Valley Times (Pleasanton, CA)



Valley Times (Pleasanton, CA)

November 14, 1999

GRIM TALE OF WOMAN IN SEX CASE

Author: David Holbrook

They were an unlikely match. She hated men "because of the way they treat women," and he was a registered sex offender and notorious womanizer.

When James Daveggio made advances on Michelle Michaud at a barbecue in the summer of 1996, she tried to scare him off.

"I'm a whore, a hooker, a prostitute," court records state she told him. "Have been for 22 years of my life, and I'm not changing now."

Despite her caveat, within a few weeks the tattooed biker from Pleasanton had won over the jaded prostitute from Sacramento and moved in with her. She spoke proudly of Daveggio to her friends, and she stood by her man 16 months later when the couple were accused of a string of sex crimes in Northern California.

"He's the kind of man who demands respect for you from your family, stands up to your family and doesn't let them chase him out of your life," she told detectives in December 1997, the day she and Daveggio were arrested in connection with a Reno kidnapping. "James has been nothing but good to me."

A cellmate talks

During an Oct. 17 interview at Santa Rita Jail, she said she's not the culprit, not the monster she has been made out to be.

"He's the one," she said.

Daveggio and Michaud each face 30 sexual assault and murder charges related to a 1997 spree that claimed victims in Alameda, Sacramento and Placer counties. The couple arrived at Santa Rita jail last month after being convicted in Reno for the rape and kidnap of a 20-year-old college student, who was assaulted and abandoned in Placer County.

Daveggio and Michaud are scheduled to enter their pleas in the Samson case in Alameda County Superior Court on Wednesday.

Authorities have sealed most of the details of the crimes. But an inmate they say Michaud confessed to in a Lake Tahoe jail cell, while detectives secretly listened in, said she is still trying to forget.

"I'd never heard anything like it," said Theresa Agorastos, a Carson City, Nev., resident who at the time was in custody for drug possession. "I was crying my eyes out. I told the deputies to get her the hell out of my cell."

The charges in the Samson case are the most serious the couple faces, and Michaud's only chance to avoid the executioner's needle might lie in her ability to cast herself as a battered woman acting under the orders of a sexual predator.

In a tearful statement just before her sentencing in August for the Reno kidnapping, she told a federal judge, "I'm so, so sorry for not being stronger, for not being able to stop things he has done."

It's a common defense used by women accused of raping and killing with their men, experts say, but it's not an easy sell. In Reno, U.S. District Court Judge David Hagen rejected Michaud's request for leniency on the grounds she was suffering from "battered woman's syndrome."

"Even if there is abuse, if the famale partner is actively involved in some of the crimes, it's very hard to put up a defense that says I'm not responsible because I got dragged by my hair into this," said Michael D. Kelleher, a criminal behaviorist who has written a book on the subject.

Court records show Michaud's actions in her alleged crimes varied dramatically. In the Reno case, she apparently helped persuade Daveggio to spare the victim's life. In the Samson case, she allegedly pulled on one end of the rope used to strangle the 22-year-old, Hagen said in court.

Her contradictory behavior might suggest Michaud played a lesser role in the crimes than Daveggio, but criminal profiler Brent Turvey says he often sees such ambiguity in the 50 serial rape and homicide cases he reviews each year.

"You can't put these people into a box and say they're always evil and psychotic," said Turvey, who also teaches forensic science to law enforcement agencies. "Sometimes they

feel happy, sometimes they feel sad. Sometimes they decide to kill, and sometimes they don't."

Distancing herself from Daveggio probably won't influence the jury when deciding her guilt, Turvey said, but it might help persuade jurors to recommend against the death penalty.

Michaud's background is as steeped in contradiction as the role she allegedly played in the spree that includes Samson's killing and the sexual assaults of five women and teen-age girls. According to friends and acquaintances, she was either a devout mother struggling to break from a dark past or a clever hypocrite living a double life.

She attended church, but dabbled in the occult. She hated men, though she hung out with notorious biker gangs. She was a school crossing guard during the day and a prostitute at night.

"She was a nice woman," said Monsignor Edward Kavanagh of St. Rose Catholic Church in Sacramento. "She had a lot of good qualities."

