnapper. The story begins on November 9th. 19th, 1988. It's a drizzly morning in Hayward, California, a suburban city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nine-year-old Michaela Garrett wakes up excited. She jumps out of bed and does what she usually does on Saturday mornings, runs across the street and meets up with her best friend,

eight-year-old, Trina Rodriguez. In a letter she writes many years later, Trina describes her and Michaela's friendship as fiercely loyal. Their personalities aren't identical. Michaela is bold and opinionated, while Trina describes herself as being more middle of the road, but they love each other like sisters. That morning, they go back and forth between each other's houses. Both girls have parts in their school's upcoming Christmas pageant, so they're rehearsing their lines and songs. By 10 a.m., they've worked up an appetite. They ask Michaela's mom, Sharon, if they can ride their scooters to the Rainbow Market grocery store and buy some snacks. Sharon's hesitant.

The market's only about four blocks away, and Michaela has gone with some of the older neighborhood girls before. Still, Michaela begs and begs until her mom finally gives in. The girls grab their scooters and head out. Sharon watches as they ride down the street, Michaela's little blonde head next to Trina's brunette. They get smaller and smaller, then round the corner.

corner, and they're gone from Sharon's sight. A few minutes later, Michaela and Trina park their scooters outside the rainbow market and run inside. They're on a budget, so they choose their snacks carefully, Mountain Dew, beef jerky, and some laughy-taffy. They check out, grab their bag, and head back outside. When they get there, they realize one of their scooters is gone. Michaela looks around, then spots a man in the parking lot a few feet away. He's holding the scooter and he says, Come over here, you can get it. Michaela walks towards him, and as soon as she gets close,

the man grabs her and forces her inside his car, kicking and screaming. Then he gets back into the front seat and speeds off. All throughout this terrifying encounter, Trina has been watching. frozen in fear. But the moment the man's car takes off down the road and she realizes what just happened, her best friend just got kidnapped right in front of her. She races back into the store. Trina does exactly the right thing. She finds a store clerk, tells her what just happened, and together they call 911. Trina gives the dispatcher a detailed description of the kidnapper. He's white, about six feet tall, in his 20s with shoulder-length blonde hair and an acne-scarred face.

Trina makes special note of the man's eyes. She says they were striking, almost like a fox's. She also gives a description of his car. It's an American model sedan that looks old and beat up. According to the store clerk, Trina says it's kind of like a brownish, burgundy car. The dispatcher takes down all this information and assures Trina and the clerk the police will be there as soon as possible. In the meantime, Trina calls the only person she can think of, her dad. She tells him what happened, and he passes the information on to Michaela's parents.

Michaela's dad, Rod, rushes to the scene, probably hoping there's something he can do to help. Meanwhile, Sharon stays home just in case Michaela comes back. She's in a state of utter disbelief. In a later interview, she says, I could not possibly imagine that somebody had actually taken Michaela and left with her. When Rod gets to the rainbow market, it's a madhouse. There isn't much he can do except watch while the police do their work. Officers talk to Trina, and she changes her earlier statement.

She apparently didn't realize that Burgundy is a shade of red. She says the kidnapper's car was actually tan or gold. It's an understandable mistake for an 8-year-old. But it also points to one of the really difficult aspects of this case. Officers need to be specially trained to interview child witnesses, and they have to take into account a child's verbal and cognitive development. Kids might use words adults wouldn't, like describing blood as red paint,

or not really understanding what a certain color looks like. But Trina is the police's best witness. So officers bring her to the station where she helps them create a composite sketch of the man. Within just 16 hours, the police and a team of volunteers print 42,000 flyers with the composite sketch and a photo of Michaela and post them all over the Bay Area. At the same time, Sharon is holding a vigil at home. Trina comes over at some point. She's really worried, not just because of what happened to Michaela, but because she thinks Sharon might be mad at her. But when Trina comes in, Sharon wraps her in a hug.

Throughout the evening, Sharon's phone rings about 30 times an hour, and every call gets her hopes up. But Michaela never calls. And as far as Sharon can tell, no one has seen her, the car, or her kidnapper anywhere. But the police are making progress. They have one piece of physical evidence from the crime scene, the scooter. Detectives are pretty sure the kidnapper moved it to the parking lot so he could bait one of the girls closer to his car. And in order to do that, the guy would have had to touch it. If he left his fingerprints, there might still be hope of bringing Michaela home.

