Chapter 3

“Act Like You Enjoy It.”

While Renee Romero was checking for DNA evidence in late October, police investigators later learned the dark-haired woman who owned the green minivan was back in Sacramento, California. She and the tattooed man planned a trip to Oregon. Somehow her twelve-year-old daughter learned of their plans and cajoled her way into coming along. Once they were rolling along the freeway, the girl fell asleep on the long drive up the Sacramento Valley. Somewhere south of the Oregon line, she was suddenly awakened when she felt a strange sensation on her leg. She realized with a start that the tattooed man was rubbing her legs.

“Make him stop, Mommy!” the girl cried to her mother, who was driving.

The dark-haired woman turned around and glared at her daughter.

“No,” she responded. “I want him to.”

Then the woman drove off the freeway into a secluded area and stopped the van. While the man held her daughter down, the woman unzipped the frightened girl’s jeans. The man bent over and began to perform oral sex on the girl—with no objections from the woman.

Even when they reached Klamath Falls, Oregon, the girl’s torment wasn’t over. They forced her to take drugs and both took turns molesting her.

The couple enjoyed the torment so much, in fact, that the next week they drove the woman’s daughter and her friend Nancy Baker down to Santa Cruz on the northern California coast, and again the man’s hands freely roamed over the young girls’ bodies. He was filled with such bravado over his exploits that he stopped the van somewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains just to fire his .38-caliber pistol next to the head of the young teenager. He even told her what caliber it was and what would happen to her if she ever told anyone what they had done. The girls were under no illusions that he meant business. They knew he was a rough member of a motorcycle gang and would resort to violence if he felt he had to. Nor did they have any illusions about the woman as well. The woman had bragged about killing someone in the past and then hanging the body in a tree.

 

On November 3, 1997, seventeen-year-old Patty Wilson, who was a friend of the tattooed biker’s daughter by his first marriage, was working at Q-Zar, a game arcade for teenagers near Pleasanton, California. She stepped outside for a cigarette break that evening and saw the familiar green minivan approach. The dark-haired woman gestured for her to come over and she complied.

“Want to do a line of meth?” the woman asked.

“Sure,” Wilson answered.

It wasn’t a big deal for her. She had done meth with the woman and her boyfriend several times before.

As Patty Wilson stood by the driver’s window, they all talked for a while about the man’s daughter being pregnant. Then Wilson asked if they wanted to do the meth in the arcade’s bathroom.

“No, we’ll do it in the van,” the woman answered.

“I’ve got to tell my boss I’ll be gone for a little while,” Wilson said, excusing herself. When she returned and climbed into the minivan, she noticed that all of the backseats had been removed except for the long benchlike seat in the far back. There were pillows on the floor and a mirror above it.

The man began driving east, away from the city lights. As Patty Wilson gazed up at the mirror, thinking they were just out for a drive, the woman suddenly came up behind her and pushed her down, attempting to place handcuffs over her wrists. Wilson struggled wildly and elbowed the woman in the ribs. But the heavyset man stopped the van and tore out of the driver’s seat. He jumped into the back of the van and punched Wilson hard in the face.

As Wilson remembered later, “I didn’t know you could actually see stars when you get hit. I passed out for about five minutes.”

The next thing Wilson knew when she revived was that there were handcuffs on her wrists, and her hands were behind her back.

Now the woman was driving and the man was yelling at her that every place she attempted to stop was either too open or too conspicuous. Patty Wilson knew the general lay of the land in the area and realized that they were headed for the hills south of Livermore, a nearby town. While they were still moving, the man could no longer restrain himself. He undid his pants and ordered Wilson to go down on him. Fearing for her life, she did as he demanded.

The man wasn’t satisfied with her performance. “Act like you enjoy it!” he growled.

But Patty Wilson wasn’t enjoying it. After a minute she stopped and told him, “I can’t do this! It reminds me of my stepdad. He used to force me to do this.”