Michaud regularly attended St. Rose with her mother and two children. She volunteered with the altar society and baked cookies for church fund-raisers.

"When I was sick and in the hospital, she helped a lot," said Marie Ward, a family friend for 17 years. "She was there by my husband's side, showing him how to cook his oatmeal, his Cream of Wheat. She was a pillar of strength for him."

Michaud also helped care for Ward's elderly mother, making regular stops by her house to comb her hair and rub her arthritic legs. Ward recalls the day in 1985 when Michaud picked roses for her daugther's baptism.

"Her kids had a nice house," she said. "Always clean. She was a good mother to them. She didn't hide the fact that she had been a prostitute, but now she was trying to do good."

At night, a different story

But across town in the rough bars along Stockton Boulevard, Michaud had a different reputation. Regulars knew her as "Mickey," a well-dressed but foul-mouthed woman who drank champagne, threw money around and boasted of an ability to cast spells.

Michaud spoke often at Bobby Joe's bar of her hatred of men, said Connie Jackson, a bartender there, who described Michaud as a heavy tipper who would leave her $60 to $100 a night.

"She just gave you the shivers," Jackson said.

Much of what is known about Michaud comes from her testimony at Daveggio's trial in Reno and a probation report for a 1991 prostitution conviction.

Born in Morocco in 1958 to a career Army man, Michaud and her family moved often before settling in Sacramento in her early teens. She soon became a ward of the court for "incorrigible behavior," and by age 18 she was working in Nevada's brothels.

She went by the name Ruby, and her high cheekbones and hazel eyes made her a popular choice among clients. She claims to have been "one of three girls" close to the owner of the Mustang Ranch, former Danville resident Joe Conforte, now believed to be living at large in Argentina.

While in custody for the Reno abduction, Michaud tried to persuade authorities who were investigating the Mustang Ranch to release her so she could infiltrate the operation with her Hells Angels contacts.

"She has stated...that the Hells Angels used her as a person that they would call to set up hits and kill people," Daveggio's attorney told the judge during the Reno trial.

According to court records, Michaud also told a friend "she had killed a man in Sacramento after he tried to strangle her, that she had cut him, and she had enjoyed it."

Such statements could be mere bluster. Her sister described her to the FBI as "overdramatic, attention-seeking and a pathological liar who can be very convincing."

Michaud never married. Her children, a 17-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, have different fathers.

Eventually, she left the Nevada brothels for the seedier and less lucrative massage parlors of Sacramento.

To supplement her income, she served two elderly paramours. According to her testimony, the men gave her thousands for living expenses, including the payments on the Dodge Caravan minivan that police say she and Daveggio converted into a "murder and abduction chamber."

Michaud's defenders have only one explanation for the charges she faces: James Daveggio.

"We used to talk every week, but after she met him I never saw her again," said Ward, her longtime friend. "Never took calls. Never called back. Whatever happened must have been because of that man."

Michaud's purported jailhouse confession about her and Deveggio's exploits might have shocked her fellow inmate, but it fails to surprise those closest to him.

"He was the type who thought he could do anything," said his second wife, an Antioch resident who asked not to be identified. "He thought women were put on this Earth to make him happy."

Born in 1960 in San Francisco, Daveggio was shuttled between his mother's home in Pleasanton and the Bay Area homes of his father, a delivery man who married four times.

Daveggio attended Foothill High School in Pleasanton and graduated in 1978 from Village High School, a Dublin continuation school. As a young man, Daveggio quickly established a record as a sex offender.

Before his 25th birthday, he had been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in Tracy and indecent exposure in Contra Costa County. Pleasanton police arrested him in 1984 on suspicion of sexually assaulting a woman at Black Angus Restaurant, but charges were never filed.

The day Daveggio's second wife learned she was pregnant with their child, he and a buddy were arrested for assaulting a Tracy woman they met at a bar.

"By that time, it wasn't much of a shock," his second wife said.

They met in 1980 at a Niles Canyon swimming hole. She was 17. He was 20 and still married to a Livermore native who lives in Dublin with their two daughters.

"He could make you believe almost anything," his second wife said. "It's kind of like he knew what the person wanted to hear and then he made up a life to fit that image."

Women under his heel

Daveggio's second wife portrays him as a man obsessed with gambling, who preferred drinking and playing cards at the bars on Pleasanton's Main Street to holding a steady job.