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In the days after 9-year-old Michaela Garrett's abduction, the Hayward PD gets over 200 calls a day from the public, offering potential tips. Within the first week of the investigation, officers have already investigated 600 leads, and they have a list of 400 men they want to question. But obviously, that's a huge number, so they need a way to narrow it down. That's where the scooter comes in. Analysts check the scooter and they find several latent prints from someone's hands. Okay, hold on a second. Let me break that down. There are three different kinds of prints that detectives search for at crime scenes. Plastic, patent, and latent.

Plastic prints are basically impressions. They're what get left behind when someone touches a malleable surface like clay. You can see them with the naked eye. Patent prints are like stamps. They get left behind when someone has liquid. on their fingers. That could be mud, ink, blood, or anything else that would transfer from someone's hands onto a surface. They're also visible to the naked eye. But latent prints are different. They're created when the oils from someone's skin transfer to a surface, and they're extremely

common. We leave them everywhere all the time. These are the kinds of prints you usually see on crime TV shows. They're invisible to the naked eye, so crime scene texts have to use lasers or powders to see them. That's where the term dusting for prints comes from. Michaela's kidnapper left latent prints on the scooter. However, they're not full fingerprints. They're only partial, and they mostly appear to be palm prints, which really complicates matters. If they were full prints, detectives could enter them into a database to search for matches, but they can't do that with partial prints. In fact, detectives are pretty sure these aren't even going to be usable as evidence. They preserve the prints just in case they prove helpful in the long term,

but for now, Boots on the Ground detective work is the only way forward. One week after Michaela's kidnapped, her picture and the sketch of the kidnapper are all over the news. Her face shows up in the San Francisco Examiner, one square in a grid of photos of kidnapped children. The FBI is already involved in various abduction cases in northern California, and they hop on Michaela's case, too, supporting the Hayward PD. One group of detectives focuses on the tips flooding in. They follow up on every single one and start interviewing men off their list of 400. Some of them seem like they could be suspicious, but through interrogations, polygraph exams, and cross-referencing alibis, police rule them out one by one. Other officers and volunteers continue searching the area.

For a while, they focused their efforts on Garin Regional Park, a 1,300-acre reserve just half a mile from the rainbow market. An officer tells a local reporter that they're searching here because it's the most accessible remote area close to the site she was abducted from. They don't say outright that they're looking for Michaela's remains. Officially, this is still a kidnapping investigation, not a homicide, but the implication seems pretty clear. If Michaela's kidnapper did kill her, detectives might find her body in the park. But they don't. As the days pass with no breakthroughs, the question remains, is Michaela dead or alive? At the time, it kind of seems like police are entertaining both options, which makes sense, because the

statistics feel simultaneously hopeful and worrisome. First, non-family child abductions are incredibly rare. In 1988, there were only 200 to 300 cases of this kind in the United States. Since then, the numbers have gone down even more. Between 2016 and 2020, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported an average of fewer than 100 cases per year. Of those children, 95% were found alive. Those are good odds. However, for the 5% of cases in which children are killed, it's a race against the clock, the Washington State Attorney General's office conducted a study of more than 800 child abduction murders that occurred nationwide between 1968 and 2002. They found that within three hours of being kidnapped, 76% of those children had already been killed.

After 24 hours, the number jumped to 88.5%. So police and Michaela's loved ones definitely aren't giving up hope, but time is of the essence. Officials ramp the investigation up even further. By November 30th, 11 days after the abduction, a dozen FBI agents are working the case full-time, and over 100 police officers are involved in various search missions throughout the Bay Area. There's a huge swell of support from the community, too. Through various donations and local fundraising events, there's soon $178,000 being offered.

It's the largest reward for a missing child in the United States at the time. But it doesn't lead to any breakthroughs. Just before the one-year anniversary of the crime, Sharon and Rod split up. Trina and her family move out of state, but come back a few years later. When Trina's a freshman in high school, she runs into Sharon, and their relationship picks up where it left off. Trina babysits Michaela's younger siblings. She and Sharon sometimes go on walks and jogs together in the neighborhood.

