Coffee and Crime Time: Michaela Garecht Case Solved?

she's like a sickness in my brain a vision standing by the window pain she ripples through the blinds and leads me in a daze it's in the way her body moves me the way she grabs me and intoxicates until the signals in my mind forget to operate just comes and goes [Music] hello everybody and welcome back to my channel thank you for joining me for another coffee and crime time today we're talking about the case of a missing child that has gone unsolved for far too long but recently some new developments have occurred which may see the case being closed once and for all and the family of nine-year-old michaela joy garrett may finally have some closure during this video as a heads up we're going to talk not only about michaela's case but about a lot of other cases that are on the periphery of her case and i really wanted to go more in depth on all of them um there was things that i had never heard of before it was a struggle honestly to not follow that path and go more in depth but i know that this video is going to be long as it is so i wasn't really able to just go as deep as i wanted to but if there are any cases that spark your interest that you do want to see me make a dedicated video on let me know in the comments i'll be in there reading the comments taking notes um making sure you feel heard and that you know we get everything you want on the channel but before we dive into the case let's have a word from the sponsor of today's video surfsharkvpn i personally value my privacy and my freedom online i value my privacy and my freedom in life as well and surfsharkvpn helps me achieve both of these things surfshark is a modern vpn designed with the user in mind which for me as the user means it's easy to use because if it was even slightly complicated i i wouldn't make it i'm very technologically challenged you guys know this when you're using surfshark it encrypts all the data sent via the internet protecting all the stuff you want to keep from prying eyes like your 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reached nationwide proportions if you're into true crime if you follow true crime cases especially cold cases everyone pretty much knows about michaela's case and it was just so stunning because it happened she was there one minute and then she was gone and it felt like just such a split second that your whole world can change as her parents as her friends as her community everybody was sitting there wondering how this little girl could vanish and there could be literally nothing left behind no leads to follow michaela was called kayla by her friends she was a bright and happy nine-year-old girl in 1988 on november 19th the first day of thanksgiving vacation michaela woke up and dressed in a pair of blue jeans black shoes a white t-shirt that had the word metro printed on it and white plastic earrings shaped like feathers she had breakfast with her family and then asked her mother sharon if she could ride her scooter to the nearby rainbow market with her best friend and neighbor trina rodriguez now sharon was described as being a really good mother a careful mother almost overprotective at points the family had just moved to this neighborhood in hayward california two years prior and for a long time sharon wouldn't even let her children play outside the yard of their own home until she was sure that the surrounding neighborhood was safe now michaela had been to the rainbow market before it was just two blocks away from her house but she'd always been there with her parents or with her neighbors who were teenagers she was always with somebody who was older she'd never been there by herself now sharon told michaela no at first but her daughter begged and promised to be careful so sharon eventually gave in and she said yes she stood at the door and watched the two young girls climb onto their scooters michaela turned around and told her mother i love you mom before they scooted down the driveway sharon watched until they had reached the end of the black and vanished from sight before going back inside to finish the breakfast dishes once at the market michaela and trina left their scooters outside the front door and went inside they bought two mountain dews two sticks of beef jerky and two cherry-flavored taffys and then they left the store and they began to walk home forgetting that they had ridden their scooters to the market they hadn't even really gotten out of the parking lot before they remembered and they rushed back to collect the scooters but one was missing michaela and trina glanced around trying to figure out where the other scooter had gone off to when michaela spotted the missing scooter about three parking spots away from the front of the market sitting next to a parked car trina waited while michaela went to retrieve it but as she bent down to grab the scooter by its handlebars something terrifying happened a man jumped out of the parked car next to the scooter and grabbed michaela and while she screamed and fought and tried to get away he forced her into his vehicle trina could only watch frozen in shock as the car her friend had just been forced into tore out of the parking lot and on to mission boulevard and just like that within a minute or two michaela was gone trina ran inside the market and asked the cashier on duty a woman named rona ronalin to call the police trina then called her father who told her he would be right there back at the garrett house not much time had passed certainly not enough for sharon to be worried about the girls she was inside the house when she heard shouting coming from outside and her husband rod came running in and told her that michaela had been taken and he was going to the market rod had been outside working on his car in the driveway when trina's father drove by on his way to the rainbow market and let rod know what had happened the police response was actually very quick by the time both the men arrived at the market the police had already gotten there and they were interviewing the cashier rona even though trina was the only eyewitness the only one to have actually seen the perpetrator and his vehicle she was not questioned by police at that time she was allowed to go home with her father and this in my opinion was a very big mistake rona the cashier had never even seen the man trina was the only one who actually had witnessed it happen but she would not be questioned until two days after the abduction so that crucial first 48 hours was lost rona said she'd seen a man she thought might have been the kidnapper outside of the store earlier when the girls were inside she said she thought maybe he was planning to rob her and he walked by the store window very slowly looking inside rona felt that he may have been watching the girls while they were inside the store based on rona's description of this man he was in his thirties and he might or might not have had a mustache and he was also driving a dark-colored vehicle possibly burgundy or maroon so for two whole days the police and the public were on the lookout for a kidnapper that wasn't actually a kidnapper i mean i can't say that who knows who this guy was that rona saw he could have been a sketchy kidnapper too we don't know but he wasn't the one who took michaela and michaela's actual abductor could have been walking around in plain sight protected by his absolute anonymity finally police did speak to trina and they got a completely different description of this man michaela's kidnapper was a young man in his 20s with long dirty blonde hair and severe acne described as boils which makes me think it must have been cystic acne if anybody's had cystic acne you know that they can get very boil like trina said he was driving an older tannish gold full-sized sedan boxy in shape with body damage of some kind and this man's eyes were specifically noted by trina who said quote he had fox eyes he looked right at me but he didn't even see me end quote something else that was strange or unusual about this case is how quickly the fbi became involved i believe they jumped on board within that first day it may have had something to do with the fact that michaela was not the only young child to go missing in the bay area in recent years five-year-old angela berga from antioch was reported missing in mid-november of 1983 and her body was later found in a shallow grave miles from her apartment complex a