Chapter 31
The “Rock” Returns
In the interval between James Daveggio’s federal trial and Michelle Michaud’s Reno sentencing, the Mustang Ranch closed for business. The feds had been contending for years that ex-owner Joe Conforte was still running operations secretly from South America and receiving payoffs. The government had originally closed the bordello in 1990 after Conforte declared bankruptcy and auctioned the ranch off to recover some of the back taxes to the IRS.
Victor Perry, the one and only bidder, bought the property for $1.49 million on behalf of Mustang Properties, Inc. Perry had a brother named Peter, who was Conforte’s lawyer. A.G.E., a conglomeration, whose members were all associates of Conforte, took over the establishment. The government soon alleged that they were secretly transferring millions of dollars to Conforte in South America. There was no doubt that he wanted to come back and take over operations. He’d even placed a full-page ad in one of Nevada’s newspapers stating that fact.
The FBI looked closely into the illegal actions of Mustang madam, and former Storey County commissioner, Shirley Colletti, as well as brothel bookkeeper Joann Olcese. When the heat came down on them, they decided to talk, alleging that Conforte was still skimming profits from the bordello. In a trial that took place in the spring of 1999, a jury found both Colletti and Olcese guilty of racketeering.
The end came for the Mustang Ranch on Monday, August 9, as a mob of reporters, television cameramen and curious onlookers surrounded the pink stucco ranch house, while a file of working girls moved back and forth taking possessions to their cars. At 5:00 P.M., former Storey County sheriff, and now president of the Mustang operations, Bob Del-Carlo handed over the keys to the padlocked gate to Agent Ronald Meseberg of Customs Service.
It’s hard to say how much Michelle Michaud was involved in Mustang Ranch’s demise. Whether she gave key evidence about Joe Conforte and the others, or whether it was just one more set of lies in an attempt to gain her freedom, only the FBI knows for sure. Whatever she had to say apparently wasn’t enough to convince them to use her as an undercover operative.
It not only wasn’t enough for the FBI—it wasn’t enough to sway either the Alameda County prosecutors or Judge David Hagen either. On August 12, 1999, Michaud once again found herself in Judge Hagen’s federal courtroom in Reno for sentencing. In a tearful, dramatic statement during her ninety-minute sentencing phase, she said, “I’m so sorry for not being able to stop things he [Daveggio] has done.”
Attorney Mary Boestch tried to portray Michelle Michaud as another of Daveggio’s victims.
“He physically assaulted her,” Boestch said. “He terrorized her. She does not fit the profile of a woman who is a cold-blooded criminal.”
Boestch asked for leniency in Michaud’s sentencing because she had cooperated with authorities after her arrest. Judge Hagen saw things differently and replied, “I believe that what Ms. Michaud saw was the murder [of Vanessa Samson] in California [on the Douglas County Jail television] has been discovered and thinks, ‘I’m going to do something right now to distance myself from that 85 [murder charge].’ My first thought [about the Juanita Rodriguez case] was what a horrible, horrible crime this was. The victim was trussed up like an animal in the back of a minivan.”
Judge Hagen dismissed the battered-woman syndrome that Boestch was trying to use and contended that Michaud had ample opportunity to escape the clutches of James Daveggio. As Michaud sat weeping, he sentenced her to twelve years and eight months for the kidnapping of Juanita Rodriguez.
The government, meanwhile, was trying to make the court be even harder on James Daveggio. Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said, “Daveggio chose his Reno victim due to her gender, age, physical size and due to the fact she was a small-in-stature female victim walking alone at night. This pattern of choosing defenseless, vulnerable female victims occurred both prior to the Reno kidnapping and following the Reno kidnapping. Without a doubt, defendant Daveggio is one of the most heinous, violent, cruel, dangerous and remorseless defendants that this court or most other courts in the state of Nevada has sentenced. This criminal [Daveggio] acts, in this case, unusually heinous, cruel, brutal and degrading to [ward] the victim. If allowed to return to the streets, he poses an immediate and imminent threat to innocent females who may cross his path. Incapacitation and imprisonment is the only way society can be protected from this repeat and obviously non-rehabilitative criminal rapist.”
