By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

April 9, 2002

OAKLAND —Defense attorneys for a woman accused of helping kidnap and kill a young Pleasanton woman took aim Monday at the Sacramento County coroner who conducted the victim's autopsy but has since admitted that he has a drug addiction.

Lawyers called into question Dr. Curtis Rollins' examination of the body of Vanessa Samson, 22, discovered in an Alpine County snowbank Dec. 4, 1997, two days after authorities believe she was abducted while walking to work in Pleasanton. Rollins was indicted in Arizona last year on drug charges and later pleaded guilty. He resigned from the medical examiner's post in Coconino County, Ariz., and was sentenced in January to a year of probation.

He has since rejoined the Sacramento office, where he had worked at the time of the autopsy.

James Daveggio, 41, and Michelle Michaud, 43, are accused of abducting Samson, sexually assaulting her, then strangling her with a length of rope. They could face the death penalty if convicted.

Also on Monday, Judge Larry Goodman cautioned Michaud attorney Barry Karl about certain testimony that witnesses called into court by defense attorneys denied saying. Each of two witnesses, Goodman said, "denied major statements attributed to them."

Karl had said that he interviewed the witnesses alone and the notes that he took were his impressions rather than their exact statements.

"I'm not sure where they're going," Samson's brother Vincent said, referring to the defense strategy. "They're kind of on shaky ground."