week later ten-year-old kevin collins disappeared after basketball practice in san francisco on february 10 1984 he's never been located two little girls eight-year-old amber schwartz garcia and four-year-old candy telerico were abducted just one day apart in june of 1988. candy would be found 45 days later after being trapped that entire time in a cramped staircase cubbyhole under the altar of the elk grove united methodist church she had been taken by the church handyman kenneth alvin michael who was also holding another young girl captive at that church but amber amber schwartz garcia has still never been found in march of 1987 six-year-old jeremy stoner had been abducted from vallejo and his body would later be recovered in august of 1984 three-year-old clark hando was taken from his parents home in west fairfield the year before that in february of 1983 four-year-old mitchell owens had been taken from his parents home in menlo park in 1982 three-year-old tara burke was kidnapped and held captive in a van for 10 months before she was found by police who were led there by an 11 year old boy who had also been held captive but managed to escape through the roof ventilator of the van and that's just a handful of cases of children who were taken during the 80s in this specific area of california some of these children made it back home alive some did not some of their parents know what the fate of their child was some still do not but these abductions were most likely on the radar of the fbi and maybe they thought michaela's kidnapping was connected once law enforcement had the correct information about the suspect the investigation went full speed ahead the police checked on and interviewed any and all local sex offenders nearby and this is very standard procedure in a case where a child is taken because sadly when young children are abducted i feel i don't know the exact number but i feel like in my heart it's like 95 percent of the time it's for nefarious reasons and it's for sexual abuse and there was also a composite sketch that was made of the suspect using trina's description and that sketch was checked against databases of known criminals volunteers took to the streets knocking on doors and handing out flyers when no sign of the little girl was found in the surrounding neighborhoods police began searching the surrounding hills ravines parks and abandoned areas where she might have been kept or where her body might be found in late november local police and fbi agents descended on these places hoping to find something even if it was just one clue an article of clothing something that showed them that this girl hadn't just disappeared into thin air some of these officers were on horseback some were accompanied by police dogs and others were on foot they flew helicopters over garen regional park and niles canyon which were heavily wooded areas that were located just within minutes of the garrett home and the reason for searching these areas was two-fold three hikers had previously called the police claiming that they'd found footprints that looked as if they belonged to one adult and one child and when the hikers followed the footprints they found a blanket in some fast food containers additionally a psychological profile of the perpetrator had claimed he would take michaela to an isolated area outside of public view they even used infrared cameras on the helicopters over some of the especially dense wooded areas hoping to sense a heat signature to see if there was somebody hiding in the woods or somebody held captive in the woods but all those searches came up with nothing michaela's case was featured on unsolved mysteries america's most wanted her face was put on milk cartons it made national news and no one could really understand how this young girl could be stolen in broad daylight in the middle of you know a well-traveled area the parking lot of a market and there was no leads no clues michaela and her abductor had vanished without a trace now the missing children's program sent out over 50 million mailing cards to homes all over the country with michaela's face on them her information the composite sketch of the suspect hoping to bring in tips and it did it brought in a plethora of tips but most of them were rumors or coming from attention seekers who like to insert themselves into crime cases and we have talked about some of these people on this channel before in different videos but it's it's just crazy how absolutely common that kind of thing is and when all was said and done investigators had followed over fifteen thousand leads and they'd come up with nothing now there were suspects however who were actively pursued and questioned by law enforcement and some of these suspects they seemed like they could be definitely good for it you know like a lot of these suspects fit the profile a lot of these suspects just seemed like they definitely had something to do with it most of these suspects weren't good people to begin with right so already you're thinking this is a criminal or this is somebody who's done a similar sort of crime it must be him and i remember before this new news came out about michaela's case i definitely had my list of suspects of who might have done this to her and i might share that with you at the end of the video like who was at my top and going down and so forth but during a series of interviews with the fbi in late 1991 and 1992 roger haggard an inmate at an indiana prison confessed to knowing who had kidnapped and killed michaela garrett and he knew this because it was his buddy and he'd helped his buddy bury her body now those who interviewed him initially were not buying his elaborate story it just didn't make sense it didn't add up you know he just seemed sketchy and the fbi and police officers get this all the time prisoners who all of a sudden want to confess to crimes or say they know something about crime so they can get like a reduction in their sentence or just even you know better food in prison etc just they want an edge they want a benefit so they'll offer information and a lot of the times the information turns out to to be fake so initially the fbi declined his offer to help lead them to her body which annoyed him so haggard wrote a letter to the san francisco chronicle claiming once again to know the identity of michaela's assailant as well as the location of her body and he was willing to lead law enforcement to her body unable to ignore him any longer with public outcry the fbi flew him from indiana to california to testify before a federal grand jury where he repeated his same claims he knew who killed her he was there when the body was buried and he would lead them there he promised he would show the fbi not only where the little girl could be found but where the murderer lived so the next day roger haggard led fbi agents on a four hour 100 mile wild goose chase around the bay area before finally fessing up and saying that he just lied he made everything up but he claimed he did so only to bring some peace to michaela's family now this idiot was already in prison like i said but he was only there for a burglary charge which he'd been sentenced to 11 years in prison for but because of this insensitive and time and resource wasting hoax it was decided that roger would be staying in prison for an additional six years and he was also ordered to pay michaela's family seven thousand dollars for the false hope that he had given them which understandably would cause a great deal of emotional trauma having a child missing um i've said it before it's worse i can't i can't say that it's worse because i've never been in either situation but i imagine that it would be worse than having your child die having your child missing you don't know where they are you don't know what's happening to them you don't know if they're being hurt repeatedly if they're being tortured so it's already a roller coaster to be you know in that position and then to have somebody say oh i can give you closure i can give you hope and then to find out that he was just lying and he testified in front of a federal grand jury so that's also a crime in itself to lie to a federal grand jury but um yeah i think he definitely deserved another six years and and you know the seven thousand dollars now there was another character in the story that has been a head scratcher for many of many an armchair detective for years now i'm not going to use this