Both Bogden and Rachow sought a two-level increase in Daveggio’s sentencing, which would mean a great deal more prison time. Daveggio’s lawyer, Michael Kennedy, shot back that the government had not sought the same two-level increase against Michelle Michaud, had filed this motion late, and that Daveggio did not know beforehand that Juanita Rodriguez was a “vulnerable” victim.
Judge Hagen ruled in Kennedy’s favor, and at least in this he won a small victory for his client. But it was one small victory in a war that was steadily going against Daveggio. Only eleven days after Michaud had been sentenced in front of Judge Hagen, it was Daveggio’s turn. Unlike Michaud, who cried constantly, he remained stoic and sat almost motionless during the hour-long sentencing phase. Prosecutor Daniel Bogden once again summarized Juanita Rodriguez’s horrifying ordeal, stating that she now suffered from post-traumatic stress disorders. “She has a chronic fear of death,” he said, “with the belief she will not wake up in the morning and will die young. What kind of life is that?”
When asked to make a comment, Daveggio, dressed in a jail uniform, only said, “On the advice of [my attorney] Mr. Kennedy, I don’t have anything to say, Your Honor.”
In the end Judge Hagen was twice as hard on James Daveggio as he had been on Michelle Michaud. He sentenced him to twenty-four years in prison, saying, “He [Daveggio] controlled the depraved nature of the forcible sexual acts. The victim was trussed up like an animal.”
The Nevada phase of the Daveggio/Michaud saga was now over. But the California phase was just getting into high gear, thanks to the efforts of Rock Harmon.
Back in November 1998, Rock Harmon and Alameda district attorney Tom Orloff had convened a grand jury to look into the crimes James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud had perpetrated in their county. They had plenty of technical evidence to back up their charges. Way back on December 19, 1997, Brian Burritt of the California Department of Justice Lab, in Berkeley, received several items from the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office that had been found in Michaud’s van. One large envelope and one smaller envelope contained three blood tubes and a stain from the liquid blood. He also obtained a napkin from her van with a dark stain on it, two curling irons and a green gag ball. With these came a blood sample from James Daveggio, drawn by criminalist Maria Fassett, and a blood sample from Michelle Michaud, drawn by criminalist Renee Romero.
Brian Burritt explained what he did next. “The first thing generally is to examine the packaging. I’ll look at the packaging, see what notations are made on them, if there’s any case numbers, item numbers, descriptions of evidence, that sort of thing. Then make notes and document what I’m observing there.
“The next step is to open up that item or the envelope or container and just visually examine the item and try to assess what I’m going to collect and what I’m going to analyze. I looked at Q12701, the curling iron, and looked for any possible biological stains, since that’s what I’m focusing on is DNA testing, the biological evidence. So in an effort to also preserve any other evidence that might be there, such as latent prints, I didn’t want to overly handle the item such that I smear a latent print that was there or some other type of evidence.
“I observed in the tip portion of that item some brown stains that looked like they might be biological material that I could test. There’s a concave area in that tip and that’s where I observed the stains and collected them. I collected a portion of the stains with a damp Q-tip cotton swab.”
In his search he noted a brown pellet of material that appeared to be biological in nature. He didn’t know what it was at first, so he did a presumptive test for dried blood. The test came up positive, so he did a test for coagulated blood. But when he tried to extract it, the material didn’t act the way a solid blood sample should act. At this point he surmised it might be fecal material. His test in this area proved that his assumption was correct.
On the smaller of the curling irons, which had a deeper tip, he also found a more pronounced amount of brown material. He pried it loose with a scalpel blade. Preserving and putting these samples aside for a while, he concentrated on taking minute samples from the napkin that appeared to have bloodstains on it, and a sample from the green ball gag that had apparent teeth marks on it. From his test on the green ball gag, he found that the ball surface contained epithelial cells, which generally come from a person’s mouth.
