Chapter 29
Move . . . Countermove
The intricate legal chess game involving the lives of James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud now moved from the realm of policemen and FBI agents to the courtroom. Michaud was assigned legal counsel, Reno attorney Mary Boestch, on December 12, 1997, and on December 15 she entered a plea of not guilty in the Juanita Rodriguez case.
Right from the start Boestch was wary and tightlipped with reporters, and her client matched her taciturn manner. But it was a telling first revelation in her strategy when Boestch moved to quash the government case at the outset. She argued that the arrest of Michaud was illegal in the first place because FBI Agent Chris Campion had lied when he spoke through the door at the Lakeside Inn saying he was a manager and that Daveggio was ill in the casino area.
David Hagen, U.S. district judge, the man who would be presiding over the case, was a dignified, lean man with graying hair and beard. He had an aspect about him that typified the best of the small-town Nevada-style open-mindedness and sense of fair play. Noted for his intelligence and thoughtfulness, he carefully considered Mary Boestch’s request and after much consideration let the arrest order stand.
In the meantime, Daveggio had been assigned court-appointed attorney Michael Kennedy. In his thirties with an effusive manner, flashy suits and long dark hair tied back in a ponytail, Kennedy was in stark contrast to the conservatively attired and reticent Mary Boestch. Kennedy divided his time between Reno and Las Vegas; he knew with this case he had a “big one” on his hands. Not only would it have high media awareness, but it would be difficult as well. Kennedy was up to the challenge.
While Boestch and her client hid behind a wall of silence, Kennedy came out swinging right off the bat for Daveggio. The analogy of the chess game was now more true than ever. Boestch and Michaud waited in the corner for things to develop while Kennedy and Daveggio moved their pieces all over the judicial chessboard, countering the moves made by the federal prosecutors.
There were two federal prosecutors on the case now attempting to link James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud to the abduction and rape of Juanita Rodriguez—Daniel Bogden and Ronald Rachow. While Bogden radiated youth and enthusiasm, a spark plug in the crime unit against drugs and racketeering, Rachow was a more sedate warrior of the legal battlefield. He looked like a television version of a veteran prosecutor—gray short hair and a penchant for gray suits. But even though he spoke quietly, he still managed to have a commanding presence and well thought-out delivery. When he wanted, he could insert sarcastic barbs hidden behind his smooth sentences. There wasn’t much that got past him, and any openings the defense gave him, he pounced on.
The two dissimilar prosecutors were in no hurry for the trial to get under way as evidence came pouring in from all points of the compass. Criminalist Renee Romero was joined by criminalist Maria Fassett at the Washoe County Crime Lab as they scanned the evidence obtained from the minivan. They had a wide array of evidence to peruse. They first searched for hair that might have come from Juanita Rodriguez, and if a root sheath was attached, DNA testing using the PCR method could definitely say it came from a certain portion of the population to which the victim belonged. Even without the root sheath, microscopic analysis could say that the hair had the same characteristics as the victim’s hair.
Broken fingernails were also searched for, since they, much like a bullet, have individualized striations on them. They could be matched to a victim even months after a crime had been committed.
Also a key element were clothing fibers that could be matched with a fair degree of accuracy to the victim’s clothing. Under a high-powered microscope they had very significant characteristics.
Meanwhile, another lab in Reno, a California Department of Justice lab in Berkeley and still another DOJ lab in Santa Rosa began to take in samples for analyzing. In an ironic twist of fate, Daveggio was ordered to produce some blood and it was sent to a lab in Pleasanton not far from where Vanessa Samson had lived. Even the Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit at Quantico, Virginia, was looking at James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud. Especially Michelle Michaud. “It is one of the first cases in which a woman has allegedly taken an equal role in a series of sexual assaults,” FBI officials said. Unlike Charlene Gallego, who had been termed “an enabler” and only picked out young girls for her husband to rape, torture and kill, Michaud in time became just as involved in the rapes and murders as Daveggio. So few women in the United States fell into this category that the FBI took a long, hard look at her case. They worried she was just the tip of the iceberg in a growing trend of violent female criminals. It was only half jokingly referred to by some as the “Thelma and Louise Syndrome.”
There was so much information gathering, in fact, that Judge Hagen continued the case scheduled for mid-January 1998 until September 8, 1998. Neither counsels for Daveggio nor Michaud objected. In fact, they were glad for the delay, for on February 5 and March 27, 1998, both Mary Boestch and Michael Kennedy had to view literally hundreds of physical evidence items seized by law enforcement agents.