man's real name in this video because um well because he hasn't been charged with anything a and b i think he's a little bit insane so i don't want to be somebody on his radar we're going to call him tb for the sake of this video and if you do your own digging online you can fairly easily find information on him but tb was a 43 year old married sewage treatment plant worker who first appeared on law enforcement radar in 1991. in 1991 law enforcement was investigating several cases of young girls who had gone missing in the area and tb's name seemed to keep coming up due to his creepy behavior with young girls in his neighborhood as well as his odd behavior with the parents of little girls who had gone missing now the parents in tb's east bay neighborhood reported to the police that he was trying to get close to their young daughters and like strike up friendships with these little girls by giving them gifts or money or sending them cards on their birthday the only thing was some of these cards would be written backwards so they could only be read if held up to a mirror which is creepy if you're a grown man sending a coded message to a little underage girl now one card contained a love poem and bible verses with certain words underlined such as i have chosen you be with me where i am tb claimed there was nothing nefarious about these little tokens of his affection he was just being kind to these girls because he felt like they were lonely now police did some digging into tb's background and they found that this was sort of a pattern of behavior in 1985 he'd been fired from his job as a social security claims officer because he'd been collecting the names addresses and birth dates of several young girls in colorado and he used this information to send multiple young girls 50 on their 14th birthdays the exact number of how many girls he did this to is unknown but it's reported that he did this with approximately 40 girls so when he got caught doing this he said he was just trying to add a touch of magic to the kids lives like a character he'd seen on a tv show he saw somebody on a tv show like giving things away for free and it made people happy so he said that he was just trying to do that he was fired from his job but he got his job back 16 months later after it was determined that he had not used the information he collected for personal gain because apparently that's all that matters sketchy morals and communicating with underage girls that you don't know is not a reason to lose your job using government resources to communicate with these young girls definitely not a reason to lose your job he was fired unfairly poor tb now allegedly tb drove a light blue van with a license plate that read love you l-o-v y-o-u and inside the van he had covered every inch with pictures of small children uh cran drawings bible verses poems things like that so basically the inside of tb's van it was like the inside of you know every 90s 13 year old girl's bedroom who like caught pictures of leonardo dicaprio out of tiger bee and like plastered them to the walls along with you know lyrics from love songs and things like that or was that just me that was just me okay tb was also once arrested for trying to lure two young girls into this creepy ass van but those charges were dropped and the only thing that he was ever charged with that stuck was public drunkenness it's also reported that he once worked at a crematorium and he liked to spend his free time hanging out in cemeteries repairing gravestones now this man had also made contact with at least two of the parents of missing girls it might have even been three but it was definitely the mother of amber schwartz garcia whose name was kim and the mother of michaela garrett who is sharon apparently this dude just walked right up to their houses after their their children went missing and he knocked on their doors and when they answered he volunteered to help uh help locate their daughters help in any way he could and these parents were not like huge fans of this kind of uh interaction so they did call the police and and reported him tb was reported as having repeatedly interfered with the cases he would call the parents repeatedly like over and over asking if there's anything he could do to help um he would show up at their houses he would like go and research and try to solve the crime on his own and he claims he was just trying to be helpful a good samaritan but the families of these children as well as law enforcement feel that him forcing himself into the case was specifically so he could play mind games with the family and he actually enjoyed leading them to believe that he may have been involved with what happened to their children so basically he was torturing them now when one of the missing girls little angelo begue was found dead and buried tb repeatedly visited her grave and then went to her parents house to inform them that he had done so in a later interview with a forensic psychologist tb admitted to having visited angela's grave at least 80 times most often at night claiming he had fallen in love with angela from the picture on her headstone just a few days after amber schwartz garcia was abducted tb visited angela's grave and according to the fbi who had him under surveillance at that time he kissed the gravestone and then simulated a sex act amber's mother kim remembered a tb showing up at her doorstep three days after her daughter had vanished and telling her quote i wanted to be the one to save her i wanted to be the one to bring her home to you end quote in 1988 it is reported that tb sent a letter to the police claiming that another girl would disappear and she would be nine years old that same year nine-year-old michaela garrett was abducted allegedly he also sent an fbi profiler a christmas card with the image of a little girl holding up four fingers not long after that four-year-old amanda nikki campbell disappeared on december 27 1991. so uh he's creepy to say the least and he started kind of getting publicity for this obviously there was people who wanted to interview him and figure out like what the hell was going on with him and he actually invited a reporter from the san jose mercury news linda goldstein to interview him but he wanted to be interviewed at 4 30 in the morning at the oakmont cemetery where little angela was buried so apparently um this reporter picked him up and they drove to the cemetery together and while they were driving um the reporter asked him to play her his favorite song and in a minute i'll tell you what that favorite song was so when linda asked tb about his strange birthday cards he said he thought they were nice and he said that the kids liked them so he hadn't done anything wrong he also told linda that he thought of the missing girls as his own children and told her his thoughts on their abductions what had happened in great detail like if they'd fought back or not if one had been more meek and one had been stronger if they'd screamed stuff like that and he also speculated what their assailant had been thinking he said that the assailant had convinced himself he was saving the girls and delivering them to jesus and like i said we'd come back to in a minute if all that wasn't weird enough when he was asked in the car what his favorite song was tb told linda goldston it was jesus here's another child to hold so eventually the publicity did reach like a high peak and um you know his name was being printed in papers and tb and his family were being harassed and threatened by the general public who honestly felt like he had something to do with at least one of these missing girls so tb filed a defamation lawsuit against the city of fairfield and he won so like i said this is kind of a slippery slope and this is why i didn't want to use his real name although he has been suspected for years of being involved with some of these missing children he's always claimed to have had nothing to do with any of them going missing and the evidence against him is circumstantial at best the one piece of evidence that i believe is the most solid is the fact that after having him under surveillance and watching him visiting angela's grave multiple times police dogs were brought to the spot and they picked up the scent of nikki campbell who was at that time missing so angela went missing first angela died was buried tb starts going to her grave a bunch and then nikki goes missing and this is