Then comes 1992, and the moment that Sharon has been waiting for. A man named Roger Haggard is serving time for burglary in an Indiana state prison. He tells the FBI that, that he knows the identity of Michaela's kidnapper and the location of her body. At first, agents dismiss him outright. But then, Roger writes a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, again claiming to have answers in Michaela's case. He tells reporters he's coming forward because he wants Michaela's family to finally know the truth. The media attention convinces the FBI to take him a little more seriously, so they bring him to California for a grand jury.

hearing. I have to imagine that for Sharon, this whole situation is bittersweet. For four years, she's held on to hope that her daughter will come home alive, and now hears Roger saying Michaela's dead. But at least that means there's an answer, that this will finally be over. Only throughout the grand jury hearing, the FBI realizes it's a hoax. Roger doesn't actually know anything. He apparently thought this ruse would help him gain favor with the Indiana parole board, but all it did was tear open the Garrett family's wounds. The grief is so overwhelming. It makes Sharon physically ill. She has to go on disability leave from her job. According to Katya Sengel's reporting in Alta Journal, Sharon describes feeling consumed by anger. She screams at random

drivers on the road and smashes dishes in an alleyway. Sometimes she stands outside her house and gazes down the road, hoping against hope that Michaela will round the corner and come back home. When Trina graduates high school, Sharon attends the ceremony. As she watches the students make their way across the stage, she can't help but wonder what it might be like if Michaela was the one getting her diploma instead. A decade-acted. A decade-acted. After Michaela's kidnapping, Trina finds herself asking similar questions, like, what if she had tried to get the scooter? Would she be the one missing today?

Trina eventually moves away from the Bay Area. She gets married and has three children of her own. She struggles with feelings of guilt and anxiety and has a hard time letting her kids go out on their own. While Sharon and Trina try to cope, the Hayward PD and FBI continue their investigation. They need a big break, and in 2009, they seem to get one. A woman named J.C. Dugard has been missing for 18 years, and she was just found alive. If you've never heard of J.C., here are the Broadstrokes. In 1991, when she was 11 years old, she was abducted from the street outside her family's home in California's South Lake Tahoe area.

Although no one knew it at the time, she was kidnapped by a married couple, Philip and Nancy Garito. They kept her in a makeshift shelter in their backyard in Antioch, California, which J.C. later described as a prison. Philip repeatedly raped her. J.C. gave birth to two daughters, one when she was just 14 years old. One day, Philip went to UC Berkeley, hoping to talk to someone to get a permit to hold a religious event on campus. He had two young girls with him. Campus police thought he was acting erratic and that the girls looked sullen.

One officer took down his name and ran a background check on him later that night. That's how she found out that he was on parole and was a registered sex offender. The campus police were concerned, so they contacted Phillips' parole officer. As far as they knew, Garido didn't have any kids. A parole officer showed up at the Garido home,

searched the place and didn't find anything particularly suspicious, but they did ask Philip and his wife to come to the parole office the next day. For whatever reason, Philip and Nancy actually brought J.C. and her two young daughters to the parole office with them. Through a series of interviews, officers eventually found out the truth. JC had been kidnapped and held captive for almost two decades. Philip and Nancy both wound up in prison. Now, the reason all this pertains to Michaela's story is because the goritos live about 50 miles from Hayward, where Michaela was abducted, and Michaela and J.C. looked almost exactly alike as children. So police are wondering, what if the goritos also kidnapped Michaela?

It's actually kind of a hopeful thought, because 18 years after she disappeared, J.C. is alive, and that could mean Michaela is too, even though it's been, 21 years since she was last seen. For police, there's another important thing to consider. Philip Garrido has a hoarding disorder, so officers are hoping if Michaela was ever at his house, the evidence will still be there. But the search is a bust. Philip and Nancy swear they had nothing to do with Michaela's kidnapping,

and there's no evidence that they're lying. A few years later, in 2012, Mikaela's case makes headlines again. A convicted serial killer named Wesley Shermantyne claims he knows what happened to her. If you're a regular listener of serial killers, you might recognize that name. Wesley is one of the speed freak killers. He and his partner in crime, Lauren Herzog, were jointly convicted of three murders in California, but they're suspected of killing more than 70 people throughout the 1980s and 90s.

