Couples Who Kill (19 page)

Whilst Vanessa was captive in the van, Michelle parked outside a welfare office and collected her cheque. If she’d really been an unwilling accomplice of James Daveggio, she now had ample opportunity to alert the authorities. But she waited patiently, collected her money and left. She was also alone with the trussed-up and crying victim when Daveggio went to the restroom, but she didn’t let the young woman leave.

Michelle Michaud now drove north whilst James Daveggio repeatedly raped Vanessa Samson. He also sodomised her with Michelle’s curling irons – they had cut
off the cord when adding it to their torture kit.

Eventually the couple booked into a cheap motel, parking the van next to their room door so that no one could see them carrying the bound and gagged twenty-two-year-old. They untied her and Daveggio went out for burgers but Vanessa only managed one bite before she vomited.

When she was trussed up on the bed again, Michaud joined in the torture – her fingerprints would be found on a second pair of customised curling irons, showing that one sadist pressed one side of the tongs against the girl’s buttocks whilst the other inserted the second tong rectally. By afternoon, Michaud would later note, the victim was ‘half dead.’

They now smuggled her back into the van and drove for a while, then got into the back where Daveggio looped a rope around Vanessa’s neck. Michelle then took one end of the rope and James took the other as they’d agreed to kill in tandem. They pulled until their victim stopped breathing, then drove on and dumped her body in an isolated snowbank.

That morning, Michaud made a court appearance for passing bad cheques so law enforcement knew she was back in the area. That afternoon they arrested her and her boyfriend at their motel. A search of the room revealed crack cocaine and a loaded pistol, as well as paraphernalia which showed the couple were dealing in drugs.

The van yielded further evidence of the couple’s crimes. Rape victim Juanita Rodriguez’s hairs were found, as were curling irons stained with blood. There was also a
saliva-soaked
ball gag and recreational drugs.

Outwardly, Michelle Michaud was co-operative, agreeing that the police could search her hotel room and van. She answered all of their questions but remained exceedingly vague. At this stage the authorities only knew about the various incestuous assaults and the rape of Juanita Rodriguez, and she hoped that they wouldn’t link her to Vanessa Samson who was still officially a missing person, though everyone suspected she was dead.

But two days later Vanessa’s frozen corpse was found – and meantime the police had forensically tested the curling irons and found traces of Vanessa’s blood and faeces. The subsequent autopsy showed bruising on the girl’s buttocks which matched the pattern of the curling irons. Michelle’s fingerprints were found on duct tape wrapped around the handle of the curling irons, showing that she was the one who’d turned them into a torture implement.

Michelle Michaud now decided to co-operate fully with the authorities, albeit seriously playing down her part in the rapes and murder. She said that Daveggio had molested her daughter, that
he
was the one who’d become fascinated by the Gallegos. Even more disingenuously, he’d put her hand on the rope which was tied around Vanessa Samson’s neck and had told her to pull. She’d done so because the girl wasn’t moving and she thought she was already dead. She said that she prayed for the girl every day and found it difficult to sleep.

On 15th December 1997 she pleaded not guilty to the Juanita Rodriguez rape. For the next eleven months she remained in jail, and by the end of that period she’d
decided that she hated James Daveggio. By now she was aware that Juanita Rodriguez’s hairs had been found in her van and that the FBI were suggesting she’d played as big a part as Daveggio in the murder so she decided to plead guilty to aiding and abetting the abduction of the girl.

By the time she entered her plea in court, Michelle Michaud looked nothing like the gaunt-faced drug addict who had tortured Vanessa Samson. Now her hair was short and curly and she wore glasses. Denied her beloved crystal meth, she had put on weight and resembled a suburban housewife, looking like court-taken photographs of British serial killer Rose West. Daveggio would also completely change his appearance for his trial, cutting his long hair and donning glasses so that he resembled a professor rather than the barely literate outlaw he actually was.

Michelle had helped snuff out Vanessa Sampson’s life for a quick thrill – but she held her own life in higher regard and was determined to save it. As such, she suggested to the authorities that she should infiltrate the prostitution ring she used to work for and pass on their secrets. When this was turned down she told them about witnessing the murder of a bail bondsman by a biker – she could infiltrate the biker gang if the authorities set her free. When they refused to make a deal, she decided to become a prosecution witness at James Daveggio’s trial – the man she had promised to love forever had now become her sworn enemy.

Her ex-boyfriend’s trial for Juanita Rodriguez’s abduction and rape lasted for seven days – but it took the jury only two hours of deliberation to find him guilty. He was subsequently sentenced to twenty-four years.

On 12th August 1999 Michelle Michaud was sentenced to twelve years in prison for the Rodriguez crime, namely for aiding in the kidnap and rape of the Reno college student. She wept during her pre-sentence statement and said she wished she’d done more to stop her boyfriend abducting and terrorising the girl. ‘There is no way to make you understand, because I still don’t understand…I don’t know how it got where it got,’ she said inarticulately. Later she added ‘I’m so, so sorry for not being stronger, for not being able to stop things he has done.’