after he allegedly sent a christmas card to an fbi profiler with a little girl holding up four fingers and nikki was four so i guess it stands to reason that if he really enjoyed going to angela's grave for whatever reason if he had taken nicki he may have brought her there to share that with her i can't get inside the minds of these people but that's obviously kind of what what i'm thinking may have happened now investigators in the campbell case did question tb in relation to her disappearance and he was named officially as a suspect in 1992 but the specific evidence with the the dogs the cadaver dogs it wasn't enough to get an arrest and it definitely wasn't enough to use in court now tb could very well just be a misguided person maybe mentally ill in some ways maybe he thinks what he's doing is helpful he was given an award for heroism by the california highway patrol for his rescue efforts during the 1989 earthquake in california but the mother of angela schwartz certainly found him to not be very helpful after he had first approached her offering to help with her missing daughter the police had urged kim schwartz to not get close to tb but sort of like give him hope that that there was some sort of like possibility there like the door was open and every time she talked to him or met with him she left her interactions with him feeling that it was all a game to tb saying quote he was walking that fine line knowing exactly where he can go with it i think he was getting off on taunting me and my family end quote tb had also told kim swartz to read the book crime in punishment and in this book this one character who keeps turning up who keeps finding himself in the middle of everything turns out to be the one who actually committed the crime so it's a little kind of like a wink and a nod i guess as far as tb is concerned i definitely think he could have had something to do with one or more of these disappearances especially considering um how often he visited angela's grave that he said he fell in love with her by the picture on her tombstone that's not normal this is not something that a mentally healthy person does um so there's something wrong there in my opinion if all that is true there's something wrong there and he could very well be responsible for what happened to her or you know any of the other girls but as far as michaela even though he did present himself to michaela's mother after michaela went missing and asked to help and kind of made himself a general nuisance um i don't think he was involved with that case and even before i knew the new information that came out recently this month i i still didn't think that he was it just didn't add up but like i said i think he's definitely not right definitely not right at all another suspect for a time was 35 year old kyle allen raymer okay so imagine you see a homeless man sleeping in the park in a rainstorm and you feel bad so you invite him to come home with you so that he has a roof to sleep under in a dry bed for the night and as he's sleeping you're watching tv and you see his face on america's most wanted sounds like the plot of a horror movie but this is exactly what happened to robert and karen decosta of lake port california karen decosta saw kyle ramer sleeping in the park it was raining she felt bad and she invited him to come back with her to her home allowing him to sleep in her five-year-old daughter's bed while the girl slept in her parents bed and the decosta's two sons three and four years old slept in the room right next to this strange man that karen had never met before before opening her home to him so ramer fell asleep the couple and their two friends sat down in the living room to watch television that evening and then a photograph of their new guest flashed on the television screen with the information that he was wanted for multiple counts of child molestation obviously the police were called and kyle was arrested and after a background check it was discovered that kyle had been very busy before finding himself in a warm and cozy bed within reach of three innocent children he was a registered sex offender in lake county and had been arrested in 1994 for molesting a seven-year-old girl in san jose he'd also been charged with attempting to kidnap a ten-year-old girl from golden gate park in san francisco and he had molested a six-year-old girl at a nudist camp can you answer this because i just can't seem to find in my head or in the depths of the universe any reason why a six-year-old girl would be at a nudist camp and i also can't understand why these people would have invited this dude into their house to sleep in the same general vicinity as their children knowing nothing about him nothing about him okay i get it you feel bad you want to give a homeless man a roof to sleep under at least call the police and have them do a background check or something like i personally would say don't invite any any strangers in your house to spend the night but that's just me but if you are this kind of person that that wants to to do good by i guess personally opening your home to strangers uh do your due diligence first so now the police have kyle in custody and he seems to really fit for the michaela garrett abduction like he could have actually been responsible for what happened to her his age fit his physical description fit he was a repeat sexual offender and his victim of choice seemed to be girls around michaela's age and he'd been active in the bay area but kyle allen raymer although definitely not an innocent man not a good man by any means was also not the right suspect for this specific case considering his alibi was pretty airtight he'd been in jail at the time of the abduction so there was another promising lead and another dead end then we have another man if you can call him that i wouldn't but technically he's a man and his name was curtis dean anderson so on december 9th 1999 seven-year-old zayana fairchild never made it home from school her mother called the school and found out the horrifying information i can only imagine how horrifying this information was that her daughter had never even shown up to school that morning on august 12 2000 eight-year-old mitzi sanchez was walking home from school excited to get home to celebrate her eighth birthday with her family it was legitimately her eighth birthday that day and she was just two blocks away from her vallejo california home when she noticed a man sitting in his car watching her through his rear view mirror he got out of his car and she she felt like she should cross the street and and maybe it wasn't safe but when he got out and he asked mitzi if she could help him grab a roll of duct tape from the floorboard of his car so he could fix a window she agreed to because children are conditioned and taught to obey their elders especially during this time um i i would say as a parent and i hate to get off track but as a parent i would be very clear with your children um it's not like obey all your elders it's obey your parents and like your grandparents and run away from all strangers so when mitzi reached down to get the tape this man put his hand over her mouth and forced her into the car driving her past her own home where her mother was preparing her birthday festivities um she she was literally driven past her own home on her birthday after being abducted and she said she saw her house and all she wanted was to be inside of it so this man he drove her to the parking lot of a shopping center and he forced her to change into clothes that he'd already bought and brought with him he then forced her to drink alcohol before sexually abusing her and then he put a padlock around her leg and chained her to the inside of his car making sure that the car windows were covered up by blankets so no one could see her inside mitzi remembered thinking that she was never going to see her family again for two days this man curtis dean anderson drove this scared little girl around the bay area abusing her and only leaving sometimes at night where he would go inside and watch tv and then he'd come back out and tell mitzi that he was watching her mother on tv crying for her daughter's return and pleasuring himself to it so this is how this girl this young girl spent her eighth birthday fortunately one night anderson four got the keys to the padlock in the car and mitzi took her chance she grabbed the keyring there was a bunch of keys on it