DUBLIN — The man suspected of killing two best friends and leaving their naked bodies on the side of a Fremont road three decades ago appeared in court Wednesday before the victims’ families.
David Emery Misch, 57, was charged last week with the February 1986 slayings of Michelle Xavier, 18, and Jennifer Duey, 20. The two women, who were heading back from a birthday party, were also allegedly raped; their bodies were found on Mill Creek Road, according to court documents.
Now, 32 years later, their alleged killer appeared in court in red jail clothes, wearing red-rimmed glasses, to answer to the charges of murder, rape and special circumstances of felony murder during the course of a rape, use of a gun and murder with a prior murder conviction. The allegations could make him eligible for the death penalty.
In court Wednesday before Judge Armando Cuellar at the East County Hall of Justice, Misch looked around the courtroom when he entered.
Seated in the front row were two members of Duey’s family. Beth Duey, Jennifer’s sister, wiped away tears before he appeared, whispering that she just wanted to be in the front row to see him.
“I just miss my sister every day,” said Beth Duey outside the courtroom.
Members of Xavier’s family, plus nearly a dozen Fremont police detectives also appeared in court Wednesday for Misch’s arraignment. The defendant did not enter a plea and will appear in court again later this month.
According to archives of the Oakland Tribune, Duey and Xavier were last seen at a 7-Eleven store by their boyfriends, Xavier driving a 1984 Pontiac Sunbird convertible.
She had playfully hopped on the back of her boyfriend, Matt Stinhilver, kissed him on the cheek and told him, “I’ll just see you tomorrow,” he told this newspaper in February 1986.
But more than two hours later, the two women’s bodies were found on the secluded Mill Creek Road, naked and covered in blood. Details emerged later from police at the time that one woman had been shot, the other strangled. Xavier’s car was found at the Mission Valley Shopping Center in Fremont, several miles away from the 7-Eleven.
The two women had met at Notre Dame High School in San Jose, a private all-girls Catholic high school that still exists today. Both women worked as department stores clerks, Duey at the then-named Emporium-Capwell in Fremont and Xavier at Nordstrom in San Mateo.
Despite reward money offered at the time, and the Duey family hiring their own private investigator, the case went unsolved for 32 years, until this month.
Fremont police said this week that the break came when cold-case Detective Jacob Blass began to re-examine case files and several pieces of evidence — including some that had been processed for DNA in recent years. The DNA results identified Misch as the main suspect, authorities said. Misch had lived in the Fremont area at the time of the deaths and was a known commercial burglar and drug user, but police don’t believe the women had any history or contact with him before they were killed.
According to archives of the Oakland Tribune, at the age of 21, Misch was arrested for the assault of an 18-year-old woman who was picking flowers in Oakland. He allegedly grabbed her from behind, brandished a knife and told her he was going to kill her. He was on parole at the time from the California Youth Authority for charges of rape, assault and burglary.
He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1990 for the December 1989 slaying of 36-year-old Margaret N. Ball, who was found stabbed to death in her Hayward home. He is currently serving a 18 year prison sentence.
Harry Harris contributed to this report.