But realists pointed out that she’d had her own income from a sugar daddy during the time of the rape, and was not financially dependent on Daveggio. And she had become very aggressive when other women showed an interest in him. Moreover, James Daveggio’s defence produced witnesses who said that Michelle Michaud was a strong woman who gave as good as she got.

She remained religious, telling a reporter that she especially enjoyed reading Romans from the Bible, which apparently concentrates on love.

In April 2002 the couple were moved to Almeda County and tried together for Vanessa Samson’s horrific torture murder. A doctor for Michelle’s defence said that the abuse from her boyfriends and clients had left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, with a propensity for
subservience. The prosecution countered that she often shared power with Daveggio and at other times was in charge.

Daveggio’s lawyers argued that the couple had killed Vanessa Samson for thrills, not because she was a witness to her own sexual assault. Reaching new levels of legal madness, they suggested that the crime therefore lacked the ‘special circumstances’ that would qualify for punishment by execution. Daveggio’s representatives later said ‘you have to look at the defendant as a person…look at childhood, family illnesses.’ And it was true that Daveggio had had a difficult childhood – but he’d
chosen
to pass on his pain to someone else.

The jury, consisting of seven men and five women, spent two days of deliberations, then returned to find the couple guilty of kidnap, rape by an instrument and first degree murder. Daveggio reddened at the verdict and Michaud’s hand flew to her mouth. The couple were subsequently sentenced to death for the horrific crime.

Carlton Smith, who wrote a book,
Hunting Evil,
about the case, has become convinced that James Daveggio murdered his former girlfriend Cassie Riley in 1974 in Union City. Another man called Marvin Mutch was convicted of the murder and has been in San Quentin ever since. Carlton Smith has informed the Union City police and the Alameda County district attorney of his findings, but they have refused to act.

Robert Scott, who wrote a later book,
Rope Burns
, about
Daveggio and Michaud notes that Daveggio’s friend Michael Ihde spent four years in jail for assaulting and intending to murder a woman. Both Daveggio and Ihde were age twenty at the time. Ihde later went to prison for another murder and the authorities suspect that both men could be linked to other violent deaths.

James Daveggio is currently on San Quentin’s Death Row. In January 2003 he began advertising on the internet for penpals, writing ‘I have never been out of the USA. Nor will I ever will be now. It may not be like coming to your country, but it will be as close as I’ll get. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.’ Doubtless there will be females – convinced that all he needs to straighten him out is the love of a good woman – reaching for their writing pads and pens.

Michelle Michaud is on Death Row in California, one of only fourteen women there. The appeals process moves so slowly that she may remain there for the rest of her natural life.

Couples who kill babies are understandably seen as especially reprehensible. Most such deaths occur when violent parents try to ‘discipline’ a crying or defecating infant (who is far too young to control such automatic reflexes) and go too far. And chapter fourteen, British Couples Who Kill Children, looks at another form of deliberate cruelty where adults let babies starve to death for monetary gain. But occasionally a couple murder a baby and it’s possible to feel a modicum of sympathy for them, as in the following case.

Amy was born on 10th July 1978, the second child of Sonye and Alan Grossberg. Amy, her parents and her three-year-old brother lived in an attractive
four-bedroomed
house in New Jersey. Her mother, a former teacher, stayed at home until Amy went to school then she joined her husband as a furniture sales representative. The couple were very successful in their careers so Sonye was able to take her daughter on frequent shopping trips. Amy was intelligent and artistic and expected to excel academically. Throughout her junior school years, she was a model child.

When Amy was twelve, the family moved to a much larger house and hired a maid. Amy continued to do well in school and also made great strides in her religious studies, the family being Jewish. But at thirteen she developed irritable bowel syndrome which can be brought
on by – and later exacerbated by – stress. Like most IBS sufferers she tended to worry excessively about everything and was terrified of letting her family down. It was vital to Amy’s mother that she got good grades and once, when she got a B, Mrs Grossberg phoned the school and persuaded them to increase it to an A.

Fortunately the slightly shy girl had a few close friends to take her mind off these academic expectations and her IBS symptoms. And her happiness increased at age fourteen when she met Brian Peterson. The slender blonde boy was popular and athletic, only one month her senior. He was impressed by her cuteness, sweet disposition and artistic talent and they soon fell in love.

Like Amy, Brian was an intelligent and sensitive teenager. He was born on 10th June 1978 to Barbara and Brian Peterson who lived in Long Island. His mother was a maths teacher who also had an evening job and his father was a computer programmer. The couple worked long hours so he came home to a babysitter every night. He was somewhat lonely but filled his time as best he could, attending classes in Catholicism, walking his dog and playing with friends.