After June 26, 1998, Boestch and Kennedy had even more physical evidence to review. On that date law enforcement agents seized a computer tower and two cases of computer discs belonging to Daveggio, along with clothing items, and as the search warrant stated, “Fibers, hairs, and trace evidence.” With all this mountain of evidence, criminalist Rene Romero had more ammunition than ever in the case against Daveggio and Michaud.
Meanwhile, a curious thing was happening. Even though Daveggio and Michaud weren’t separated by a great distance now, both being confined in separate parts of the Washoe County Jail in Reno, it became more and more apparent to Daveggio that Michaud was slipping away. Just what that witchy woman was up to he couldn’t say for sure. But as the summer of 1998 progressed and the pile of evidence grew, Daveggio and his attorney could feel a decided chill deepening on Michaud’s part. What was at first just a hunch became almost a certainty as July turned into August. Michaud at some point was going to cut her losses and leave James dangling alone in the wind.
Before that could happen, Michael Kennedy struck first. On August 8, 1998, he made a motion to sever James Daveggio’s trial from Michelle Michaud’s. The deadly link that had been forged in the smoky recesses of Bobby Joe’s nearly two years before was now totally and irrevocably broken.
Another significant event happened “off stage” on August 25, 1998—Police Chief Bill Eastman was rushed to Valley Care Medical Center directly from his office, complaining of chest pains. He had suffered a mild heart attack and would retire within the year after serving as head man in Pleasanton for eighteen years. He said, “It’s time. I’ve enjoyed my career, but being a police chief is not my whole identity in life.”
At least he had one great satisfaction upon retirement. The murder of Vanessa Samson, unlike that of Tina Faelz, would not go unpunished.
Back on the judicial scene, on September 11, 1998, Judge Hagen granted the severance that Daveggio sought, and Michaud’s trial was set for November 17, only two months away. Daveggio’s trial was scheduled for December 15. But nothing was going forward in an orderly manner with these two involved. It was as if the cases had taken on the aspects of Daveggio’s and Michaud’s own erratic personalities. The two who had been lovers were now sworn enemies and as the government’s case against Michaud was just coming to trial on November 11, 1998, all of the minivan exhibits were admitted into evidence over the objections of Mary Boestch. Boestch requested once again that all of Michaud’s statements to the FBI made on December 5, 6 and 8 be supressed because Agent Chris Campion had lied to her at the motel door when he said that he was the manager and James Daveggio was sick in the casino area. But that motion was denied by Judge Hagen again. Even more damaging government evidence was admitted on November 16, 1998—the findings of criminalist Renee Romero who had indeed found two hairs matching Juanita Rodriguez’s in Michaud’s minivan.
Everything was lining up to place Michelle Michaud right in the crosshairs with James Daveggio. But Michaud was never one to sit back and let fate take its course. On the afternoon of Monday, November 16, 1998, just one day before her jury trial was to begin, she made a conditional plea of guilty to Count 2 of the charges: Aiding and abetting a kidnapping. By doing this, she added one big bonus for herself. She could come back at a later time with her lawyer and approach the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This court could then decide whether or not to overturn Judge Hagen’s decision to include her taped statements to the FBI and Desiree Carrington on December 5 through 8. If indeed the Ninth Circuit Court overturned Judge Hagen’s decision, Michaud could return, change her plea to not guilty, and ask for a new trial. Without all the statements, it might be very hard to prove that she even aided and abetted in the kidnapping of Juanita Rodriguez and she might get off scot-free, at least on the Reno kidnapping case.
Her conditional plea of guilty to Count 2 caught everyone by surprise, including prosecutors Ron Rachow and Daniel Bogden. They were set for a lengthy, hard-fought trial. They well knew Michaud’s lawyer, Mary Boestch, was no pushover. But Michaud, staying true to form, twisted the proceedings her way. James Daveggio could have learned a lesson in control from her.
Bogden was particularly surprised because he had to give up so little for a plea bargain. In return for her plea of guilty to a charge of kidnapping, he and Rachow dropped the charge of conspiracy. He expressed a certain buoyancy of stunned relief when he told reporters, “One down, one to go!” But his buoyancy might have been less exuberant if he knew what tricks Michaud still held up her sleeve.
