On November 19, 1988, Rod Garecht gave his nine-year-old daughter Michaela $5 so she and her eight-year-old friend Katrina Rodriguez could buy candy and sodas at the Rainbow Market, four blocks from their home in Hayward, California, a subregion of the San Francisco East Bay Area. The best friends who lived next door to one another had frequently gone to the store many times on their own, as had other neighborhood children.

Upon arrival, the girls parked their scooters near the store entrance. After purchasing their goodies at approximately 10:15 a.m., they began walking home before realizing they had forgotten their scooters. When they went to retrieve them, they saw that Michaela’s had been moved several feet away, near the far corner of the store’s parking lot. As she went to retrieve it, a man quickly exited the driver’s side of a nearby parked car and grabbed her. He threw her into the vehicle’s back seat, leapt back into the car, and sped away.

Police were at the store within minutes, confident of a quick capture. Over thirty-two years passed, however, before a suspect was charged. Despite the arrest, Michaela Garecht remains missing.

Michaela Garecht

Several shoppers and motorists saw the car speeding south toward Union City, seven miles south of Hayward. The vehicle was generally described as a large cream, brown, or tan colored American model, possibly a four-door Oldsmobile Sedan. It may have had cement splatters on its sides and lights set into the rear bumper. The shattered front bumper suggested the car had recently been involved in an accident.

Katrina had witnessed Michaela being taken. She thought the kidnapper appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties and approximately six-feet-tall with a slender build. He had shoulder-length blonde hair, a pockmarked or pimpled complexion, and he wore a white t-shirt. She did not recall the man having a moustache, but others who caught brief glimpses of him in his car as he sped away believed he did.

Katrina viewed hundreds of mugshots but did not believe any of the men was the abductor, whom she described as “dirty.” Composite sketches of the man produced no solid suspects.

Composite Drawings of Michaela’s Abductor

On June 3, 1988, five-and-a-half months before Michaela’s kidnapping, seven-year-old Amber Swartz-Garcia was abducted while playing in the front yard of her home in Pinole, thirty miles north of Hayward. The possibility of the cases being connected was bolstered after authorities learned of a local man having contacted the families of both missing girls.

Amber Swartz-Garcia

Forty-year-old Timothy Bindner, a married sewer treatment worker from Richmond, thirty miles northwest of Hayward and only six miles northeast of Pinole, had previously been arrested for trying to lure two young girls into his van, but the charges were later dropped.

Following Amber’s abduction, Bindner had contacted her mother, Kim, offering his assistance in searching for her daughter, and he repeatedly continued doing so nearing the point of harassment. Following Michaela’s abduction, he had done the same with her mother and was found to have acted in a similar manner toward the families of several other young girls who had earlier disappeared from the East Bay Area.

Shortly before the nine-year-old Michaela was kidnapped, Bindner had sent police a letter saying he believed a girl that age would soon be abducted from the East Bay Area. He had also recently mailed birthday cards to several local young girls whom he did not know because he said they appeared “lonely.”

Bindner admits being in Hayward on the morning of Michaela’s abduction, saying he was taking a test for employment with the fire department. He allowed police to search his van; the inside was adorned with pictures of children, primarily girls, including Amber Swartz-Garcia and Michaela Garecht. He said he thought kids were beautiful and he enjoyed looking at them.

Nothing was found linking Bindner to the abduction of either missing girl.

Timothy Bindner

Bindner is also considered a person of interest in the subsequent disappearances of two other young East Bay Area girls; the January 30, 1989, disappearance of thirteen-year-old Ilene Miselhoff from Dublin; and the December 27, 1991, disappearance of four-year-old Amanda Campbell from Fairfield. He was also, and some sources say he still is, a person of interest in an earlier East Bay Area disappearance, that of twelve-year-old Tara Cossey from San Pablo on June 6, 1979.

 

Left To Right: Tara Cossey, Ilene Miselhoff, Amanda Campbell 

Here is the link to my write-up on Ilene Miselhoff’s disappearance.

Where Went Ilene?

