Missing Girl: Michaela Joy Garecht--CA--11/19/1988

[Kelly]

Michaela Joy Garecht



DOB:  Jan 24, 1979
Missing:  Nov 19, 1988
Age at time of disappearance: 9
Sex:  Female
Race:  White
Hair:  Blonde
Eyes:  Blue
Height:  4'8" (142 cm)
Weight:  75 lbs (34 kg)
Missing From:
HAYWARD
CA
United States


SUSPECT COMPOSITE


Sex:  Male
Race:  White
Hair:  Blonde

 
Michaela was abducted by an unknown individual while trying to retrieve her scooter from him in front of the Rainbow Market on Mission Blvd in Hayward, CA. Suspect was between 18 - 24 years with a slender build. He had a pock marked or pimpled face and dirty blonde hair. He was driving an older model full-size car, possibly a gold or tan 4-door. Michaela was wearing a white t-shirt, pant or shorts, and black cloth shoes with brown plastic soles.

Hayward Police Department (California) - Missing Persons Unit - 1-800-222-3999 Or Your Local FBI 

Family Website: www.myspace.com/MissingMichaela

Print a Poster: http://www.projectjason.org/aan/AAN_MichaelaGarecht.pdf

[Kelly]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20041010/ai_n14586615

Michaela kidnapping a mystery years later

Oakland Tribune,  Oct 10, 2004  by Ivan Delventhal, STAFF WRITER

HAYWARD -- It's impossible to predict just how long it will take to heal, to find peace, to let go.

Sharon Murch of Castro Valley, whose 9-year-old daughter, Michaela Joy Garecht, was abducted almost 16 years ago in Hayward, said she managed to find some measure of peace earlier this year.

Peace with God.

Peace with the unanswered questions.

Peace with the mystery man who stole her child.

But now, with Hayward police confirming this week that detectives recently flew out of state to interview a convicted sex offender in connection with the unsolved kidnapping, she's again filled with mixed emotions.

"Just this year, I made my peace with God ... and at that point really and truly I made peace with not ever knowing what happened," Murch said Friday. "In making my peace with God, I've had to make my peace with the person who did it, also."

"The stuff that has come up recently has thrown me a bit," she admitted.

Nov. 19, 1988, was a dark day in Hayward.

It was on that Saturday morning almost 16 years ago that Michaela was snatched up by a man outside a South Hayward store, forced as she screamed into a car and whisked away, never to be seen again.

The blond-haired, blue-eyed fourth-grader was abducted after she and a friend rode their scooters to the Rainbow Market on Mission Boulevard near Lafayette Avenue at about 10:20 a.m. to buy some snacks.

The kidnapping prompted a massive investigation that these many years later continues. No arrests have been made, and Michaela has never been found. Police have sifted through thousands of tips.

Hayward police Sgt. Mark Mosier confirmed this week that two detectives recently flew to Oklahoma to again question a convicted sex offender -- a former Hayward resident -- in connection with the kidnapping.

Detectives had interviewed the man not long after the kidnapping, in part because of his criminal history and the fact that he lived on Lafayette Avenue, within two blocks of the kidnapping site.

Mosier emphasized that the 49-year-old man who, according to court records, moved to Collinsville, Okla. sometime after 1995, is not considered a suspect in Michaela's kidnapping.

"No suspect has been identified," Mosier said. "But even though this is an old case, we're still working aggressively on it."

The ex-con recently questioned by detectives was picked up last month on a 2001 arrest warrant that charged him with failing to update his address as required by the sex offender law, Mosier said. The Oakland Tribune is not publishing the man's name because police have not labeled him a suspect in Michaela's disappearance.

"We felt we needed to take the time to ask him more questions -- it was an opportunity for us to continue following up on some leads," Mosier said. "Unfortunately, the interview netted no new information."

According to court records, the man was convicted in 1987 of felony assault with intent to commit rape and sentenced to two years in state prison. He was freed in January 1988.

Since his arrest in Oklahoma, the man has been brought back to California to face prosecution for failing to update his address -- a lifetime requirement for convicted sex offenders. He is currently in custody at Santa Rita county jail in Dublin on $55,000 bail and is due back in court at the Hayward Hall of Justice this week.