On all the samples that he had gathered, Burritt ran DNA tests, noting, as Renee Romero had already done, the kind of DNA test performed depended on the amount of DNA material gathered. The PCR test was more general in nature, but needed very little DNA material. The RFLP test was much more precise, but needed a greater amount of DNA material. Burritt had enough potential DNA material on the paper napkin to run both a PCR and RFLP test. The results he found were that the DNA located there was consistent with the DNA found in Vanessa Samson’s blood. Only one in 8.9 billion people in the PCR test, and only one in 22 billion people in the RFLP test, were likely to have the same DNA as found on the napkin. From the blood samples he had received from Maria Fassett and Renee Romero, he discovered that James Daveggio’s and Michelle Michaud’s DNA did not match the DNA picked up from the paper napkin. Only Vanessa Samson’s DNA matched.
The same results came in from the curling irons and ball gag. The DNA was consistent with Vanessa Samson’s and not Daveggio’s or Michaud’s. When Burritt ran a test for semen stains in Samson’s panties and from a vaginal swab, he found that there was no semen present. But even this was damaging evidence against Daveggio. As Renee Romero had discovered in the Reno case, Daveggio had undergone a vasectomy and had no semen in his ejaculant.
The curling irons were becoming a double whammy against Daveggio and Michaud at this point. Not only did they contain DNA material from Vanessa Samson, proving that she had been in their van, but these same items contained fingerprints, and Bonnie Paolini, who was an expert latent print analyst at the California Department of Justice Lab, was about to find out to whom the fingerprints belonged.
On the AM/PM cup she had received from the Washoe County Sheriff’s Crime Lab, she used a superglue fuming method and then a rhodamine laser method, picking up prints she dusted with fingerprint powder. She photographed her results and used a lifting tape to place the prints on a lift card. On the cup she had found not only a print of Daveggio’s right thumb, but his left thumbprint twice. She also found prints from Michaud’s right thumb, right middle finger and right ring finger. But most damaging of all, she found Vanessa Samson’s right thumbprint on the same cup.
Bonnie Paolini also received the two curling irons that DNA expert Burritt had looked at. She said, “My initial processing method was to superglue it [the larger of the curling irons]. I examined the item to see if there were any visible latent impressions. There were not. At this point I removed the duct tape that was wrapped around the center area of the curling iron. I then processed the pieces of the duct tape, and I reprocessed the curling iron itself, to possibly develop any prints underneath the duct tape area. I processed these items with superglue fuming again and used the laser on them. I found Michelle Michaud’s right thumb on the middle of the duct tape. There were three pieces wrapped around on the middle of the curling iron. On the middle piece of duct tape, I was able to develop her right thumb on the sticky side of the tape.”
Ms. Paolini also found Michaud’s fingerprints on the curling iron itself, underneath the duct tape area, as well as Michaud’s palm print on the metal.
On the smaller curling iron she found Michaud’s right middle fingerprint on the nonsticky side of the duct tape, and left index fingerprint on the curling iron’s metal shaft.
There were Daveggio fingerprints on the Dead of Night book about serial killers, especially on the photographs. His fingerprints were also on the Submissive Young Girls audiotape.
With all this evidence, and much more—including testimony from Patty Wilson (Jane Doe #1); Daveggio’s daughter (Jane Doe #2); Robert Maisonet, the clerk at the Livermore adult book store; David Valentine and David Elola, the roofers near the place Vanessa Samson was kidnapped; Mukesh Patel, the manager of the Sundowner Inn; Everett Brakensiek, the Alpine County deputy who found Vanessa Samson’s body; and law enforcement experts in forensic science, Toni Leal, Curtis Rollins, Brian Burritt and Bonnie Paolini—Rock Harmon had enough evidence against James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud to make a book a foot thick.
He sought several counts against them. In legal terms he stated, “The County of Alameda hereby accuses James Anthony Daveggio and Michelle Lyn Michaud of a felony to wit, Oral Copulation Acting in Concert with Force, a violation of subdivision (d) of section 288 (a) of the Penal Code of California, in that or on about the third day of November, 1997, in the County of Alameda, State of California; said defendants did willfully and unlawfully participate in an act of oral copulation with Jane Doe #1, against the will of said victim and by force and fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury to said victim, while voluntarily acting in concert with themselves, personally and by aiding and abetting.”
The second count dealt with the same victim and concerned Acting in Concert with Force.
The third count concerned a similar charge of oral copulation on a victim under the age of eighteen years old (Daveggio’s daughter, Jane Doe #2) on November 27, 1997. Both of these acts took place in the Dublin area near Pleasanton.