In January 2012, Lauren dies by suicide. Soon after, Wesley says Lauren was responsible for Michaela's kidnapping and murder. He even claims he can show detectives where Michaela's body is. When Sharon hears about this new development, she tells the Mercury News, quote, My Hope is My Daughter is still alive somewhere out there and one day will come home, for them to be looking for her body is not something that's hopeful. In the end, nothing comes of this lead.

It seems like Wesley Sherman time was lying. For Sharon, it's a double-edged sword. She's glad her daughter might still be alive, but she's still living every day without answers. Over the next few years, Sharon spends a lot of time running a Facebook page and blog in Michaela's honor. The Facebook page is mostly, geared towards keeping Michaela's memory alive, and the blog paints a picture of a grieving

mother who leans on her Christian faith for strength. Sharon says she posts because if Michaela's still out there somewhere, she wants her daughter to know that she's still looking for her. For the most part, Sharon doesn't post many updates about the investigation, because there really aren't any. While she does have contact with the police, it's not like they can tell her everything, some secrets have to be kept for the good of the investigation, which is why Sharon probably doesn't know about what happens next. In 2018, detectives are revisiting the partial prints found on the scooter, the one they thought wouldn't be usable as evidence. With three decades of technological improvements, it could now be the key to solving Michaela's kidnapping. The Hayward PD has a short list of

suspects and an expert analyst who's ready to compare those men's prints with the ones from the scooter. The work is extremely difficult. The analyst spends two years pouring over tiny lines and warrels going over the images again and again. But it pays off because in 2020, they get a match. Transport your senses with Sol de Janado's limited edition perfume mist collection. At Sephora, Sprits on lush notes of rainforest orchid and crisp sea breeze with Hefresco Paraiso. Embrace of floral and fruity scent inspired by Rio's nude beach with chiqui bikini or caps for sun-kissed bliss with limonada gelada, where zesty Brazilian lemonade accord meets coconut milk and golden brown sugar. Don't miss Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection only at Sephora. Want to support your gut health?

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In 2020, the Hayward PD finds a match for the partial prints found on Trina's scooter. But before we get to that, we have to go. go back to where it all started, two years before Michaela's kidnapping. It's just after midnight on February 3, 1986. The air is chilly in Fremont, California, about 10 miles south of Hayward. A man is riding his motorcycle down a country road when a horrifying sight stops him in his tracks. Two young women shot, stabbed, and left dead on the side of the road. The police later identify them as 18-year-old Michelle Xavier and 20-year-old Jennifer Dewey. They were best friends. They'd gone to a birthday dinner that night and were last seen at a nearby convenience store around 8 p.m.

The Fremont PD investigates. Both women were found naked, which makes detectives think the crime was sexually motivated. They find DNA underneath Jennifer's fingernails, that they're almost certain belongs to her attacker. But genetic technology is still too. too new for the sample to be useful. Police follow up on thousands of leads and offer a $35,000 reward for information, but they can't manage to get a break in the case. Just like the investigation into Michaela Garrett's kidnapping, it's cold for over 30 years. Until 2018, when investigators are able to retest that DNA, it matches with a man who's already incarcerated in California. He has has been since 1989 when he was arrested for yet another violent crime, the stabbing death

of a 36-year-old mother named Margaret Ball. Margaret was found dead in her Hayward apartment in December 1989. Some pocket change, food stamps, and her car were missing, so police determined the motive was robbery. A few days later, they found a man driving Margaret's car in Oakland. Apparently he was an acquaintance of hers, though it's not a not quite clear how they met or how close they were, but the evidence must have been pretty strong because he was convicted of second-degree murder in 1990 and given a life sentence. Now, as they connect Margaret's case to Michelle and Jennifer's, something strikes the Fremont PD as interesting. They know all about Michaela Garrett's kidnapping, since it happened so close by,

and they realize the timeline and location of all three crimes intersect. Michelle and Jennifer were killed in 1986 in Fremont. Michaela Garrett was kidnapped in 1988 in Hayward, and Margaret Ball was killed in 1989, also in Hayward. The Fremont PD charges this suspect with Michelle and Jennifer's murders in 2018. That same year, Fremont detectives suggest officers in Hayward look into in two, so they do. In 2020, the expert analyst gets,