This seemed to spoil the effect for the man. Sullenly, he said, “OK, you don’t have to do it anymore. But you know who is going to want her turn,” and he pointed at the woman.

Indeed, the woman did want her turn. She found a place to pull over in the darkened hills near Livermore, parked, and came in through the sliding door. She pulled Wilson’s pants and panties off and went down on her as the man sat nearby and masturbated. When they were finally through, they forced Wilson to take off all her clothes and they snapped a couple of photos of her nude.

It was only after this that they said, “We can’t take you back to work. We’re not going to jail.”

Patty Wilson was scared out of her mind. She knew how dangerous this pair could be. She also knew they had a gun because she’d seen it the day before behind the passenger seat. And she realized that the man could kill her with his fists at any time if he wanted to.

Wilson begged, “If you let me go back to work and don’t hurt me or kill me, I won’t tell. I’ll make up some dumb lie to the police. I know my manager will call the police because I’m not like that. I wouldn’t take off from my job like that. As long as you let me live, I won’t tell.”

The man and woman drove on and thought it over. The minutes seemed like hours to Wilson. Everything was dark and deserted outside with no houses in sight. A perfect place for a murder.

Finally, after an excruciating amount of time had elapsed, the couple agreed to let her go. They concocted a story she was to tell the police.

“Listen,” the woman said. “You’re to tell the police that you were kidnapped by three teenage boys from the parking lot of Q-Zar. The boys took you out in the hills and raped you.”

To make it more convincing, the woman reached over and ripped Patty’s shirt. They drove her to a gas station on Dublin Boulevard and dropped her off. Then they simply vanished.

Patty Wilson called her manager from a phone booth and repeated the story about the teenage boys and he believed her. But when she told the Dublin police the same story when they arrived, they were more skeptical. Too much of her tale did not ring true.

Nonetheless, Wilson stuck to her story, even though her assailants were no longer around. It didn’t matter. She recalled how the savage man’s punch had knocked her out for a full five minutes. And she remembered the large pistol behind the passenger seat. But more than anything else, Patty Wilson remembered that these two knew where she lived.

 

Two weeks later, on the night of November 18, 1997, a curious event took place on the streets of Sacramento, California. A Sacramento police officer received information that two young girls had been molested and went to investigate. When he arrived at Nancy Baker’s house, he found her and the dark-haired woman’s daughter there. His mere presence must have given them courage. First Nancy, and then her friend, blurted out stories of sexual molestation and rape at the hands of a man and woman who owned a green minivan.

Detective Willover of the Sacramento Police Department got the particulars of their statements on November 20 and began to fill out a report. Under the crime description he wrote, “Rape of drugged victim,” concerning the rape of the girl who was a daughter of the woman who had been driven to Klamath Falls and Santa Cruz. For a date of the crime he penciled in “Sept ’97?” He wrote down the vehicle used in the crime as a ’95 Dodge Caravan, dark green.

Nancy Baker, who had been raped in the strange house, also told about her ordeal. She not only gave vivid testimony, she gave one more very important fact—the names of the couple. James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud.

Nancy Baker also gave one more bit of electrifying information. On an evening back in October, a news item had come on the local television station about the Reno abduction and rape of Juanita Rodriguez. Michelle Michaud’s daughter and Nancy had been sitting on the couch when Michelle suddenly pointed at the screen and said proudly, “We did that!”

By “we” she had meant herself and James Daveggio. And by “that” she had meant the abduction and rape of Juanita Rodriguez.

Daveggio and Michaud had not only done “that”—they had also done a lot of other things that hadn’t come to light. When Detective Willover checked the computer data bank, he found that both Michelle Michaud and James Daveggio had indeed had their problems with the law in the past. Michaud had been arrested for prostitution and Daveggio’s transgressions included kidnapping and forcible rape.

When asked where the couple might be at the present time, Nancy Baker didn’t know. She said they now lived out of their van and could be anywhere.

One thing Detective Willover knew for sure, they were on the loose, they were armed and dangerous, and they meant business.