By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

March 13, 2002

OAKLAND —A day after Vanessa Lei Samson vanished as she walked to work, the woman charged with helping abduct and kill the young Pleasanton woman politely chatted with a Nevada prosecutor about her check-bouncing case, he said Tuesday.

On Dec. 3, 1997, Michelle Lyn Michaud went to the Douglas County Justice Center in Stateline, Nev., where she talked to then-deputy district attorney Alan Buttell, he testified Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court.

Michaud had paid back some of the money a local casino had lost when she passed bad checks, but the woman needed more time to pay off the rest, Buttell said. "I remember her being at ease and very cooperative," Buttell told jurors, recalling his brief conversation with Michaud. "It seemed like I was doing the right thing in giving her an opportunity to pay this back and she seemed appreciative."

After the talk, Buttell said, they went into a courtroom where a judge signed off on the extension, giving Michaud, who by then was wanted by state and federal authorities, until Christmas Eve to cover the debt. Michaud left a short time later, he said.

A day had passed since Samson, 22, disappeared after leaving her Pleasanton home on a short walk to the insurance office where she worked. Police in Pleasanton had taken a missing-persons report and were looking for clues, but found little.

Later that day, Michaud was arrested in a motel room across the street from the courthouse. Federal agents and deputies from the Douglas County Sheriff's Office descended on the area after her van was spotted out front.

"She was very quiet with me," said Aaron Crawford, a Douglas County deputy sheriff who was called to the stand. "She didn't really say a whole lot of anything."

James Daveggio, who also is charged with kidnapping and strangling Samson, was arrested in the motel's casino, said former FBI special agent Bruce Wick. A federal warrant had been issued for Daveggio after a Reno student told authorities she had been snatched from a street and raped in the back of a van in September.

"He was very calm," Wick told jurors.

Daveggio later was convicted in the Reno attack and sentenced to serve nearly 25 years in a federal prison. Michaud was handed a prison term of more than 12 years for her role in that kidnapping after she pleaded guilty and testified against her boyfriend.

On Dec. 4, 1997, a trucker passing through a remote part of Alpine County near Lake Tahoe spotted Samson's body in a snowbank.

Michaud later confessed to the attack on Samson, authorities have said, saying that they promised the 22-year-old woman she would be released alive.

Michaud, 41, and Daveggio, 43, face the death penalty is convicted of the slaying.