An imprisoned Bay Area killer has been found guilty of the 1986 murders of two young Northern California women after a DNA match connected him to the crime, authorities said.
An Alameda County jury last week found David Misch, 63, guilty of murdering best friends Jennifer Duey and Michelle Xavier, prosecutors said. The naked bodies of the women, who had been shot and stabbed, were found in a remote area in the city of Fremont on Feb. 2, 1986.
Evidence presented at the trial showed that DNA found under Duey’s nails in 2001 belonged to Misch, authorities said. In 2003, while serving a life sentence for a murder he committed in December 1989, Misch told Fremont police that he had seen the two young women being kidnapped at gunpoint and tried to save them. That was his explanation for the presence of his DNA, the Alameda District Attorney’s office said.
Also presented as evidence was a partial license plate number written on one of the victim’s hands associated with Misch.
“Misch was charged by this office 32 years after murdering Jennifer Duey and Michelle Xavier. He was found guilty by a jury four years later,” Chief Asst. Dist. Atty. Royl Roberts said in a statement. “This conviction is a testament to this office’s commitment to seeking justice for victims and their families, even if it takes decades. I only wish we could have delivered justice sooner for these two families.”
Xavier, 18, and Duey, 20, were Fremont residents who had planned a relaxing evening of pizza and movies on the evening they were killed, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Prosecutors argued during trial that Misch, a convicted rapist, preyed upon both victims after they had the bad luck of crossing his path the night they were killed.
Misch faces 50 years to life after being convicted of these two murders. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 2.
Misch also faces charges in a high-profile kidnapping and presumed murder that took place in Hayward in 1989. Investigators suspect Misch abducted and killed Michaela Garecht, a 9-year-old Hayward girl who had ridden a scooter to a market with a friend to buy snacks and soda.
Misch is suspected of moving her scooter next to his car, and then jumping out of it and abducting her when she came to retrieve it. A partial palm print on the scooter was a match for Misch, police said. Garecht’s body has never been found.
