Where is michaela garecht

Sharon Murch speaks to the press about her missing daughter in at the Hayward police station. A police sketch of the man seen forcing a screaming Michaela Garecht into a car outside a market in Hayward. For more than three decades, the disappearance of Michaela Garecht has perplexed investigators in Alameda County: Who kidnapped the 9-year-old girl in a supermarket parking lot in Hayward, as she shopped for candy and sodas with a friend days before Thanksgiving in ?

On Monday, authorities said they had their answer: a man already convicted of one murder and charged with two others from the late s. Authorities said Misch, now 59, lured Michaela away from witnesses by moving her scooter to the back area of the parking lot of the Rainbow Market on Nov.

Her photo with blond bangs and a large, toothy grin was plastered around the region for years after her disappearance, as detective after detective worked to solve the case. The kidnapping was the second of three in a short time period, leaving Bay Area parents gripped with fear. Amber Swartz-Garcia, 7, had been taken in Pinole months earlier and ice skater Ilene Misheloff, 13, disappeared shortly after while walking home from school in Dublin.

Misch was charged in with the Fremont double homicide — the killings of Michelle Xavier and Jennifer Duey — and was taken to the Santa Rita Jail to await trial. Misch was convicted in of murdering Margaret Ball in her Hayward home a year earlier, and sentenced to 18 years to life in prison.

Detectives tried interviewing Misch on Dec. His lawyer, Ernesto Castillo, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Buried bones. None of it was relevant. Fox eyes. She also remembers Trina seeing him and his car everywhere: at a baseball game, at a restaurant.

Trina wanted to be helpful—and tough. When her older brother was too scared to take out the trash, Trina took it out for him. She sat through weekly meetings with a counselor, developing headaches so bad that she felt like she was going to throw up.

She worried about the publicity. They moved to Missouri. By eighth grade, Trina was back in Hayward. Now Trina lives in Texas. She is 41, married with three children. She has a new last name but uses her old one.

After Misch was charged, she went silent. She was done talking. When she eventually spoke, she was distant, defensive. Years earlier, she had said she was scared to meet Michaela again.

Two of them. Also best friends. Also returning from an East Bay convenience store. Women, not girls, but just barely. Michelle Xavier was 18; Jennifer Duey, Their bodies were found naked and covered in blood on the side of a Fremont road in After DNA evidence identified Misch as the main suspect, he was charged with their murders in Murch says he will be tried for all three murders together. Months before Misch was charged, detectives flew to Texas. She is aware of the parallels between the cases.

When Trina was a senior in high school, Murch asked her to go on the Maury Povich television talk show. Murch had a new husband and a new baby. Trina had photos of Michaela in face paint acting goofy.

When Trina was in her 20s, she was subpoenaed to testify in another case. She no longer recalls the name of the child victim. Everything she said was challenged. While the practice of examining latent prints—unintentional reproductions of friction ridge areas of skin—is more than a century old, there have been technological developments. Once the prints are illuminated using a chemical or light source and are captured, they are compared with either known prints that have been submitted or prints generated by an automated database.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation started using its first automated database in and a newer version in , says Melissa Gische, a latent print technical leader at the FBI Laboratory. Whether or not the database is used, it is the examiner who makes the comparisons, using three main characteristics—ending ridges, dividing ridges, and dots—and the different configurations they make.

According to Gische, the most frequently referenced large-scale study to assess the accuracy of examiners was published in by the FBI and Noblis, a nonprofit science and technology organization that contracts with the federal government. He has received most of the reports and is investigating every potential lead to demonstrate that someone else could have been involved. His trial is scheduled for November. Murch did not attend his preliminary hearings. She moved to rural Iowa a year and a half ago, around the time her breast cancer returned.

Stage IV. She has chemotherapy appointments on Wednesdays, the same day the calls about the trial sometimes take place. She has heard that Misch stabbed his victims. She has been told that Michaela was killed quickly. Michaela is in the life to come. Maybe she will tell him about the anger. How she used to yell at drivers and smash dishes in an alleyway. An arrest in Michaela's kidnapping and murde3r was announced Monday, Dec.

Hayward Police Department. She said upon learning about the suspect, she asked the hard questions of the cold case detective — including the method through which Misch killed his other alleged victims. The answers were not easy but were something she had to hear, she indicated. It has always been about Michaela. Paralyzed them with grief and terrorized them with the unknowing of what happened to Michaela.

Their pain was, and remains, indescribable. Now they got somebody. When they came out with their goodies, one of the scooters had been moved behind a car parked in a space deeper into the parking lot. An arrest in the girl's kidnapping and murder was announced Monday, Dec.

Michaela screamed as her horrified playmate, also 9 years old, watched the abductor drive away, a probable cause affidavit in the case states. The snatched girl was never seen alive again.

Her friend described the kidnapper as a white man in his 20s, about 6 feet tall and of slender build. He had blue eyes and long, dirty-blond hair. MIchaela Garecht cold case arrest A sketch shows the man witnesses saw abduct Michaela Garecht, 9, from the parking lot of a Hayward, Calif. An arrest in the girl's abduction and murder was announced Monday, Dec. The scooter the man had moved was dusted for fingerprints and viable prints were taken from the handlebars and fork.