The detectives traveled to Oklahoma on Sept. 9, the day of the man's arrest, and returned to the Bay Area three days later.

"We'll go anywhere, clear across the world, to try and track down new information, to try and solve this case," Mosier said. "Any money we spend trying to solve this case is well worth it."

Though police have discounted the man's potential involvement, Murch said she views the development as a promising sign.

Anyone with information is urged to call Inspector Jim Denholm at 293-7085.

"I'm real hopeful that this is actually the person (responsible)," she said.

Though it took years, Murch said she has accepted that Michaela is most likely dead.

"(Michaela) would be 25 and nobody is going to convince me that she wouldn't have found some way to get in touch with me," Murch said. Now, the most important priority is making sure the kidnapper is removed from society so he cannot harm another child, she said.

"Michaela was a gift from the beginning and even after all the heartache, she's still the greatest gift I've ever received in my life," Murch said. "I believe she's in a good place."

[Linda]

Michaela Joy Garecht

DOB:   Jan 24, 1979
Missing:  Nov 19, 1988
Age Now:  29
Sex:  Female
Race:  White
Hair:  Blonde
Eyes:  Blue
Height:  4'8" (142 cm)
Weight:  75 lbs (34 kg)
Missing From:
Haywood, California
United States



Suspect-Composite

DOB: 
Sex:  Male
Race:  White
Hair:  Blonde
Eyes:  Blue
Height:  Unknown
Weight:  Unknown

Michaela's photo is shown age-progressed to 29 years. She was abducted by an unknown individual while trying to retrieve her scooter from him in front of the Rainbow Market on Mission Blvd in Hayward, CA. Suspect was between 18 - 24 years with a slender build. He had a pock marked or pimpled face and dirty blonde hair. He was driving an older model full-size car, possibly a gold or tan 4-door.

Contact Information:
Hayward Police Department (California)
1-510-293-7000

Print a Poster

[Linda]

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/g/garecht_michaela.html




Top Row and Bottom Left: Garecht, circa 1988;
Bottom Right: Age-progression at age 24 (circa 2003)


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Michaela Joy Garecht

Missing Since: November 19, 1988 from Hayward, California
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: January 24, 1979
Age: 9 years old
Height and Weight: 4'8, 75 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Garecht's nickname is Kayla. Her ears are prominent and both are pierced. Garecht's eyes slant slightly downward. Her teeth were slightly mottled at the time of her 1988 disappearance.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A white t-shirt with "Metro" printed on the front and images of people imprinted on its midsection, denim pants rolled above her knees, flesh-colored nylon stockings, white anklet socks, black cloth shoes with brown plastic soles, and three-inch-long pearl or white-colored earrings that resembled feathers.



Details of Disappearance

Garecht and a friend rode their scooters to the Rainbow Market on Mission Boulevard in Hayward, California on November 19, 1988. The store was two blocks from Garecht's home. Garecht noticed that her friend's scooter had been moved in the parking lot when the girls exited the store; when she went to retrieve it, an unidentified Caucasian male grabbed her and forced her into his vehicle. Garecht's friend went inside the Rainbow Market for assistance, but the abductor was able to escape with Garecht. Neither has been seen again.

The abductor is described as between 18 to 24 years old in 1988, with a pockmarked or pimpled face. He wore a white t-shirt and had longish dirty blonde hair and a slender build. Two sketches of Garecht's abductor are posted below this case summary; the original sketch was later revised. The abductor drove a large older model American-made sedan. It was possibly a four-door vehicle and was cream, gold, or tan in color. The car may have had cement splatters on the sides and lights set into the rear bumper. The front bumper was battered; the vehicle may have previously been in an accident. It appeared to be run-down. The car was last seen speeding south on Mission Boulevard towards nearby Union City, California with Garecht inside.

Two men have been named as possible suspects in Garecht's case. Authorities announced that Timothy Bindner had a possible connection to her disappearance, as well as the disappearances of Ilene Misheloff, Amber Swartz-Garcia, Tara Cossey and Amanda Campbell. A photo of Bindner is posted below this case summary. He maintains his innocence and successfully sued Campbell's hometown of Fairfield, California in 1997 for defamation of character. Bindner, a married sewage treatment plant worker, came to authorities' attention after he began sending birthday greetings to young girls in the East Bay area. One child's parents contacted authorities and handed over a letter Bindner had written to their daughter. The note was printed backwards and could only be deciphered by holding it up to a mirror. Bindner claimed he sent the cards as a kind gesture because the girls were "lonely."