she said she just grabbed the smallest one on this keyring put it in the padlock and it fit and she freed herself and she jumped out the car window and started running she could hear him yelling for her to come back but she didn't stop she didn't go back she ran until she found help and anderson was in police custody within hours after being put in prison for mitzi's kidnapping and assault anderson bragged to his prison friends how he had abducted and killed at least 15 other little girls including siena fairchild whose partial remains were found in the hills above los gatos in january of 2001. he told investigators that he held her captive for several weeks and took video of himself molesting her when asked how he'd killed her anderson claimed that as an avid drug user himself he knew the amount of narcotics that he would need to give zyana to cause a fatal overdose in a small child saying quote i know what drugs do okay it's all body weight end quote he claimed that this little girl's last words were i'm tired as the drugs took effect now that was not all that anderson confessed to remember the kidnapping of amber swartz garcia we talked about in the beginning of this video anderson claimed that he'd seen her standing on a street corner he forced her into his car and eventually killed her in arizona now amber who was only seven years old was last seen skipping rope in front of her home in contra costa county while she waited for her neighbor to get home see her neighbor had just had a baby and amber couldn't wait to meet this new baby so she wanted to stay outside and wait for her neighbor to get home and her mother kim said she took her eyes off amber for three minutes tops and then she was gone now unfortunately before anderson could give more information he died suddenly in his jail cell i believe it was kidney and liver failure probably all those narcotics hopefully uh those caught up to him i hope it was painful i hope he suffered very very very much now although both the pinol police department where amber went missing as well as the fbi felt that anderson's signed confession along with the circumstantial evidence was enough to close the case on amber's disappearance her mother kim wasn't able to completely accept that this guy was responsible saying that she would rather have amber listed as a missing person forever than to have the case closed with the wrong perpetrator now although no information has been received that would dispute the confession of anderson amber has never been located so the police department did decide to reopen the case hoping that more tips would come in for a while there many believed that kurdistan anderson may have been the man who took michaela garrett he was within the age range of her kidnapper at the time when it happened it certainly fit his mo and he had bragged about killing multiple little girls that we would never find you know i when i say we i don't mean like me and you i mean people in general her parents the police the public he said i killed all these girls and you'll never find most of them but he'd only ever actually confess to three i believe additionally in 1989 he was pulled over driving a brown 1977 chevy sedan very similar in looks to the car that trina had seen michaela's kidnapper driving due to his untimely death they were never able to ask him or verify about michaela or even verify about amber but something interesting though curtis had a son also named curtis curtis dean anderson jr to be specific curtis jr was also a criminal and he was serving a 16-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter in 2019 when he took his own life in his jail cell at the age of 32. so make of that what you will what i want to say i'm going to keep in my head because it's savage another suspect in michaela's kidnapping was a man who had become notorious for another kidnapping that of jc dugard in 2009 20 years after michaela's disappearance something happened that gave her mother sharon hope that what she'd prayed for all those years could be true michaela could still be alive now sharon mckayla's mother for years any time anybody would ask her she was interviewed she would say i believe my daughter is still alive and i think that she really used that hope as a buoy to keep her afloat to keep her going to keep her um giving the interviews and writing the letters and you know raising awareness about michaela's case so that it could be solved i think that that hope was what she needed and i mean this woman was tireless in trying to find out what happened to her daughter i have nothing but respect and love for her well on june 10th 1991 eleven-year-old jc dugard was walking to her bus stop in myers california she was wearing her favorite pink outfit a car approached her and she thought at first maybe the man driving would be asking her for directions because the car was kind of going slow but instead when he rolled down the window the man philip garado had a stun gun in his hand and he used it to stun jc and then get her in the car with the help of his wife nancy garrido confused and scared jacy was in and out of consciousness for three hours in the car while nancy held her down as they drove from myers california to antioch 120 miles away and for 18 years jacy's mother had no idea where her daughter was or what had happened to her for 18 years philip and nancy garrido held her captive on their property at first in a soundproof shed where jc was used and abused by philip whenever he wanted and then left alone all by herself it's so sad for the entire first week he left her alone all by herself handcuffed besides the parts where he came in and sexually abused her jc was with these monsters for three years before they even gave her cooked food and at that point the greatest told jaycee that they thought she might be pregnant she was 14 years old when her first daughter was born in captivity and 17 when her second daughter was born both girls were fathered by philip garrido now on august 24 2009 philip garrido visited the uc berkeley campus accompanied by jc and her two daughters her oldest daughter at this point was 14 and her youngest was 11 the same age that jc had been when she was stolen from her life and locked away for the pleasure of a twisted and evil couple so philip and the girls were on campus because philip wanted to see if he could hold a religious event on the campus called the gods desire program he spoke with the woman who was in charge of special events at the college with that time was nancy campbell and she found his behavior to be both odd and erratic nancy also noticed how quiet and almost submissive his three companions were she asked philip to leave his information and return the next day for a meeting to kind of iron out the details but after he left she had campus security run a background check on him and it was discovered that philip garrido was a registered sex offender on parole for kidnapping and rape now officer ally jacobs of campus security observed philip gurrito and the three girls the next day at this meeting and she felt something was very wrong the girls all seemed to be really pale as if they didn't get outside a lot as if they weren't in the sun and they were very meek and they were acting unusual so she called the parole board which prompted two parole officers to drive over to the greedos and check things out now obviously they found jc she was returned to me this is not the happiest of endings right because i i don't see how she could ever really get over that what happened and you know there's just a lot of a lot of stuff in this case but one of the worst parts about this case is how many times jc could have been saved over the years how many times law enforcement of some kind was physically in the greedo household while she and her daughters were being kept there i can't get into it that deeply in this video like i said i wish i could but if you want a full video or a series which it would be it would be a series on jc dugard let me know in the comments because it really is tragic and heartbreaking but it is also a story of survival and strength and i think that there's a lot of a lot of things to discuss there so when jc dugard was found alive after all those years michaela's mother sharon felt reinforced in her belief that her own daughter was still out there somewhere both jc and michaela's abductions had similarities they were both roughly the same age when