The fourth count was directly tied to Vanessa Samson.
“The fourth count of this indictment further accuses James Anthony Daveggio and Michelle Lyn Michaud of a felony, to wit, MURDER, a violation of Section 187 (a) of the Penal Code of California, in that on or about the second day of December, 1997, in the County of Alameda, State of California, said defendants did then and there murder Vanessa Samson, a human being. SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES AS TO BOTH DEFENDANTS.”
Rock Harmon went on to sum up to the grand jury all the findings in layman’s terms. He said, “Now, I want to define the crimes that we’ve charged for you. In Counts One and Two we’ve charged the crime that’s different than Count Three. Counts One and Two—the victim was Jane Doe Number One—and defendants are charged in or accused in Counts One and Two of having committed the crime of unlawful oral copulation, a violation of section 288A (D) of the penal code. Oral copulation is the act of copulating the mouth of one person with the sexual organ or anus of another person. Any contact, however slight, between the mouth of one person and the sexual organ or anus of another person constitutes oral copulation. Penetration of the mouth, sexual organ or anus is not required. Proof of ejaculation is not required.
“The phrase ‘acting in concert’ means two or more acting together in a group sexual attack, and includes not only those who personally engage in the act constituting the crime but those who aid and abet a person in that.
“So that’s Counts One and Two.
“Count Three, it’s a different crime. Some of the basics are the same. The title of this instruction is ‘Unlawful oral copulation with person under 18 years.’ The third count is the one alleged against the victim Jane Doe Number Two.
“Defendants are accused of having committed the crime of murder, a violation of Penal Code Section 187. . . . Kidnapping is defined as the unlawful movement by physical force or a person without that person’s consent.... The definition of unlawful penetration by a foreign object, which is a crime which can form the basis for the first-degree felony murder. Every person who for the purpose of sexual arousal, gratification or abuse causes the penetration, however slight, of the genital or anal opening of another person by any foreign object, substance, instrument or device, against the will of that person, is guilty of the crime of unlawful penetration by a foreign object. It means a purpose to injure, hurt, cause pain or discomfort. It doesn’t mean that the perpetrator must be motivated by sexual gratification or arousal or have lewd intent.
“Let me explain why we charged the first two counts. There were two separate events like that. One where she [Patty Wilson] was forced to orally copulate Daveggio, and the other where Michaud orally copulated her. There’s no question that each of them by driving and all the other actions, Michaud holding her arms back, that this was a cooperative effort to do it. The crime against Jane Doe Number Two [Daveggio’s daughter], you probably wonder why did we charge a different crime against her. Mostly, [because] there’s no question emotional duress is as powerful as physical duress. The fact that Michaud said to Jane Doe Number Two, ‘Your father’s going to have sex with you,’ it shows that there was a discussion of this, there’s a facilitation. Maybe she left the room to make it easier for him to get away with this. Then she performs oral copulation on him for fifteen minutes while he’s orally copulating his daughter. It seems clear there’s mutual gratification in there.
“Okay, we’ve charged the crime of murder. We have alleged it’s first-degree murder. The crime of first-degree murder occurs, even if somebody’s accidentally killed, in the commission of specified crimes. You commit a burglary; you’re driving away; you collide with a school bus; you kill three people. That’s first-degree murder. So here’s a question. Was Vanessa Samson killed during the commission of one of those crimes? Well, in my example the burglary was over, you’re trying to get away, and so how would that apply to this? Well, you’re kidnapped until you’re free. I mean that’s the simplest way to think of it. That kidnapping doesn’t end when the roofers see the van pull away. It’s not over then. That’s the beginning of it. In the sense of liability, that kidnap was not over until Vanessa was dead. As a result of being kidnapped, she was murdered.
“So the special circumstances. We have shown to you, the hunting, and that’s the most telling, chilling, and not just the vague term that’s left floating out there that may have come from the Dead of Night. You know that statement was made on the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth [of November 1997]. And what do we know? On the thirtieth, these things were purchased. [The curling irons]. On the first, the gag was purchased. I mean the things were actually used as the instruments of torture or death. They were bought in anticipation of this.
