Contra Costa Newspapers

Jan. 21, 2002

OAKLAND —It was Thanksgiving 1997, and, like many families, the Samsons gathered in their home.

Their one-story house on Siesta Court in Pleasanton was a clean-cut American clich‚ surrounded by the manicured lawns of another safe suburb.

At the Samsons', celebration was in order. It was a departure from usually hectic lives filled with work, school and errands- a point not lost on Christina Samson, who was overjoyed to have her husband, Daniel, son Vincent and daughters Nicole and Vanessa together.

Just hours later, a short distance away , a shaken teen-age girl sat in a room at the Candlewood Hotel in Pleasanton. She had been molested, the victim of a crime she later told police that Michelle Lyn Michaud had warned would take place.

James Anthony Daveggio, Michaud's boyfriend and the man who has since pleaded guilty to forcing the girl into a sex act, was nearby.

"It was the biggest shopping day of the year and would be the best day to kill somebody," the girl recalled her attacker saying just after midnight, court records show.

Police say Daveggio and Michaud soon began to hunt a new victim.

Six days later, Vanessa Samson was dead.

Opening statements in the trial of Daveggio, 41, and Michaud, 43, for the murder of Vanessa Samson are scheduled to begin Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland. They could face the death penalty if convicted.

Michaud is accused as well of sexually assaulting two Tri-Valley teens, charges similar to those Daveggio pleaded guilty to in October.

Nov. 30, 1997

Daveggio and Michaud drove to a Hayward Kmart, according to court records. They were familiar roads for Daveggio, who had grown up not far away in Union City, where he went to Logan High School before transferring to Foothill High School in Pleasanton in the 1970s.

He later completed classes at the Sequoia Institute in Fremont, earning mostly high marks in the school's diesel engine program.

About a decade after attending the school, Daveggio, a bartender and biker known as "Frog," was cruising the aisles of the discount store to the north with his prostitute girlfriend, records show.

The pair took their purchases to Motel 6 in Pleasanton, where they checked into Room 137. Michaud's green 1994 Dodge Caravan was parked outside.

A day later, police say, the pair began their search in earnest. The green van parked in front of Foothill High School, potential victims were scouted, former Pleasanton police Chief Bill Eastman later told reporters.

The couple drove to Livermore later that day, stopping at Not Too Naughty on First Street, where a security camera captured their 10-minute visit to buy a ball gag and a cassette tape titled "Submissive Girls."

Dec. 2, 1997

Daveggio and Michaud were out early on what court records revealed the couple referred to as "adventures" and "huntings" - and what police said was a search for a victim. Two young girls were spotted, but then came Samson, Eastman said.

Not wanting to be late for the clerical job she had held for only weeks, Vanessa bid farewell to her mother and left for SCJ Insurance Services with her backpack and bag lunch. She had paged her sister, who was staying with a friend and had offered a ride the day before, but she hadn't heard back.

That was not a problem for Vanessa, 22. The Ohlone College student regularly turned down rides to work, preferring to walk the short way to Gibraltar Drive.

It was foggy and cool as Vanessa set out about 7:30 a.m. She strolled to Singletree Way, headed east and then walked another six blocks to where the road slices past Kern and Page courts.

Roofers working at a house on Page heard a "desperate scream," then a door sliding closed, Alameda County prosecutor Angela Backers said in court papers. Looking down the street, they watched a green van inch away.

Two hours later, Michaud turned up in Sacramento, where she had grown up after a vagabond military-family life. There was money to be had from a waiting welfare check.

After a stop at a check-cashing store, she continued east to South Lake Tahoe. Michaud had business the next day at Douglas County Courthouse - a court date for writing bad checks.

Later that morning, the van steered into the parking lot of the Sundowner Motel at South Lake. Manager Mukesh Patel checked them into Room 5 but noticed nothing out of the ordinary, investigators were later told.

But inside that room Samson's brutalized body would be pushed to the edge, author Robert Scott would write in "Rope Burns," one of two books published on the case.

It was there, Scott wrote, that Samson was tortured before being forced into a van and driven along Highway 88. Near Crater Wash, she was strangled with a length of rope and dumped in the snow.

Dec. 3, 1997

A day had passed and the Samsons and their friends were in a panic. For Christina Samson, it had been a sleepless night following a grindingly slow day since she had heard a message from Vanessa's coworker asking why she hadn't come to work.

She had a "funny feeling." It was simply out of character for Vanessa to not show up for work and fail to go home.

Still she remained hopeful. Vanessa had a good friend in Davis who had planned to come for Thanksgiving but could not make the trip. She might have gone to see him.

But no, family friend Raul Guilliarte had not heard from Vanessa, he told the worried mother.

In a frenzy, friends called friends, and others called hospitals. Nobody had heard from Vanessa since she left for work the day before.

Fliers were crafted. Vincent Samson stayed home from his San Francisco job to help search for his little sister. They had to do everything; he had failed her, he told officials, records show.

Two hundred miles northeast, FBI agents bore down on the Lakeside Inn in Stateline, Nev. Two days earlier, a college student had pegged Daveggio and Michaud in a police photo lineup as the couple who had snatched her in September from a Reno street and raped her before dumping her in a remote area of Placer County.

They drove a van, she told police, one similar to the van now parked at a casino across the street from the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

Agents knocked on the door of Room 133. Michaud was arrested seconds later.

They went to the casino, where Daveggio was playing a slot machine. He was cuffed and hauled away.

Daveggio and Michaud were arrested for the Reno rape and kidnapping, a crime for which they were convicted in 1999. Soon after, authorities announced the pair were prime suspects in Vanessa's kidnapping.

Dec. 4, 1997

With a chaplain in his front seat, Vincent Samson headed home to break the news. Two days had passed since his sister left him with too many questions, and now he had the answer.

"You are going to present your parents and sister with information that will change their lives forever," he said to himself, he later told officials.

Vincent fell through the door with a detective behind him. Christina now knew the answer, too.

"They took my daughter away," she said, according to court records.

A trucker had spotted the body down a snowy embankment about 10:45 that morning, officials explained. "Ness" was not coming home.