they'd been taken they looked similar i mean i see it reported that people believed they looked like they could be sisters they were so similar and both had been brazenly abducted in broad daylight very quickly the vehicle in michaela's case was similar to the sedan found on the greedo property and philip gurrito in his younger years resembled the composite sketch of michaela's abductor it was also discovered that in the late 80s garrido was living at a halfway house about 20 miles from where michaela was taken now trina rodriguez michaela's friend who had witnessed her abduction saw pictures of philip when he was younger on television and she said she recognized something in his eyes saying quote i see that same intensity that same creepy look that i don't think i'll ever forget end quote now sharon merch's first thought when jc was found was let michaela be with her and she said quote i know if jc dugard can be found alive and come home after 18 years then my daughter can still be found and come home end quote i am hoping that this will lead to a resolution and i'm hoping that it will lead to a positive resolution i know that if jc dugard can be found alive and come home after 18 years then my daughter can be found alive and come home after 18 years if this should not turn out to be the answer that we seek the answer is still out there if michaela might still be out there alive like jc was out there alive perhaps she will see herself in your stories perhaps that will give her the courage that she needs to break free from whatever situation she's been in and come home to us and i just want to say michaela if you're out there somewhere within the sound of my voice i just want you to know that we love you we miss you there's nothing that could possibly have happened over the last 20 years that could change that and we want you to come home now the police did question the greedos about their possible involvement in michaela's kidnapping but the couple insisted they had nothing to do with it police also i believe asked jacy if any other girls had been held with her while she was at the greetos and she said that there hadn't been not that she'd seen she'd been absolutely alone until the birth of her daughters and then all they'd had was each other eventually philip and nancy greedo were cleared of any involvement in michaela's kidnapping if you want to call it that like i hate saying they were cleared because they're monsters and scumbags but the police didn't think they had anything to do with what happened to michaela at least and the next lead in this case wouldn't come until 2012 when wesley shermantine one half of the twisted duo of murderers called the speed freak killers sent a letter to the stockton record claiming his partner and fellow speed freak lauren herzog was the one who had taken and killed michaela together the two men were suspected of taking at least 20 lives in the 80s and 90s on this like methamphetamine kind of drug binge i guess that's why they were called the speed freak killers they were just really into meth and they were apprehended in 1999 however the justice system had been a little easier on lauren herzog than it had been on wesley shermantine herzog had i guess confessed to three murders and he was initially sentenced to 78 years in prison which is to me not a lot for three murders but uh it came out that his confessions had been illegally obtained by the police so this sentence had been reduced to 14 years which definitely definitely isn't isn't a lot for three murders and he was actually paroled in 2010 after serving only 11 of those years because say it with me guys our justice system is incredibly flawed now his partner in crime sherman teen was sentenced to death for his part in the four murders that he'd been involved with and from death row he wrote this letter asking for a monetary payment i think it was like 30 or 40 thousand dollars and he wanted to give this to his son on the outside and the police were like no we're not going to pay you money for information on where you buried bodies of people you killed that's insane but they did offer to commute his death sentence to life in prison which allegedly he didn't take he refused that he was like no i'll stay on death row and i'll still help you anyway so i don't know if there was a little like guilt there or if he was just hoping that he would get a payment or maybe he did get the payment like under the table and they just don't want to report it because i don't see a man who you know claimed to have killed like 20 something people feeling you know really like bad and having some crisis of conscience at any point but maybe anything's possible right anything's possible so on the day that it was announced that wesley shermantine was helping the police locate victims of the speed-free killers his old friend lauren herzog who was out on parole remember just living his life he took his own life so good riddance probably best for everybody and it's obviously suspected that he did this because his buddy was about to you know bring out a whole new plethora of of people that the speed free killers had taken out and this would allow law enforcement to bring new charges against herzog which would take him out of normal life and put him back in prison so that's believed to be the reason why why he took his own life once again i don't think he was having a an attack of guilt or a crisis of conscience i think he was just like i'm not going back there this is the comedy police the joke's too funny i'm not going back to jail so wesley shermantine did lead investigators to an old well in his and herzog's hometown linden california and in this well several bones were found i think something like a thousand as well as many personal possessions that shermantine claimed had belonged to their victims now there were a pair of little girls shoes found they were black like the issues michaela had been wearing when she'd gone missing i mean she didn't go missing she was abducted i hate when i hate when people say like she went missing or when she died it's like she was abducted and then murdered it's not missing and died i do it sometimes myself too because i just don't want to use the same words over and over again but let's call it what it is additionally one of the bones found in the well appeared to belong to a child about her age at the time that she was abducted but after it was tested the dna of the bone did not match michaela garrett and that brings us to this year 2020 when district attorney nancy o'malley announced just this month december that an arrest had been made in the case finally so many years later the man charged with michaela's kidnapping is 59 year old david mish who's been in prison since 1989 after being convicted of a double murder now apparently a palm print was found on the scooter that had lured michaela over to her abductor's car and that print had been matched to david mesh and additionally it's now being reported that other eyewitnesses have placed him in the parking lot of the rainbow market on the day michaela was taken so i assume people in the parking lot people like that that the police interviewed at that time but didn't tell us about now i was having a hard time finding anything out about this man besides vague suggestions of like a past criminal history and you know just the same information regurgitated over and over again in articles which is very common and i was lucky enough though to stumble upon an article by nick wojcik i hope i said her name right and the title of this article is david mish the system failed to protect michaela garrett from a serial killer in the making and this article actually gave me a lot more insight into not only david misha's past criminal activity but also kind of the timeline and it's frustrating because as this article suggests this man could have and should have been stopped multiple times before he ever crossed paths with michaela garrett okay so this article says that when david mish i don't know if it's david meech or mish but he's a criminal and he's a bad person so don't come for me if i pronounce his name incorrectly because he doesn't deserve me to pronounce his name correctly but this article says that when david mish was 16 years old he was convicted of breaking into a neighbor's home and raping a woman at knifepoint who worked as a maid in the house that was just when he was 16. so if we do some quick math uh david