“There’s a tendency in this society, when you view these male/female couples like this, you think the male’s got to be the killer. Right? And that the woman’s just helping out. Well, we know that both of them shared that hunting comment on Thanksgiving Night by Mr. Daveggio, and on Friday morning by Michelle Michaud. But we also know that it had to be Michelle Michaud that prepared these instruments. You can see there’s just a Phillips screw. These clips come right off. And in some macabre accommodation to not cause her too much discomfort that duct tape was put over where the holes were. And there’s no other conclusion you can reach that she’s the one that did that, three layers of duct tape, sometimes her prints are on the underside of the tape, sometimes they’re in the middle. So it seems obvious that this, as hard as this is to accept, that people do these kinds of things. They really, really do these kinds of things.
“So have we proven that there was a rape by a foreign instrument? The fecal matter, especially the one with the deeper tip. That seems obvious. The marks on her [Vanessa Samson’s] buttocks suggest two things. Number one that these [curling irons] were both used. Number two, it’s hard to picture that one person was wielding one of these or two of these, as opposed to both of them.
“So the evidence by virtue of the hunting comment, the evidence, by virtue of the shopping trips to purchase the items, which unquestionably were used in this, [and] the two prior incidents where they went on this bizarre self-centered spree, not to do this to strangers, but to do it to blood relatives and friends of theirs.
“It all really just means, if you don’t know who the killer was, who strangled Vanessa Samson, then, in order to find either or both of the special circumstances to be true, I’ve had to show there was an intent to kill by each and both of these people. The other incidents, the hunting trip, all the preparation, seem to leave not much question on those things. So I want to close with that idea.”
If Rock Harmon ever worried about how the grand jury would view any of these counts, he needn’t have. In short order the grand jurors came back with findings that the suspects should be indicted on all counts, including special circumstances, which left the door open for the prosecution to seek the death penalty.
Just as in the Reno federal trial, the Alameda prosecution would take a “tag team” approach. Rock Harmon had been, and would keep working, the technical end, especially as concerned DNA tests, while Alameda County assistant district attorney Jim Anderson would take the lead in other realms of the prosecution.
Jim Anderson was known in the area as a strong death penalty advocate with a hard-nosed approach. He had no sympathy for either James Daveggio or Michelle Michaud because of what they had done to their victims. That he meant business could readily be ascertained by his previous “big” trials. On November 24, 1997, armored car guard Thomas Wheelock had set up an elaborate trap and shot his armored car partner Rodrigo Cortez to death and stole $300,000. He escaped with the money and was on the run for four days until captured hundreds of miles away in Utah. Hauled back to Alameda County, he faced Jim Anderson, who from the start wasn’t fooling around with this cold-blooded killer. He had Wheelock indicted by an Alameda grand jury on a murder charge with special circumstances even before a preliminary hearing.
Wheelock’s public defender, Michael Ogul, cried foul and said, “The district attorney had decided he doesn’t want to honor the rights Mr. Wheelock would have in a preliminary examination . . . such as getting discovery, getting to watch the witnesses testify, get to cross-examine the witnesses.”
But Anderson denied any gamesmanship and announced that the jury had more than enough facts to speed the case to superior court. When the arraignment of Wheelock was finally held, Rodrigo Cortez’s mother, clad in black, rose from her seat and burst into sobs, railing at the assailant, “Why’d you kill my son?”
She had to be escorted from the courtroom, but not before DA Jim Anderson assured her that he would have Thomas Wheelock executed for the crime.
But even though Jim Anderson was an absolute death penalty advocate, he knew when to cut his losses and let a suspect plead to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Such a case happened in July 1998. Jerrol Glen Woods, a fifty-year-old carpet cleaner, had killed a popular Oakland pediatrician, but it wasn’t a clear-cut case of murder for cash, which carried special circumstances with the crime. As Anderson said, “He claims he killed her, saw the purse lying there, and robbed her as an afterthought, which doesn’t make it a felony robbery. I think the guy should die, but we have to play the cards we’re dealt.”
As autumn 1999 rolled around, both James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud hoped that prosecutors Jim Anderson and Rock Harmon had been dealt a hand of low cards. But things did not look promising as far as they were concerned. As Rock Harmon reiterated, “They are both going to be really surprised when they understand the nature of the evidence we have against both of them.”