his palm print and compares it to the prints found on the scooter. And it's a match, which means Margaret, Michelle, and Jennifer's murders, and Michaela's kidnapping might all be connected by one man. His name, David Emery Mish. He's 59 years old when the charges are filed. That would make him 27 at the time of Michaela's kidnapping, which tracks with Trina's description of the kidnapper. He matches the physical description too, about six feet tall, white, with long hair that's since gone gray. News reports say that two unnamed witnesses choose his photo out of a double-blind lineup. On top of that, at the time of Michaela's abduction, David Mish drove a tan sedan, just like the car witnesses reported the

kidnapper driving. Of course, this is all circumstances. The real clincher is the matching palm print. That's direct physical evidence that can't be ignored. On December 21st, 2020, 32 years after the crime, the Alameda County District Attorney charges David Mish with kidnapping Michaela Garrett. But it's bittersweet news because he's also charged with Michaela's murder. Here's a quote from the Hayward PD's arrest affidavit, explaining that decision. Giving Mish's criminal history, which includes sexual assault and murder, I believe that it is reasonable to conclude that having violently abducted the victim, a nine-year-old girl who hasn't

been seen in 32 years and whose remains have never been found, that Mish murdered the victim, disposed of her remains, and has successfully kept her remains hidden from authorities. So you might be wondering, what does David Mish have to say about all this? According to his defense attorney, Paul Foyer worker, the fact that David's DNA was found underneath Jennifer's fingernails doesn't prove that David was guilty. Paul says, quote, we can't even say that he was actually present when these killings occurred. Assuming that he was, we can't say what, if anything, he did. In regards to Michaela's case, David's other lawyer, Ernie Castillo says he is a loving father, a good son, and a caring brother, who would never

hurt a child. Their plan seems to be to argue that the partial palm print isn't enough to tie David to the murder. Castillo said there's still no evidence to prove Michaela is even dead. Soon after the charges are filed, the Hayward PD holds a press conference. Sharon doesn't show up in person. Instead, she writes a letter that the Hayward Police Chief reads aloud. She writes, quote, When I received news of the kidnapper having been identified, I asked the hard questions of Detective Pernell

of what method this man used to kill his victims and received answers, and they were not easy. When I had doubted whether I would want to know, it always came back to, if Michaela could experience it, I could hear it, because it's not about me. It's never been about me, about my feelings. It is and always has been about Michaela. The thoughts of her fear, her pain, her grief are overwhelming. When it comes time for David Mish's first court hearing, Sharon doesn't show up. She says she isn't interested in anything he has to say.

Sharon still hopes for a conviction in her daughter's case, but sadly she doesn't live to see that happen. After struggling with breast cancer for several years, she passes away in May of 2002. As for Trina, she's in her 40s now, a far cry from the eight-year-old girl who watched her best friend be abducted. When David Mish was first charged, Trina didn't make any public statements. She's been through a lot with the media and isn't interested in getting wrapped up in the news. As of this recording, David Mish is still awaiting trial for the 1986 double homicide of Michelle Xavier and Jennifer Dewey and Michaela Garrett's kidnapping and murder. He has pleaded not guilty to all these charges.

So it's not over, but there's hope it could be soon. The evidence is there and the charges have been filed. All we can do now is wait and see how the cases play out in court. Until that happens, I want to leave you with a message Sharon posted on Facebook in November 2021, 31, 31, 33 years after her daughter disappeared. I know Michaela is at peace, and I will see her again. Until then, I hold her in my heart. I thank everyone for the love poured out to her for these many years, and ask only that you keep her in your heart as well. Thanks for listening to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Monday,

and be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. For more information on the disappearance of Michaela Garrett, amongst the many sources we used, we found Sharon's blog, Seekers Road, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there. Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Caris Allen,

edited by Sarah Batchelor and Andrew Kelleher, researched by Mickey Taylor, fact-checked by Claire Cronin and Chelsea Wood, and sound designed by Sam Bear. Our head of programming is Julian Borrow. Our head of production is Nick Johnson and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks.

You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Do you want to hear something spooky? Some Monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves.

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