mish is 59 in 2020 which puts his birth year in 1961 and i'm pretending that i'm doing this math in my head but i'm not i already did it on my calculator but that means he would have been 16 in 1977 so that means this happened him going into a neighbor's house and raping the maid this happened in 1977. so he rapes a woman while holding her at knifepoint he goes to jail and he's paroled in 1978 a year in prison for for that for doing that a year in prison right but bamish wasn't done and why would he be why would he be when there was basically no consequences for the horrible things he likes to do in february of 1979 he was arrested for false imprisonment and assault with a deadly weapon later the charge was updated to include assault to commit rape once again he went to prison and once again he was paroled in september of 1981. in july of 1982 he was convicted of assault after holding a woman at knifepoint and beating her once again he went to prison once again he was released in january of 1984. not even a full two years later so the year he was released 1984 in september he was charged with indecent exposure and a year later in august of 1985 he was charged with indecent exposure again after driving naked through oakland in february of 1986 he killed his first known victims 18 year old michelle xavier and her friend 20 year old jennifer dewey on february 2nd the two women who had been friends for years went to a birthday dinner at a restaurant in fremont california and on their way home they stopped at a convenience store 7-eleven i believe and i think they were seen on surveillance there this was the last time they were seen alive shortly after midnight their bodies were found naked and thrown on the side of the road they had both been stabbed and one of them had also been shot for 32 years what happened to these young women has remained a mystery but in 2018 thanks to dna technology david mish was identified as their killer at around the same time that he was murdering innocent women david mish was also being considered for a court drug diversion program due to more than one drug related and burglary incident now it's not clear whether they were separate like um this is a drug incident this is a burglary incident or whether they were drug slash burglary incidents i don't think it matters but the court thought it was bad enough where he he probably needed some some help in may of 1988 miche was arrested for burglary at a san leandro market and he was sentenced to one year in prison and one year probation but he didn't stay behind bars for one full year he was barely in there six months before he was released in november the same month michaela garrett would be snatched from the rainbow market parking lot within days of abducting michaela mish was once again in police custody arrested on possession charges but he would be released on parole on november 17 1989 and the month after that in december of 1989 he killed another woman margaret ball a woman he had been friends with for years who was found stabbed to death by her stepdaughter in her home near hayward which was also where michaela lived before she'd been killed margaret had been beaten violently and her front tooth was found six inches away from her body in a pool of blood by the time dna from underneath the fingernails of one of his 1986 victims appointed law enforcement in his direction he'd already been charged and sentenced in this murder the murder of margaret ball and he was already behind bars by 1989 so this is the guy who they're saying kidnapped michaela and it's now assumed that michaela like his other victims is no longer alive even though they haven't found her body and authorities say they will never stop looking now the probable cause document says that mish refused to speak to detectives on december 2nd and he also refused to give them a dna sample but the physical evidence that they do have shows that david mesh kidnapped michaela and then killed her to avoid the risk of discovery detective robert purcell of the hayward police department said in that document quote i believe that it is reasonable to conclude that having violently abducted the victim a nine-year-old girl who hasn't been seen in 32 years and whose remains have never been found that mish murdered the victim disposed of her remains and has successfully kept her remains hidden from authorities end quote but according to david misha's attorney ernie castillo who has also been representing misha on some of his other murder charges the science used to tie his client to michaela's case is quote junk science misha's lawyer ernie said quote david mish is a loving father brother and son and had nothing to do with the disappearance of michaela garrett he wouldn't hurt or kill a child as they're accusing him of end quote now the question i initially had when i heard about this new information and this new you know arrest and new charges the question i had was why now if mish has been behind bars since 1989 and they've had the palm print from the scooter since 1988 which is what matched him to the scene why did it take so long to put two and two together well in 2018 when miesh became a suspect and was charged in the deaths of michelle xavier and jennifer dewey fremont police actually reached out to the hayward police feeling that there may be a connection between their double murder and the abduction case of michaela guerra according to ktvu news authorities would not specifically say what led them to believe that the two cases might be connected because in my opinion there's there's not a lot of similarities uh the ages are different his double murder victims bodies were found like that night michaela never has been found so i mean to me there's not a ton of similarities right off the bat just from the naked eye not having access to the police files but this alleged connection prompted them to pull out that old palm print and compare it to david mish and they found a match now apparently uh this had to be done with like the naked eye with just looking at it and comparing to palm prints because it was too small or too intricate to be put through um you know like a computer system so they say it had to be done manually and when they say manually that means that they're actually just looking at it with their human eye and misha's attorney ernie castillo has a big problem with this saying quote we will definitely be attacking any concept or idea that a person can with their human eye be able to distinguish ridges or whatever type of patterns we have in our hands they don't have a body we don't know if this kid is dead or not or if she's alive to start dumping everything on this guy it's an easy way to close a case it's an easy way to pat themselves on the back end quote and while i don't necessarily disagree with ernie that i think comparing palm prints or fingerprints manually with the human eye is a little tricky and while i don't agree and we can't deny this has happened before the wrong person ends up being convicted of a crime just so the case can be closed and yeah mish would be kind of like an easy fall guy considering he's already in prison so you're not like locking up an innocent man i really wish that that ernie costello would have a little bit of respect for makayla garrett and not call her this kid or that kid like we don't even know if this kid is dead she has a name ernie say it say her name because uh she's not this kid or that kid she was an innocent child who your client may have kidnapped and murdered and you can you can show a little bit more respect when you're talking about her okay ernie but i mean i guess we'll have to see um we'll have to wait and see if there's a trial what kind of experts they bring in you know people who will be able to speak to the similarities between david misha's palm print and the palm print found on the scooter if the if these experts if these forensic people are convincing enough you know it might go through i definitely don't think a jury's gonna have any problem convicting him of this since he clearly has a history of being like a bad person i would be interested in seeing it go to trial though just because i'm a little hesitant to believe right off the bat that uh that he's the guy and it's just because the mo is different um he yes he's been known allegedly to kill three women but these were grown women um so as far as we know he's never kidnapped or murdered a child before