Bindner also visited the Oakmont Cemetery gravesite of Angela Bugay, a five-year-old girl girl who was abducted and murdered in Antioch, California in 1983. A photograph of Bugay is posted below this case summary. Bindner was never considered a suspect in her murder and another man has since been arrested in that case.

Bindner approached many of the mothers of missing girls from the East Bay area offering his assistance, including Swartz-Garcia and Garecht's families. Investigators asked Swartz-Garcia's mother to maintain a quasi-friendship with Bindner in hope of learning if he was connected to any of the girls' cases. She and authorities agreed that Bindner appeared to playing mind games with victims' loved ones and law enforcement. Many people theorize that he enjoyed taunting families into thinking that he may have been involved in the presumed abductions. He was once arrested for annoying two little girls whom he was trying to lure into his van, but the charges were later dropped. Bindner often drove around in a light blue Dodge van with a license plate that said "Lov You." Inside the van was wallpapered with many pictures of children. A photograph of the van is posted below this case summary.

Bindner refers to himself as a "good Samaritan." He asked Linda Golston, a reporter for The San Jose Mercury News, to interview him at Oakmont Cemetery at 4:30 a.m. He played his favorite song on her car stereo, "Jesus, Here's Another Child To Hold." Bindner told Goldston that he thought of the missing girls as "his children." She asked him how he believed the abductions occurred and he said one child was submissive, but another fought back against her assailant. Bindner added that he was "guessing" about the girls' reactions.

Bindner wrote a letter to a law enforcement agency in the late 1980s, stating that he believed the next girl who would be abducted from the area would be nine years old. Garecht disappeared shortly thereafter; she was nine at the time of her abduction. Bindner also sent a holiday card to a profiler for the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) in 1990. The card depicted an image of a young girl holding up four fingers. Campbell vanished in 1991 at the age of four. Search dogs traced Campbell and Swartz-Garcia's scent to Bugay's grave. Authorities never had enough evidence to prove Bindner was connected to their cases, although he was known for visiting the cemetery on occasion. Bindner was given a heroism award by the California State Patrol after assisting victims in the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. He has never been charged in any of the cases.

Curtis Dean Anderson, who was convicted of the 2000 kidnapping and molestation of a young California girl, was also mentioned as a possible suspect in Garecht's case. Investigators searched Anderson's mother's residence in June 2001 for evidence linking him to other missing girls' cases, but nothing was located.

James Daveggio has been considered as a possible suspect as well. He and his former girlfriend, Michelle Lyn Michaud, were charged with the 1997 abduction, rape and murder of Vanessa Lei Swanson. Swanson's remains were discovered approximately five miles from the site of Jaycee Dugard's 1991 California abduction. Photos of Daveggio and Michaud are posted below this case summary. They were also charged with additional counts of sexual assault in unrelated cases in the mid-1990s. In 2002, Michaud and Daveggio were convicted of Swanson's murder and sentenced to death. They are awaiting execution. Michaud claims that she met Daveggio in 1996 and therefore was not involved in Dugard's abduction. There are striking similarities between Michaud and the female suspect in Dugard's case, but the FBI no longer believes she and Daveggio were involved.

In 2004, police announced that they were going to re-interview a convicted sex offender in Oklahoma about Garecht's case. The man, a former Hayward resident who served a year in prison for assault with intent to commit rape, was interviewed for the first time shortly after Garecht's kidnapping. He lived only two blocks from the store where she was kidnapped. He is not being called a suspect in her case.

Garecht remains missing and her case is unsolved.


Left: Bindner, circa 2001; Center: First sketch of possible abductor; Right: Revised sketch of possible abductor


Left: Bindner's van;
Right: Angela Bugay


Left: Daveggio; Right: Michaud, circa 1990s

Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Hayward Police Department
510-293-7272

[Kelly]

Michaela has been placed on Project Jason's 18 Wheel Angels campaign. A special poster has been made for her and can be downloaded and printed for placement. More information about the program, and the link for the poster can be found here:

http://projectjason.org/18wheel.shtml

In addition to the campaign, Michaela is also featured in a national trucking publication, Independent Contractor. This free magazine is distributed in truck stops nationwide and have a circulation of about 150,000.