Another area girl, five-year-old Angela Bugay, was abducted from her Antioch home, on November 19, 1983, exactly five years before Michaela Garecht’s abduction. Her body was found one week later; she had been raped and asphyxiated.

Bindner became a person of interest in Angela’s murder after it was learned he had frequently (up to ninety times per year) visited her gravesite despite not knowing her. In 1996, however, DNA identified her killer as Larry Graham, who lived in the same apartment complex as Angela’s family. He was convicted of her murder in 2002 and sentenced to death. He committed suicide in prison in 2009.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10062232/angela-jane-bugay

Angela Bugay

Most investigators believe Timothy Bindner has a disturbing fascination with missing young girls and is not psychologically sound, but they doubt he is involved in any of the East Bay Area kidnappings.

Bindner was given a heroism award by the California State Patrol for assisting victims of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake during the World Series. He successfully sued the city of Fairfield for defamation of character in 1997.

Bindner Is Hard To Figure

In December 1992, five years after Michaela Garecht’s abduction, Indiana inmate Roger Haggard told authorities he helped a friend bury her body in the Hunters Point (AKA Bayview) section in far southeast San Francisco. Upon further inquiry, Haggard, serving an eleven-year sentence for burglary, theft, and escape, altered his claim, saying they had disposed of her in a gladiolus field in Union City, thirty miles to the southeast.

After investigators had combed the area for eight hours, Haggard admitted to fabricating the story. He was given an additional six-and-a-half years for his false confession and was ordered to pay more than $6,000 to Michaela’s mother.

Roger Haggard

James Daveggio and his girlfriend, Michelle Michaud, were convicted of several counts of sexual assault in the mid-1990s. In 2002, they were convicted of the 1997 abduction, rape, and murder of twenty-two-year-old Vanessa Samson of Pleasanton, fifteen miles east of Hayward.

Daveggio and Michaud were investigated for possible involvement in Michaela’s abduction; nothing was found suggesting they were the culprits. The killing couple remain on California’s death row.

James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud

Another potential suspect was Curtis Anderson, convicted of the 2000 abduction and molestation of a Vallejo, California, girl, and a suspect in the October 20, 1999, disappearance of seven-year-old Karla Rodriguez of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2001, police searched his mother’s home for evidence linking him to any of the East Bay Area disappearances but found none.

In 2009, however, police announced that a month before Anderson’s 2007 death, he had confessed to abducting and suffocating Amber Swartz-Garcia to death at a motel and dumping her body near Benson, Arizona, nearly nine-hundred miles southeast of her Pinole home. Although Amber’s body was not found, police believe Anderson’s account is credible. Others, however, are skeptical as he had previously made false confessions and enjoyed taunting investigators.

Curtis Anderson

The recovery of Jaycee Dugard, found eighteen years after her disappearance, brought renewed attention to the abduction of Michaela Garecht.

On June 10, 1991, eleven-year-old Jaycee was kidnapped from outside her Meyers, California, home, two-hundred miles north of Hayward. In 2009, twenty-nine-year-old Jaycee was found alive in Antioch, one-hundred-eighty miles to the northeast.

Jaycee Dugard

1991 and 2009 Photos

Jaycee’s abductor, Philip Garrido, had been paroled from prison in August 1988, three months before Michaela Garecht’s abduction. He had been sentenced to fifty years for the 1976 rape and kidnapping of twenty-five-year-old Katherine Callaway in South Lake Tahoe.

Following his arrest for the kidnapping and forced confinement of Jaycee Dugard, a car resembling the one driven by Michaela’s abductor from over twenty years earlier was found on Garrido’s property. A photo of him, albeit from twelve years before Michaela’s kidnapping, bears a resemblance to the composite of her abductor.

Left: Philip Garrido (1976 Photo)

Right: Composite of Michaela’ Abductor

Police were also struck by similarities between the kidnappings of Michaela Garecht and Jaycee Dugard: both girls were thrown into the back seat of a car during daylight, both had blond hair, and both were about the same height, weight and age.