and usually killers like this will have a specific ammo a specific type that they go after and it's not as if there was like a big chunk of time between um what happened to um the two friends that he killed and his friend that he killed and michaela's abduction they were all kind of like within you know a few years of each other so it's not as if um a lot of time had passed where he could change his ammo or change his tastes i guess the mo doesn't doesn't really fit for me but i would be interested to see you know what else they have on him and if it's only circumstantial and if they can't make a case in court i would like to see her case remain open because we did talk about multiple suspects in this video that i think match up a lot better to to who might have done this to michaela people whose emails do match people whose um physical appearances match and apparently i haven't seen this picture yet but one of the news articles said that they have a picture of david mish when he was in his 20s and he resembles very much the picture of michaela's assailant so i have to see that but i'm gonna have to get a lot more information before i just jump on the bandwagon and say like yeah he's the guy um a round of applause for law enforcement you guys did it it's so long since it happened and i really don't want to see the case closed just for the sake of closing it i want to see whoever did it be brought to justice or you know be be found out whether this person's alive or dead or in prison or what i want to know who who actually did it so we'll have to see what uh what the police have but before we close out this video i do want to read you something that michaela's mother sharon wrote on her blog now sharon has been blogging about her daughter's disappearance for a very long time it's called seekers road that's the blog i'll link it in the description box if you want to check it out and she wrote this on december 19 2020 and i have to warn you as i was reading this it did make me cry it made me sob like a little baby so um it's gonna be emotional i think as a mother especially it's it's emotional because you never want to see yourself in in these people's shoes you feel empathy you feel sympathy you feel so bad that that that these people mothers fathers brothers sisters grandparents lose these these little children in their lives but you almost um stop yourself from from putting yourself in their shoes too much because it's a very it's very tough and reading this it really threw me into sharon's shoes almost unwillingly at a point i didn't want to um to to go that that deep into it i kind of wanted to stay a little bit separate from this case because it is close to my heart any cases that deal with children um if you've been with me for a while you know that that i do i do get a little attached so i try to always kind of keep like an unbiased distance but you know it's hard especially when you read this so this is what sharon wrote on december 19th 2020. they have not found michaela but they have identified her kidnapper he is in prison and is currently on trial for two other murders he is a monster seriously what drives a human being to do something like this on monday just before the press conference they will be filing homicide charges against this man david mish is his name you aren't going to find a lot of information about him or about the investigation that will come from the hayward police department as for me what you will hear about from me is the only thing i care about michaela and maybe love maybe grief maybe faith although i have to tell you i feel as though i am wandering around lost i am looking looking again for the answers i thought i had found but all i can find now is emptiness there has been this really big feeling that has been rolling around inside me creating a giant hole and just this morning i figured out what it is it is a feeling that my daughter has been alone for these 32 years while i was running around doing interviews writing blogs tying ribbons on trees she was lying cold and alone you know that i have been able to accept the likelihood that michaela was no longer alive how many times have i said it would be a comfort to know that she had been in a better place for all these years rather than spending a lifetime in pain fear grief but what i realized is that i had never at all been able to envision her being dead mish killed his victims by stabbing one young woman was shot but on that occasion he was trying to kill two at once so this is what i'm left with i can only touch the edges of this knowledge just skimming the surface because it is too painful while i have envisioned michaela as not living in this world she was always in a good place i've seen her floating on clouds running in grass meadows i have literally envisioned the two of us sitting on stars in eternity drinking tea and chatting in a place where all the horrors of this life have faded into insignificance in the greater whole now for some reason i can no longer see those places i can only see my child cold and alone i feel like i abandoned her to pursue a rabbit trail when all this time i should have been lying with her to michaela i am so so sorry baby girl i feel as though i let you down in a million ways i was listening to rescue by lauren daigle yesterday this has been my song for you and i broke down because i had not been able to rescue you i wonder if god can rescue me i am trying to hold on to what has kept me going for a while now and that is that i know you are a bright and shining light you were a light to all who knew you when you were here in the world and you have been a light even to strangers beyond number since you have been gone i will we will try to keep that light shining for you i love you forever baby girl rest well i have some things to do here yet but i will see you in the not terribly distant future as always make sure you let me know what you all think about this case and this news in the comment section i really enjoy talking to you let me know if you want me to cover in depth any of these other cases that we talked about any of these other victims or killers that we talked about make sure to follow me on twitter and instagram the links are in the description box make sure to subscribe if you haven't already and if you are subscribed make sure that you still are because youtube does unsubscribe people from my channel i think they're afraid that uh that i will taint you all with this true crime life but uh make sure you're still subscribed because they do unsubscribe people from my channel and also make sure you like this video if you liked it make sure you share it if you think it's worth sharing there could be a chance that this david guy this david meech guy isn't the one he may not be the one and i would really like to see this case solved concretely and i think that the sharon and rod michaela's parents would also probably really like to see this finally come to a close also don't forget to follow the link in the description box to crime weekly so you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts it's spotify pandora ir radio itunes whatever floats your boat my co-host derek lavasser and i talk about a different crime every week sometimes we do two parters we just finished the jennifer dulo's two-parter i think we're in the midst of the joel guy two-parter and uh it's just really fun having his perspective and i think it's a nice mix so make sure you subscribe to that so you never miss podcast and uh this is the last video of 2020. so the next time i see you it will be 2021 and i have a lot a lot in store for you guys a lot of very interesting cases a lot of um really in-depth multi-parters a lot of interesting coffee and crime times that i've been storing up so we will see each other very very soon have an amazing new year take care of yourself take care of your loved ones hug your kids a little tighter after this video because i know that is what i will be doing and i will see you soon stay kind stay beautiful bye [Music] [Music] how deep it goes until it's getting you slowly so you got to let it go my face

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 412,640

Rating: 4.9277577 out of 5

Keywords: michaela garecht, david emery misch, jaycee lee dugard, curtis dean anderson, the speed freak killers, amber swartz garcia

Id: nNNw8n4_MXk

Length: 74min 6sec (4446 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020