Gradually his parents saw less and less of each other and when he was ten they separated and his mother moved to New Jersey. The couple agreed that Brian should remain in his childhood home with his father so that he could keep the same friends and attend the same school.

When he was fourteen he went to live with his mother and her second husband who ran a video distribution service with seven million dollars worth of sales per
annum. Home was a large mock-Tudor house.

For the next three years Brian and Amy attended school dances, went to the cinema and had frequent meals with Amy’s family. By seventeen they were ready to become lovers but they’d had very little sex education at school and the subject had never been raised in Amy’s home. Amy’s mother always took her to the doctor and she was too embarrassed to go there on her own and ask for the contraceptive pill. Similarly, Brian was worried about being seen buying condoms so they didn’t always use them. Like many teenagers, they were playing Russian roulette with pregnancy.

Eventually nature took its course and in March 1996 seventeen-year-old Amy didn’t have a period. She didn’t have one in April either and wrote to Brian suggesting she might be pregnant. By May the couple were discussing the topic regularly, still unsure if Amy was really expecting or if the worry about getting into the ‘right’ college was making her menstrual cycle irregular.

In June they graduated from high school and took summer jobs. Both of them turned eighteen that summer but emotionally they were still children, out of their depth.

They talked about getting an abortion and even drove past a clinic – but Amy lost her nerve and Brian was determined to support her in whatever decision she made, rationalising that it was her body. The following month Mrs Grossberg took her to the doctor for her pre-college medical and, though he palpated her stomach, he didn’t detect the pregnancy. He asked her if she was pregnant as he wanted to give her an immunisation that can harm a
growing foetus. But her mother was standing beside her so Amy said that she was menstruating and accepted the dangerous shot.

The couple now booked an abortion at a clinic and Brian withdrew the money from his savings account but again Amy was unable to go through with it, fearing that if she developed a post-termination infection, her mother would find out. By now her mother had noticed that she was gaining weight and hiding her figure inside baggy clothes, but she still saw Amy as her little girl rather than the sexually active – if immature – young woman that she actually was.

In August they left home for their respective colleges, Brian going to Gettysburg whilst Amy travelled to Delaware, a hundred miles away. Almost immediately another student asked Amy when her baby was due. Suspecting that she was the subject of campus gossip, she wrote to Brian ‘I’m going insane.’ Equally distraught, Brian began to speak to her on the phone several times every day. His new friends noticed that he was withdrawn and was finding it hard to concentrate. Small wonder as Amy was writing to him ‘this is killing me, mentally, physically and emotionally.’ She even hinted that she was considering suicide.

As the season turned into autumn, her condition worsened. By now, unknown to her, she’d developed toxaemia of pregnancy, which is potentially fatal. Her ankles swelled, her body ached all over and she lost her appetite.

Amy had been brought up to believe that there was a god and that he answered prayers, but though she prayed and prayed for her pregnancy to go away, it continued. By mid-October she was reduced to writing a letter which said
‘Dear God, why does it seem like I just do everything wrong… Please help me. My life is ruined… I’m sorry that I did what I did but don’t hurt me anymore.’ She pleaded again and again for forgiveness, for the pregnancy ‘not to go any further.’

But the pregnancy continued. Her parents visited her that month and noticed that she looked unwell and was still swathed in baggy clothes. She admitted that she wasn’t feeling too good and was tired. Maybe if they’d asked her outright she’d have burst into tears and told the truth. But her well-meaning parents put her condition down to the stress of being away from home for the first time.

Incredibly, the too-good Amy was still studying hard, dragging her seriously ill body to all of her classes. By now she had terrible headaches and was constantly fighting back nausea. Worse, she could feel the baby kicking and her stomach was hurting constantly.

On 12th November her waters broke and she called Brian who immediately drove the hundred miles to be with her. The couple then drove to a motel, reaching it in the early hours. Brian had a fake ID in his wallet but booked into the motel under his own name. This suggests he didn’t anticipate exactly what would happen next.

Shortly afterwards Amy went into labour and an equally terrified Brian started to hyperventilate. The young couple had been so intent on hiding the pregnancy from Amy’s parents that they hadn’t given much thought to the actual birth. Now the exhausted eighteen-year-old was giving birth for the first time without any medical intervention or pain-killing drugs.

Brian begged Amy to let him drive her to hospital, but she was still petrified of disappointing her mother. So they stayed in the sweat-drenched confines of the motel bedroom and he pressed on her stomach a couple of times to try and ease the baby’s passage. Neither teenager knew what they should be doing medically, but soon Amy gave birth to a six pound son.