He got into enough bar fights to lose most of his front teeth. His deep, raspy voice earned him the nickname "Frog."

His second wife waited tables to provide for the couple. Her paychecks often fed his appetite for gambling.

"He'd pick me up at work, drive up to Reno, spend all the money, then drive me back so I could make it to work the next day," she said.

After serving a year in jail for the Tracy assault, Daveggio moved to Sacramento in 1987 and married the woman who would give birth to his only son.

He joined the Devil's Horsemen Motorcycle Club and cemented his reputation as a heavy gambler and womanizer. He served drinks in the bars along Stockton Boulevard, where the regulars called his conquests "Frogettes."

Jackson, the bartender at Bobby Joe's said Daveggio used the women "like slaves," ordering them to clean his house and do his bidding. "He had a nice bike. He was in a club. That's what women liked about him," said Jackson, the bartender at Bobby Joe's.

Daveggio didn't hide his criminal record. At a biker party, Jackson recalls Daveggio waving his sex-offender paperwork above his head as if it were a winning lottery ticket.

Jackson and her fiance, the owner of Bobby Joe's, were considering whether to hire him.

"He was flashing it around," she said, "I said, 'This is crazy. This guy's a sex offender. Do we really want to hire him?' "

Despite his antics, many of Daveggio's old friends hold fond memories of him.

Carla Pelfrey, a regular at Bobby Joe's, said Daveggio had a real appeal to women.

"He treated my sister and myself pretty well," she said. "The key is he was adventurous. It was more exciting than cleaning the house, or feeding the kids or paying the bills."

During Christmas events arranged by local motorcycle clubs, Daveggio played Santa Claus at a local hospital and rode his bike for toy drives.

"I'm still defending him," said Ernest "Shorty" Allgood of Sacramento. "He's still got friends here."

Brought each other down

Just as Michaud's defenders blame Daveggio for her downfall, Daveggio's friends fault her for the charges against him. By Michaud's own account, there is no question that the couple's relationship devolved into a malignant alliance marked by drug addiction, depraved sex and violence.

Michaud testified she and Daveggio started heavily using methamphetamine after they met. By the time of the Reno abduction, they were using speed "like other people drink water," she said.

Michaud appeared to be growing paranoid after Daveggio moved into her Sacramento home, neighbors and acquaintances said. After finding a dead frog on her porch, she quickly clipped a piece of Daveggio's hair and crafted a talisman intended to protect him from evil.

"She always talked about how she knew spells that would protect her," Jackson said.

A year after they met, the couple were evicted from Michaud's home and were on the run from the Devil's Horsemen because Daveggio had stolen cash from the club, according to court testimony.

The two were "whacked out on crank" when they arrived at his mother's house in fall 1997 for a family get-together, a former brother-in-law said.

Daveggio was armed with a handgun in fear of retaliation from his former biker buddies, said the relative, A Contra Costa County resident who asked not to be identified.

"The gun fell out onto the ground," he said. "It scared all of us because there were children around."

Daveggio "was amped up and drinking beer," rambling about "what's going down" with his life.

"It was really eerie because he was saying, 'You don't know what I've done with my life, the people I hang with,' " the relative said. "At that point, they were definitely vagabonds living out of a van."

The relative recalls Daveggio removing the back seats from Michaud's van, which police say was rigged for restraining victims. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Bogden, who prosecuted the pair for the Reno abduction, believes the couple arrived at the get-together a day or two after dumping the Reno woman in Placer County.

"That's when they made changes to the van and disguised themselves," Bogden said.

According to court records, Daveggio shaved his hair short and dyed it green; Michaud began wearing manly clothes.

The Reno victim told detectives she was whisked off a downtown street by the couple and sexually assaulted during a 100-mile drive to Placer County. She said Daveggio stopped only to smoke cigarettes and sing along to a Johnny Cash tune.

"He said it was about a man who killed in Reno just for pleasure," the victim testified.

She was dumped near Auburn, apparently after Michaud helped persuade Daveggio to spare her life. The victim said Michaud showed interest in her when she lied about having a young child.