Through the Gears and Independent Contractor are two of Target Media Partner's many publications. In partnership with Project Jason, they each feature two missing persons each per month. You can pick up your free copies at a local truck stop, but if it's far from you, you may want to call and ask if they carry that magazine. These are NOT with the regular for purchase magazines.

You can also see the current campaign information on this Target Media Partners site: http://www.thetrucker.com/Features/Missing_Week_1.aspx

We hope this helps in the search for Michaela. Please consider printing and placing a poster in businesses in your community.



Thank you.

Kelly, Project Jason

[Kelly]

A story written for the campaign by Michaela's mother, Sharon:

My daughter, Michaela Joy Garecht, was kidnapped on November 19, 1988, at the age of 9. She has never been found.


Sharon, holding a photo of Michaela

Michaela was kidnapped when she and a friend went three blocks to our neighborhood market one sunny Saturday morning. They had ridden scooters to the market, and when they came out one was missing. Michaela spotted it in the parking lot and went to get it. When she bent over to pick it up, a man jumped out of the car next to it, grabbed her from behind, threw her in his car, and took off with her. The man was described as being in his early twenties at the time, with long, scraggly dark blonde hair, with acne so bad it looked like boils. He was driving a boxy tannish-gold older full-size American car. Michaela's friend witnessed the kidnapping and went immediately for help. In spite of an immediate police response, Michaela has never been found, and neither has her kidnapper. It has now been almost twenty years.

For those of you who never knew her, how can I tell you about Michaela? She was beautiful. She was loving. She was very kind and nurturing. She loved God down deep in her heart. But all those words can capture her about as well as a box of crayons can capture a gossamer rainbow. She was my first child, the first person ever to reach out and call me mommy. She was a very large piece of my heart.

I don’t know where she is now, whether she is still alive or not. I used to think that she couldn’t be alive, because if she was, sometime in all the years she would have found a way to contact me. But I’ve thought that perhaps she might be in a foreign country, unable to speak the language, or figure out how to use the phones to make an international call, and eventually giving up and blending in with her surroundings. In the last year, I had a lead regarding a young woman who did not really recall where she came from, or who her family was. It is certainly not impossible that she could have suffered amnesia whether from psychological stress or physical injury. Some have suggested that perhaps she has become part of a lifestyle of drugs and perhaps prostitution, and she feels too ashamed to come home, thinks we would not accept her. This, of course, is NOT true, and I want to cry out to her, “Michaela, if you are out there, please, please come home.” If you do read this, Michaela, call the police, or call us. We are living at Nana’s house now, and have the same phone number, although I guess I should tell you that since you were here, our area code has been changed from 415 to 510.

A part of me finds comfort in the thought that Michaela has probably spent the last twenty years in God’s arms, where there is no sorrow, no pain, no tears. But I went a few years ago to a friend’s father’s funeral, and I sat and wept throughout it, because my friend’s father had a satin pillow to rest his head on, and what did my baby have? If she is not in this world any longer, please someone tell me where she is so I can put her to rest!

Whether she is alive, or whether she is not, I cannot give up. She will always be alive in my heart, and I thank you for keeping her alive in your hearts as well, through reading this.

For more information about Michaela’s kidnapping, please visit my website at www.myspace.com/missingmichaela If you have any information on her whereabouts, please call the Hayward Police Department at 1-800-222-3999. Even after all these years, they are still actively working the case.

Thank you.

Sharon, Michaela’s mom

[LoriDavis]

http://www.insidebayarea.com/crime/ci_11017627

Girl's abduction haunts Hayward 20 years later
By Kristofer Noceda
The Daily Review
Updated: 11/18/2008 07:41:26 PM PST

Today — 10:15 a.m., to be precise — marks the 20th anniversary of the kidnapping of 9-year-old Michaela Garecht.

The South Hayward girl was last seen being thrown into the back seat of a car in the parking lot of a market near her family's home.. The case remains unsolved.