Exactly what happened next will probably never be publicly known. Amy had a cloth over her eyes (the
pre-eclampsia
she was suffering from ensured she had to shield her eyes from the light) so claimed she didn’t see the baby. Brian said that it looked blue and didn’t appear to be breathing. The umbilical cord allegedly tore when he picked the infant up. Amy begged him to ‘get rid of it’ (the baby) so he went out to the car to get bin bags to enclose the infant’s body and the blood-soaked towels. Journalists would later wonder if Amy kicked her newborn son with her heel at this point – or if Brian came back and tied a bin bag around the little boy, suffocating him. What’s definite is that they made no attempt to get medical help for the sickly infant. Weeping, Brian took the bag containing the tiny body to a nearby Dumpster and tossed it in.

Two hours later, Amy and Brian left the bloodstained motel bed and drove back to her college – and two hours after that she tried to get up for her first class of the morning. Brian persuaded her to rest but she still went to her midday class. By now she was getting terrible abdominal pains as her condition had worsened into full blown eclampsia.

Back in her room she collapsed and began to have
seizures. When she regained consciousness she pleaded with her room-mate not to phone an ambulance, but thankfully the teenager called one. At the hospital she had another seizure and became too ill to talk.

Later she revived slightly and the medics asked her about her recent pregnancy but she continued to deny it. She went into a third round of seizures, her blood pressure dangerously elevated. They removed the placenta from her womb and gave her anti-epileptic medication plus Valium. She had every one of the symptoms caused by
post-eclampsia
– including tongue and eye swelling – and was at high risk of lapsing into a coma leading to death.

Meanwhile the hospital had contacted Amy’s parents and told them that she was very ill, phoning them again to confirm that she’d recently given birth. The couple were devastated. But they rallied and phoned Brian who eventually admitted that Amy had been pregnant and that they’d gotten rid of the child.

The police soon brought Brian in for questioning and the exhausted young man admitted that Amy had given birth in the motel room. The police asked if the infant could still be alive and he said no, that it was dead. His first concern was still for his critically-ill girlfriend and he told police ‘I felt so bad for her.’ He wept, terrified that his brief attempt to help deliver the baby had made Amy ill. The police asked ‘Was the baby born alive?’ and the trembling teenager replied ‘I’m not sure.’ He was charged with concealing the death of a child.

A police dog found the male infant and the autopsy found air in the lungs and bowels, suggesting that he had
been born alive. There were also injuries to the skull but it was debatable whether these had occurred before or after he was thrown into the Dumpster. The skull injuries were probably the cause of death. Later examination also showed that the baby had been born with schizencephaly which can cause retardation and paralysis.

Amy was taken in handcuffs from the hospital to the police station then taken to a correctional facility to await trial. Brian was also kept in custody and refused bail.

The next few weeks saw a frenzied media and judicial system trying to lay blame. Pro-choice groups argued that there was a clear need for better sex education and abortion facilities so that teenagers no longer had to endure such trauma whilst anti-abortionists argued the reverse.

Doug Most, an award-winning journalist who wrote a detailed book about the case, interviewed numerous youth representatives. Most noted that affluent teenagers like Amy and Brian were well-educated but emotionally immature, having never made any important decisions for themselves. The parents of such children tended to have very high expectations for their offspring and had never given them the message that it was okay to fail occasionally, that it was better to seek help than try to hide a pregnancy.

Sadly, there was still a lot of denial going on, for Amy’s parents said that Amy had done nothing wrong, a stance which unfairly suggested that Brian alone was culpable. The defence said that the baby had been born dead and that the skull injuries had occurred in the Dumpster post-mortem.
But the prosecution contended that the injuries were pre-mortem and said they would seek the death penalty.

For the first few weeks of awaiting trial, Amy and Brian still wrote to and phoned each other, their love as strong as ever. But Amy’s mother was afraid that Brian would give information about her daughter’s legal case to his lawyers so gradually the phone-calls stopped.

The rift between the lovers was complete when one of Amy’s lawyers said that Amy hadn’t even known she was pregnant, that Brian was wholly responsible. It was a cruel attack on the young man – and an outright lie. Brian’s defence could prove that he’d withdrawn money from his savings account to pay for an abortion, which meant that Amy had to have known about her pregnancy. And the numerous letters she’d written to him begging for the pregnancy to ‘go away’ were found in his room.

Brian pleaded guilty to manslaughter and agreed to testify against Amy if she went to trial. Amy eventually followed his lead and plea bargained her charge down to manslaughter. She would be given a slightly heavier sentence than her boyfriend because he pleaded guilty from the start.

On 9th July 1998, the day before Amy’s twentieth birthday, the couple were sentenced. Amy was given eight years but most of it was suspended. She would spend two and a half years in jail and serve three hundred hours of community service, counselling pregnant teenagers.

Brian was sentenced to two years. Both he and Amy were initially put into isolation for their own protection. Later Brian was given work in the prison laundry and Amy taught handicrafts to her cellmates. The youngsters lost weight in prison and aged visibly.