Striking Similarities Between The Girls’ Kidnappings

Phillip Garrido was convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and false imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard and was sentenced to four-hundred-thirty-one years in prison. His wife Nancy was convicted of the same charges and received a thirty-six-year sentence.

Nothing was found linking the Garrido’s to the abduction of Michaela Garecht.

Philip and Nancy Garrido

Here is the link to my write-up on Jaycee Dugard.

A Life Regained

In 2001, Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog, dubbed the “Speed Freak Killers,” were convicted of four murders committed in California’s San Joaquin County, two of which had occurred in 1984, one in 1985, and another in 1998. Shermantine was sentenced to death while Herzog was given seventy-eight years in prison, but three of his convictions were overturned in 2004 after an appeals court ruled his confessions had been coerced; a retrial was ordered for the fourth murder.

Under a subsequent plea deal, Herzog pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter in one of the murders and to being an accessory to murder in the other three instances. He was then sentenced to fourteen years in prison with credit for six years served.

Herzog was paroled in September 2010; he committed suicide in January 2012 after learning his former criminal cohort had offered to reveal the location of multiple victims’ bodies in exchange for $33,000 from bounty hunter Leonard Padilla. Sheramntine also wrote a letter to the Stockton Record saying he and Herzog had killed upwards of seventy people between 1984-98.

In February, Shermantine led investigators to an abandoned well in he and Herzog’s native Linden, seventy miles northeast of Hayward. The reservoir was littered with over three-hundred human bone fragments which, Shermantine claimed, were those of up to twenty victims, including, he believed, Michaela Garecht.

Wesley Shermantine And Loren Herzog

In March, two Stockton, California, girls, nineteen-year-old Kimberly Billy and sixteen-year-old Joann Hobson, missing since 1984 and 1985, respectively, were positively identified from some of the bones in the well.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/120065784/kimberly-ann-billy#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/120065483/jo_ann-hobson#

Kimberly Billy And JoAnn Hobson

Michaela Garecht was thought to be among Shermantine and Herzog’s victims after Mary Jane shoes similar to those she was wearing when kidnapped were found in the Linden well. DNA tests, however, ruled none of the bone fragments were hers.

In January 2013, further excavations of multiple abandoned wells in and around Linden yielded no additional human remains.

Michaela Is Not Among Those Whose Remains Are Found

Michaela’s Garecht’s abductor had moved her scooter to make it easier for him to snatch her. His leaving the scooter behind may prove to be his undoing.

On December 21, 2020, over thirty-five years after Michaela’s kidnapping, advancements in DNA technology matched unidentified partial palm and fingerprints on the scooter to a man other than any of the aforementioned suspects, fifty-nine-year-old California inmate David Misch.

David Misch

A career criminal, Misch is serving a life sentence for the December 1989 murder of thirty-six-year-old Margaret Ball, who was beaten and stabbed to death in her Castro Valley home, roughly only three miles from Hayward.

ballhttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/272123295/margaret-narcisa-ball

Margaret Ball

In December 2024, four years after being charged in the abduction of Michaela Garecht, Misch was convicted of the February 1986 murders of eighteen-year-old Michelle Xavier and twenty-year-old Jennifer Duey.

A day after the women were last seen at a 7-Eleven in Fremont, thirteen miles south of Hayward, a motorcyclist found their bodies dumped near a road three miles away. Michelle had been shot to death, while Jennifer had been stabbed to death. Both women had also been raped.

As with Michaela’s abduction, DNA linked Misch to the double murders. He received two additional consecutive terms of twenty-five-years-to-life in prison.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/272123454/michelle-marie-xavier

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12891875/jennifer-ann-duey

Michelle Xavier and Jennifer Duey

At the time of Michaela Garecht’s 1988 kidnapping, David Misch was twenty-seven-years-old. Although older than what Katrina had estimated the age of the kidnapper, he was among the many people authorities had considered potential suspects because his physical features largely matched those of the abductor: six-feet-tall with a slim build, shoulder-length blond/brown hair, and blue eyes. Misch had refused to speak to police and would not provide his DNA or fingerprints; at the time, he was not known to have committed crimes serious enough to be compelled to give samples.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office says on the day of Michaela’s abduction, Misch was visiting the grave of his infant son during would have been the boy’s first birthday at the Chapel of the Chimes Cemetery, located across the street from the Rainbow Market. They believe he noticed the girls coming to the market and formulated a plan to kidnap one of them, not particular about which one, while at the cemetery.