While waiting to be extradited to California, both James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud whiled away time as best they could in their respective jail cells. Daveggio in particular had few visitors or contacts with the outside world, though his mother still believed in his innocence, especially in relation to the Vanessa Samson murder. “I never killed anyone,” he told her, and she believed him. She knew that James had done many bad things in his life, but she didn’t believe he was capable of murder. In her mind he had been about as good a son as could be under trying circumstances, and the thought that he murdered a young lady was too much to contemplate. Surely the authorities and his erstwhile partner, Michelle Michaud, must have been trying to pin the Vanessa Samson murder on him.
Michaud, meanwhile, watched time slowly go by in her own isolation cell at the Washoe County Jail. Her father was so ashamed of what she had done that he wouldn’t come and visit or even write. The one member of the family who did was sister Misty. She still loved her big sister and was loyal to her. Even more surprisingly loyal was one of Michelle’s former sugar daddies. Despite having been terribly used, tricked into letting her run up his credit card at the Circus Circus Hotel, and displaced for a while in her affections by James Daveggio, he faithfully went to visit her at the jail. He was in his late seventies now, and not spry as he used to be; nonetheless, he made the 150-mile journey part of his weekly routine. When Michaud complained that her prison-issued eyeglasses weren’t strong enough, he went out and bought her a pair of glasses that matched her prescription.
She barely resembled the elegantly dressed hooker who had sipped champagne at The Rustic, or held listeners spellbound with sexual tales at Bobby Joe’s. Her luxuriant hair was starting to fade in color and she looked very plain without make-up and dressed in a drab prison uniform. But in one regard prison life was good to Michelle. She could no longer take crank. Her weight began to improve, even with jail food, and she no longer looked emaciated, especially in the face.
The one person neither Daveggio nor Michaud saw during this period of waiting was each other. Daveggio still seethed at what he viewed as a betrayal on her part, especially when she agreed to testify against him in the Juanita Rodriguez case. Marie Ward, Michaud’s former neighbor, heard from her that she was now receiving threatening letters in jail. Michaud confided to Ward that she thought Daveggio was having someone on the outside send them to her just to torment her. Whether it was true or just part of Michaud’s paranoia, Ward couldn’t say. All she knew was that they disturbed Michaud greatly.
Michaud at least got a break from Daveggio’s nearby presence in the early part of October 1999 when he was transferred to the federal prison in Lompoc, California, on the central coast. But it was a short reprieve in her worries. On October 12 she was on the move herself, giving up the familiar confines of the Washoe County Jail, which had been her home for nearly the past two years. She was bound for the prison facility that Michael Ihde had called his childhood home—Santa Rita Prison in Dublin.
The morning of October 15, 1999, found Michelle Michaud being escorted by marshals into the Alameda County Superior Courthouse in Oakland. A large white monolith of a building, it looked almost like a mausoleum perched on the edge of Lake Merritt, where prosecutor Rock Harmon often took his morning jogs. Wearing a yellow jumpsuit and hair neatly combed back, Michaud appeared for her hearing in a somber mood. As prosecutor Jim Anderson stood up and began to read the charges, Michaud sighed heavily and constantly looked up at the ceiling.
But she was brought down to earth in a hurry when Anderson announced that he was seeking the death penalty against her. Her knees buckled and she told a bailiff, “Give me a minute” before being escorted from the courtroom. She did not enter a plea at this point and waited to be assigned a lawyer. She was to be only the second woman from Alameda County scheduled for death row.
Prosecutor Jim Anderson was well aware of Michaud’s testimony in the Reno federal trial against James Daveggio and how she cast him as a sexual predator and herself as an abused and unwilling accomplice. He said, “Whatever happened up there will have no bearing on our case over here whatsoever. The only abuse going on was what she and he were doing to the victim.”
He added that he and Rock Harmon didn’t need a confession in the Vanessa Samson case. “There’s prevalent physical evidence, including DNA, to prove the couple’s guilt.”
Michaud’s formal arraignment was postponed until she could be assigned a lawyer, but from here it was only jumping from the frying pan into the fire. She was scheduled to be right back in the Alameda courthouse on October 28, and this time James Daveggio would be there as well. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get rid of him.