Even after her plea of guilty, Michaud and Boestch had to face Judge Hagen to formally enter the plea before the court. Michaud came quietly into the courtroom, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and sporting neatly combed shoulder-length hair. She looked nothing like the defiant hooker standing before the camera at the Sacramento Police Department as they snapped her mug shot in 1991. She now matched the popular conception of a mousy librarian. She wiped away tears with Kleenex as Judge Hagen began to ask her questions.
Boestch maintained her sphinxlike silence until Judge Hagen asked of Michaud, “What did you do to assist the kidnapping of Juanita Rodriguez?”
Boestch jumped up and objected.
Judge Hagen rephrased the question. “Is it true that you were driving the green minivan when James Daveggio abducted the woman from Reno and then drove across state lines to California?”
“Yes, sir,” Michaud answered quietly.
Judge Hagen cautioned her that she would be under strict sentencing qualifications. “It could be quite different from the sentence you have in mind right now. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Michaud answered.
Judge Hagen then ordered Michelle back into custody at the Washoe County Jail until James Daveggio’s trial. As she was escorted out of the courtroom by federal marshals, it did in fact seem as Daniel Bogden had stated, “One down, one to go.”
Across town, James Daveggio’s lawyer, Michael Kennedy, had a few tricks of his own up his sleeve. He had noted in the testimony that Juanita Rodriguez had given to Detective Desiree Carrington and others that she had referred to her male attacker’s voice as high-pitched. Now that was odd. Everyone who knew James Daveggio could attest to his raspy low voice. It was his trademark and had earned him the name Frog.
Kennedy obtained the services of Dr. Steve MacFarlane, professor of speech pathology at the University of Nevada, Reno, to examine and test Daveggio’s voice. As Dr. MacFarlane explained to the court about his planned examination, “The first type requires visualization of the actual vocal cords and there’s a whole rack of equipment as it were, and an examining chair, much like a dental chair that allows us to put a scope in and see the larynx and high-speed photography and slow motion. The second one is smaller but essentially like a desktop computer that allows us to measure airflow through the vocal cords in a second of time. And the third is actually a computer that has a monitor that allows us to do an acoustical measure of the voice. That is another big piece of equipment that we do sort of a voice print. I’ve done that in some cases to identify people who have done telephone scams and things. All of the equipment could fill a van.”
All this equipment was at UNR at the Redfield Building in the Speech Pathology and Audiology Department. Judge Hagen expressed his concerns about security, but Dr. MacFarlane assured him that other prisoners had been brought there in orange jumpsuits and shackles by federal marshals with no problem. Bowing to that knowledge, Judge Hagen allowed Daveggio to be tested.
Linking Daveggio up to the equipment and testing him, Dr. MacFarlane learned that Daveggio had an aberration on the left side of his larynx as well as additional tissue near the front of the larynx. It was a congenital condition and had affected his voice since birth, giving it a rough husky quality. That someone would ever accuse him of having a “high-pitched” voice seemed highly unlikely.
This was Michael Kennedy’s first chink in the government’s argument. But as he studied all their evidence, he found even more. He discovered that the rape victim Juanita Rodriguez never mentioned her attacker as having tattoos, whereas Daveggio had several prominent ones all over his body and he had been undressed during the attack. She also had told the Washoe County Sheriff’s sketch technician that her attacker had brown hair and brown eyes. Daveggio had blond hair and blue eyes.
These were small victories for Michael Kennedy, but they were better than nothing. After all, if not even the victim could positively identify James Daveggio as her rapist, then who for sure could say he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Kennedy wouldn’t argue that Rodriguez hadn’t been raped—he would simply say Daveggio hadn’t been the one.
But before he could congratulate himself very much, he should have been paying closer attention to Michelle Michaud. In early January 1999 she approached a detective with the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office and told the officer that if she was released she could infiltrate the Mustang Ranch bordello as an undercover agent. The government at the time was trying to prove that Joe Conforte, who was wanted for tax evasion and on the lam in South America, was in fact still controlling the brothel through manager Shirley Colletti, who was a former Storey County commissioner.
Michaud also reiterated the statement she had made to Rick Bourne that she was in the room when a bail bondsman in Sacramento was shot in the head and killed by a member of the Hell’s Angels. If allowed her freedom, she could also infiltrate that organization.
The authorities took her seriously for a while and mulled over her request. When they eventually passed on her proposal, she still had one major trick up her sleeve. On the night before James Daveggio was to start his trial on February 23, 1999, she decided to be a witness for the prosecution against him. More than anyone else, it would be Michaud who put the nails in his coffin.