After 32 years, charges filed in girl’s kidnapping

For more than 30 years, the kidnapping of a 9-yearold girl, Michaela Garecht, has remained a mystery in Northern California, a crime witnessed by only a fewpeople, including a child who was her best friend.

Michaela was never seen again after she was taken from a parking lot in 1988. But nowauthorities believe they are closer to solving her disappearance, after decades pursuing a trail that they say has led to a man already in prison for murder.

Authorities in Alameda County said the man, David EmeryMisch, 59, appeared in Superior Court of California on Tuesday on charges ofmurder during a kidnapping in the Garecht case. Held in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, east of the San Francisco Bay, he faces “special circumstance” charges, which can carry a sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole, because of his conviction for the 1989murder of a woman in the Hayward area, case filings said.

Ernie Castillo, Misch’s lawyer, said in a statement that he “denies the allegations against him and will fight these charges.”

“No one in his family believes David would hurt or kill a child,” Castillo said, adding that a defense team would seek to “root out any junk science” used in the case, “expose bias on the part of the police departments and get to the bottom of what happened.”

The child’s remains have not been found, investigators said. But the Alameda County district attorney said that bringing charges in the case could at least offersome hope for justice.

“The kidnap and murder of a child is horrific,” the district attorney, Nancy O’Malley, said in a statement announcingthechargesMonday. “The pain to the family and friends is indescribable, especially when their child is not found.”

After the charges were announced, Michaela’s mother, Sharon Murch, released a statement saying that she had, in the past year, “come to a place of accepting that Michaela was probably no longer alive.”

Shesaid that shehadasked detectives about Misch’s history of violence.

“If Michaela could experience it, I could hear it,” she said, adding, “The thoughts of her fear, her pain, her grief, are overwhelming.”

Onthe morning ofNov. 19, 1988, Michaela and her best friend, whowas not named in courtdocuments, left their scooters at the door of the RainbowGrocery onMission Boulevard, inHayward, and went inside to buy snacks. Whenthe girls cameout they sawthat one of the scooters had beenmoved deeper into the parking lot and behind a car, the district attorney’s statement said. Michaela went to get it. The driver of the car grabbed her as she walked past his door, the statement said. He forced her into the front seat, backed out and sped off, it said.

At 10:23 a.m., theHayward PoliceDepartmentreceiveda report that a child had been kidnapped. They spoke to Michaela’s 9-year-old friend, a probable cause document says. “Whenthe victimwent to retrieve the scooter, she was grabbed around the waist by the suspect and pulled into the car while she violently screamed,” the document says.

The girl and other witnesses described the driver as having blue eyes and long dirty-blond hair, it said.

In the decades that followed, investigators continued to pore over leads. Hayward detectives never stopped looking for her, the district attorney’s officesaid. The FBI joined the inquiry.

Printswere takenfromthe handlebars and fork of the scooter, and compared with those of possible suspects, the case document says. But itwasn’t until nearly30years after the disappearance — as detectives reexamined evidence, leads and potential witnesses — that progress in the investigation starting leading toward criminal charges.

Officer MichaelWright, a spokesman for the Hayward Police Department, said in an interview Tuesday that the prints found on the handlebars were from the kidnapper’s palm.

A fingerprint examiner was given names of persons of interest, including that of Misch, the district attorney’s statement said. This year, he was determined “to be a match tomultiple lifts from the scooter,” it said.

“Their ability nowtocompare prints has been significantly advanced through software, technology and science,” the statement said.

In addition to the prison sentence he is serving for the 1989murder, Misch has been charged with two counts of murder in the killing of two women in the nearby city of Fremont in 1986, according to the Fremont Police Department.

Mischwas brought to the Haywardinvestigators’ attention by the investigators in Fremont, Wright said.

“We are hoping thathe will be able to provide us with some information,” he said.