For local law enforcement agencies, the case brought back chilling memories of the serial rapes and murders committed 20 years earlier by Gerald and Charlene Gallego. The Sacramento couple roamed Northern California and Reno in their van, abducting women and teen-age girls. Convicted of four murders, Charlene Gallego testified that they had killed 10.

Placer County Detective Bill Summers was among the team that discovered the Gallegos' last victim, Sacramento college student Mary Beth Sowers, in the fall of 1980. Daveggio and Michaud's Reno victim was dumped Sept. 29, 1997, in Placer County, and Summers played a key role in the investigation that led to their arrest two months later.

"It made us all remember the day we found Mary Beth," he said. "It was the same description: a male-female team using a van to lure in their victims."

A book on the Gallegos' crimes was discovered during a search of Michaud's van after the couple's arrest.

Federal prosecutor Bogden said witnesses say Daveggio had an interest in the notorious couple, whose case was tried in Contra Costa County because of publicity in Sacramento about the "sex slave" killers.

A month after the Reno abduction, Pleasanton police say Daveggio and Michaud went on a similar hunt for victims in Alameda County. The Alameda County indictment accuses them of sexually assaulting a woman Nov. 3 and a teen-aged girl Nov. 27.

Details of those assaults remain sealed in grand jury transcripts.

In the days before Samson's Dec. 2, 1997, abduction in Pleasanton, police say the couple stayed at Motel 6 on Hopyard Road and roamed Pleasanton looking for victims.

Their first target was Foothill High. Police said they parked in the area where parents pick up their children, but soon gave up and went back to their motel room.

Early the next morning, they cruised Samson's neighborhood, familiar ground for Daveggio, whose previous addresses include nearby Highland Oaks and Clovewood Lane.

Samson, an Ohlone College student with dreams of a career in marketing and photography, was walking alone that morning to her job in Hacienda Business Park. It was foggy and quiet near her Siesta Court home. Michaud told FBI agents Daveggio easily pulled the slender Samson into the van.

After restraining Samson and cashing Michaud's welfare check, police claim the couple drove to South Lake Tahoe so Michaud could make a court date for writing bad checks. Unknown to Daveggio and Michaud, a team of 30 FBI agents and detectives from Placer County and Sacramento were also descending on South Lake Tahoe that morning, armed with an arrest warrant for the Reno case.

Victim provides tip

Two weeks earlier, a 14-year-old girl picked up for being out too late told Sacramento police a woman named Michelle Michaud and her boyfriend, James Daveggio, had sexually assaulted her and a friend in September.

The girl told police that Michaud, a family friend, forced her to disrobe at gunpoint after giving the girl some speed, police reports state. After Daveggio raped the girl, Michaud told her not to tell anyone "or I'll personally kill you."

Police skepticism of the girl's story, follow-up interviews and the Thanksgiving Day weekend all contributed to delays in getting an arrest warrant for the couple. The day before Samson's abduction, Michaud's mother told investigators her daughter was bound for South Lake Tahole to make a court date.

Agents finally tracked the couple down the evening of Dec. 3, gambling and doing drugs at the Lakeside Inn and Casino. In a tragic near-miss, police say Daveggio and Michaud had Samson alive at a South Lake Tahoe motel room while agents were combing the same streets in search of the couple.

It would be another day before Samson's body was found, on Dec. 4, 1997, and investigators linked her to Daveggio and Michaud, but investigators said they immediately found incriminating evidence during a search of Michaud's van.

There was a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror similar to one described by the Reno victim, a pornographic audiotape titled "Submissive Young Girls" and the book on the Gallegos.

Gerald Gallego was sentenced to death in California and Nevada. In a deal that won her release from prison in 1996, Charlene Gallego testified against her husband, describing herself as a battered woman acting under his orders.

Alameda County prosecutors won't offer Michaud such a deal.

"We don't need her testimony, and she's just as guilty as Daveggio is," said Alameda County prosecutor Anderson. "The only abuse going on was what she and he were doing to their victims."

In her jailhouse interview with the Times, Michaud said she is spending her time awaiting trial reading the Bible. She's ready for the day in court she can tell the truth about the "real Michelle."

"I don't know how many people will believe it," she said.

David Holbrook covers courts, crime and general news. you can reach him at 925-847-2125 or dholbrook@

All content copyright (c) 1999 Valley Times and may not be republished without permission.

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