Michaela's mother, Sharon Murch, has since moved to San Leandro. Hardened over the years from managing the grief from losing her firstborn and not knowing exactly what happened to her, Murch said she's been able to come to "some sort of normalcy in life."

Since the kidnapping, Murch has raised three grown children, with a teenager currently attending school in Castro Valley. She also has remarried and has a teenage stepdaughter.

"You never know where life is going to take you," Murch said this week. "I certainly never thought on the morning of November 19, 1988, that the day would take me where it did."

Day of abduction

It was the first day of Thanksgiving break when Michaela and her best friend were riding their scooters. The two girls decided to leave Michaela's home on Cornell Avenue in South Hayward and head over to the Rainbow Market, on Mission Boulevard near Lafayette Avenue, to buy soda, candy and other treats. (The store is now called the Mexico Super market.)

The girls were on their way home and halfway across the parking lot when they realized they had forgotten their scooters. But when they returned to the place where they had left them, Michaela's was missing. Reports show the scooter was spotted near a parked car and Michaela went to retrieve it. As she bent over to pick up the scooter, a young, blond-haired man snatched her from behind and stuffed her into the back seat of a large car.

Botched response

Michaela's friend immediately ran back to the market for help and a clerk subsequently called police to report the kidnapping. The clerk — who thought she had seen the man drive by earlier — offered a wrong description to a police dispatcher, according to Dennis J. Oliver, a former reporter who covered the case for The Daily Review.

Oliver, now 45, reviewed 911 tapes during his coverage and recalls the dispatcher relaying a description provided by the store clerk who said "I seen him earlier."

"Never did she say 'I witnessed the kidnapping'," Oliver said during a phone interview Tuesday.

The false description that went out to police and the public was a white male in his 30s with a mustache and driving a burgundy car.

But it wasn't until after police interviewed Michaela's friend that they were able to release a composite sketch of the suspect and a new description of the vehicle two days later.

"Here's a drawing of this completely different person, and for two days the Hayward Police Department allowed media to publish false descriptions of the suspect," Oliver said. "The first opportunity and best opportunity to rescue this girl was immediately after it happened, and for two days they were looking for the wrong person. The dispatcher took information from the wrong person — and from there on out communication was just not handled correctly in the crucial first 24 to 48 hours."

The new description was of a slender white man with dirty-blond, shoulder-length hair, in his late teens or early 20s, with a pockmarked or pimply complexion, wearing a white T-shirt. His vehicle was described as a large, beat-up, older-model car — possibly gold- or tan-colored, with four doors.

Media attention

Michaela's kidnapping caught national attention and posters with her photo were featured on milk cartons. "America's Most Wanted" and other television programs aired reports about the case, each one bringing in new calls from people eager to share rumors, speculation and possible clues.

There also have been reports that the FBI was able to obtain the suspect's palm print from the scooter. Lt. Christine Orrey of the Hayward Police Department refused to comment on the matter and would not confirm or deny that a palm print had been retrieved.

In 1994, The Daily Review reported that police followed up more than 15,000 leads, all to no avail.

One of those false leads came from Indiana prison inmate Roger Haggard, who in December 1992 told authorities he helped a friend bury Michaela's body in the Hunter's Point area of San Francisco.

Officials began to question the validity of Haggard's claim, however, because he changed his account — and even told authorities the child's body was buried in a Union City gladiolus field.

"If I knew where to dig, I would," Murch said during a Daily Review interview in 1993.

Haggard, who was serving an 11-year prison term at the time, was flown to the Bay Area. After spending eight hours in the field, he admitted he made up the story because he wanted to give the family "peace of mind."

His sentence was subsequently lengthened by six-and-a-half years as a judge ruled the emotional distress to Murch was "incalculable."

Haggard also was ordered to pay $6,836 in compensation to Murch, who at the time was on stress disability from her job as a secretary. She was later fired.

New leads

Two decades later, police continue to investigate the case — with the most recent lead coming in just a few weeks ago, said Orrey, who would not release any details because police do not want to compromise the investigation.

"The case is made difficult to solve for many reasons, not the least of which is the thousands of leads that have come in from so many sources," Orrey said. "There are hundreds of registered sex offenders in the area, hundreds of possible suspects. We won't give up. We will continue to investigate leads that come in and continue to hope that we can find Michaela and bring her abductor to justice."

