January 28, 2025
Jennifer Duey, 20, and Michelle Xavier, 18, were last seen on February 1, 1986.
They went missing after leaving a Party in Fremont, Alameda County, California.
Xavier was a recent graduate from the nearby Notre Dame High School in San Jose.
The girls went out together that night to a birthday party and were last seen by family and relatives at around 8pm that evening. The party was hosted by the Xavier family in Hayward.
The girl's boyfriends saw them later that night at a local 7-Eleven on Farwell Drive.
The pair left in Xavier’s vehicle, heading north on Fremont Boulevard, and were found dead just several hours later.
Their bodies were discovered by a motorcyclist at around 12:30am the next day off Mill Creek Road. They were both naked; Xavier had been shot, and Duey stabbed.
Police later estimated that they had been dead for around an hour or so at the time of their discovery.
Xaviers car, a 1984 Pontiac Sunbird convertible, was discovered around three miles from the scene of the crime, in the Mission Valley Shopping Center parking lot.
None of the girls’ immediate personal belongings, their wallets, I.D's, or purses, were recovered.
David Emery Misch was officially interviewed and recorded by police around the time of the murders, but denied playing any part.
In his own account, he said he was filling up his car at a gas station when he saw Xavier and Duey being held at gunpoint and dragged against their will by two men. Misch claimed that he came to the girls aid, attempting to free them, fighting the assailants. It is during the scuffle, he said, he was scratched by one of the victims.
Unfortunately, the recorder had malfunctioned halfway through the interview, and when the police eventually interviewed him a second time, he took back everything he had initially said.
Police couldn’t charge him with anything at the time.
In 2016 a cold case detective at the Fremont Police Crimes Against Persons Unit took another look at the long unsolved double murder as part of a 2016 cold case program. DNA evidence (Duey had DNA under her fingernails) identified Misch as the main suspect. He was also a resident in the area at the time of the murders, and was known to be in trouble with the law, and involved in drugs.
In early September of 2017, fourteen years after the double homicide, Misch found himself being interviewed once again. Just over two weeks later, he had a failed suicide attempt in his jail cell.
The suspect had penned and left behind a suicide note addressed to his brother, wherein he wrote that he was taking his own life to spare his mother embarrassment.
He was charged with double homicide the following year.
On October 21, 2024, Misch stood trial for the murders of Xavier and Duey.
Misch pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers argued that the evidence against their client was circumstantial. The trial went on for two months.
The DNA found under Jennifer Duey's nails was presented as evidence.
The court also heard that written on one of the victims hands was part of a car lisence plate potentially identifying a vehicle Misch was known to use.
On December 19, 2024, Misch was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder, and in January 2025 was sentenced to two consecutive terms of 25 years-to-life.
Misch, was already serving out a life sentence for the slaying of another woman, 36-year-old Margaret Narcisa Ball, in 1989.
Ball was found beaten and stabbed to dead in her Hayward home. Her body was found by her boyfriend’s daughter, who was just 11 at the time.
Misch was found in a motel in Oakland, and Misch's own father told police that his son had admitted he murdered Ball while on Meth.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Royl Roberts said of Misch's behavior: "David Misch’s behavior in court was not only reprehensible but a blatant display of no remorse for taking the lives of Jennifer Duey and Michelle Xavier," adding “The families of these two young women have been waiting nearly 40 years to receive justice for their tragic and senseless murders."
Media outlets reported that David Emery Misch showed no sign of remorse during court proceedings, and was whistling and singing "99 bottles of beer on the wall" during statements given by witnesses.
When removed from the court for refusing to stop singing and whistling, Misch could still be heard from his holding cell.
Misch had previously been charged with the disappearance of 9-year-old Michaela Garecht, who was kidnapped on November 19, 1988.
Garecht and her friend had gone to the Rainbow Grocery store on Mission Boulevard together to buy candy, parking their scooters outside.
When they were finished, they came out to see that one of their scooters had been moved from the front of the store where they had parked them, to behind a parked vehicle. Garecht went to retrieve the scooter and was dragged into the vehicle.
Misch was linked to the crime by DNA as his thumbprint was found on the missing girls scooter. She was never seen again.
On the day of Michaela Garecht's abduction in Hayward, Misch had been at the Chapel of the Chimes Cemetery, located across the street from Rainbow Market. He was visiting his son's gravesite on what would have been the child's first birthday.
He had fathered the child with his then-girlfriend. Tragically, the child had died at 3 months of age in February 1988.
Misch, who is considered a serial killer, has a long history of crime, beginning with burglary and attempted rape when he was just sixteen.
He also attempted to beat and rape a Swiss exchange student in the summer of 1982 but was caught by those in the neighborhood and fled.
January 14, 2025