Two shoppers who were at the Rainbow Market shortly before the abduction recalled seeing a man sitting in a car in the parking lot. Following the DNA match, both identified him as Misch from a photo lineup in which a 1988 picture of him was used.

David Misch

1988

Even though Michaela Garehct’s remains have not been found, David Misch has been charged with her murder. The legal proceedings are in process in preparation for his trial. He could face the death penalty if he is convicted because he has been charged with murder involving special circumstances: murder during the commission of a kidnapping and with a prior murder conviction.

Investigators say Misch has refused to answer any questions in relation to Michaela Garecht’s abduction.

Misch Awaits Trial

Some investigators still believe the kidnappings of Amber Swartz-Garcia and Michaela Garecht, occurring within thirty miles from and within five-and-a-half months of one another, may be related. Nothing has been found, however, connecting David Misch to Amber’s abduction.

Are the Kidnappings Related?

Over the years, investigators have received information suggesting Michaela Garecht may have been forced into international human trafficking, but nothing has been found to corroborate the possibility. Reported global sightings of her, principally in Mexico and, more recently, in the United Arab Emirates, cannot be confirmed and have been deemed uncredible.

Global Sightings Dismissed

Foul play is suspected in the kidnapping of Michaela Joy Garecht, but she is still officially listed as an Endangered Missing Person. When she was kidnapped from Hayward, California, on November 19, 1988, she was four-feet-eight-inches tall and weighed seventy-five pounds. She was wearing a white t-shirt with “Metro” printed on the front and images of people imprinted on its midsection, denim pants rolled above her knees, flesh-colored nylon stockings, white anklet socks, black cloth shoes with brown plastic soles, and three-inch-long pearl or white-colored earrings resembling feathers. Her teeth were slightly mottled, i.e. her enamel appeared streaked. She had blonde hair, but it may have darkened as she grew older. Her eyes were blue, and she may have required vision correction at some point of her growth.

Michaela Garecht would today be forty-six-years-old. If you have information relating to her kidnapping, please contact the Hayward, California, Police Department at 510-293-7272.

   

Computer-Aged Images Of Michaela Garecht

Left To Right Ages Twenty-Four, Twenty-Nine, And Thirty-Three

Ten days after Michaela’s abduction, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana and his wife Jennifer made a plea for the abductor to release her.

Joe and Jennifer Montana

In child kidnapping cases, particularly those involving a stranger, the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the act are the most critical. A former reporter believes that during the two days following Michaela Garecht’s abduction, inaccurate information circulated by the Hayward Police hampered the best opportunity of locating her.

Rainbow Market store clerk Rosa Conlon, who had rung up the candy and soda purchased by Michaela and Katrina only moments before the abduction, had initially thought the kidnapper to be a customer she had seen in the store. This man did not resemble the man Katrina had seen take Michaela, and he drove a burgundy-colored car as opposed to a gold-colored car.

Rosa had provided the police with the description of the man she originally believed to be the abductor. By the time she had learned of Katrina’s description of the actual kidnapper, the police had already sent out her inaccurate account.

Dennis Oliver, a reporter at the time for now-defunct Hayward newspaper Daily Review, says police continued communicating the wrong description of the perpetrator to the media for two days before the composite of the actual abductor was circulated, thus hindering the best opportunity of rescuing Michaela.

Opportunity Missed?

SOURCES:

• America’s Most Wanted
• Charley Project
• Daily Review (Hayward, California)
• Doe Network
• FBI
• Los Angeles Times
• NamUs
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
• Oakland Tribune
• Sacramento Bee
• San Francisco Chronicle
• San Francisco Examiner
• Unsolved Mysteries
• UPI