Murch said she credits the Hayward Police Department for keeping up the investigation.

Remembering Michaela

Today, Murch plans to revisit the area where her daughter was last seen, and flood the streets with fliers and yellow-and-pink ribbons.

"This is my way of keeping Michaela alive," she said. "There's also that chance that if she's alive somewhere, perhaps we can reach her and she can still see that we are looking for her. We still love her."

For more information, visit www.myspace.com/missingmichaela. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Hayward Police Inspector Rob Lampkin at 510-293-7079.

[Kelly]

AAN Poster notify sent  Code 34

Help us find the missing: Become an AAN Member
http://www.projectjason.org/awareness.html

[Jenn]

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Cold-Case-Whatever-Happened-to-this-Missing-Bay-Area-Girl.html

Cold Case: Whatever Happened to This Bay Area Child? Girl missing for 20 years

Updated 6:43 AM PST, Thu, Nov 20, 2008

Michaela Garecht went missing 20 years ago in a Hayward parking lot.
 
For the last two decades a Bay Area mother has mourned for her lost daughter.

It was 20 years ago Wednesday, 9-year-old Michaela Garecht was kidnapped from a Hayward parking lot.

"We have tried for 20 years to reach out to someone who may have some information about this kidnapping," her mother, Sharon Murch, said.

For the last 20 years, on Nov. 19, Sharon Murch, has stood in this Hayward parking lot to search for answers.

"To someone who would have a lead that may help us find out what happened to Mikhaela," she said.

The ribbons from past years still hang in the trees near the parking stall where a stranger abducted her 9-year-old daughter.

"I feel this overwhelming need to keep Mikhala alive, the only way to keep her alive is in people's memories," she said.

Michaela and a friend had ridden scooters to the store to buy candy.
 
When they came out one of the scooters was laying in the parking lot next to a car.

She went to pick it up.

"A man jumped out of the car, grabbed her from behind, threw her in the car and took off with her," she said.

Over the years, police have sifted through thousands of leads.
 
One prison inmate lead investigators to where he said Michaela's body was buried.

He later admitted he'd made up the story.

"We've had leads come in the past 20 years we've worked over 13,000 leads the most recent one came in a couple weeks ago," said Officer Chris Orrey.

But without concrete answers, Murch does what she can.

Her friends and her tie ribbons around the parking lot and tape up flyers just in case.

"If Mikhala is still out there somewhere then perhaps she'll see it and i want her to know we still love her and we're still looking for her," she said.

Murch said a small part of her still believes her daughter could be alive somewhere and that's the part that brings her back here year after year.

"The one thing that I do believe is that I will see her again and I will hold her in my arms again," Murch said. "Whether it's in this life or the next. And that's my hope."

Investigators said they've gone back to reaxamine some early leads in the case.

They would not provide any more detail on the lead they received just a couple weeks ago.

[Jenn]

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12326297

East Bay killer seeks new trial; juror Timothy Bindner was suspect in girls' disappearances

By Malaika Fraley
Bay Area News Group
Posted: 05/08/2009 09:45:28 AM PDT
Updated: 05/08/2009 09:45:30 AM PDT

A Martinez man convicted of killing his 16-year-old son is asking for a new trial because a juror once was a suspect in the still-unsolved disappearances of four Bay Area girls.

Deputy Public Defender Rebecca Brackman is arguing before a Contra Costa County Superior Court judge this morning that Timothy Bindner misrepresented himself to get on the jury that convicted 43-year-old Turkish businessman Erhan Kayik of killing his son earlier this year.

In a motion to the court, Brackman said Bindner concealed during jury selection that he was a high-profile suspect in the kidnapping investigations surrounding the disappearances of Amber Swartz-Garcia, 7, of Pinole, and Michaela Garecht, 9, of Hayward, in 1988; Ilene Misheloff, 13, of Dublin, in 1990; and Amanda "Nikki" Campbell, 4, of Fairfield, in 1991.

However, prosecutor Colleen Gleason, who wants the conviction to stand, said no one asked Bindner the right questions that would have revealed his former notoriety.

Bindner could not be reached for comment Thursday night.

Bindner, now 61 and living in San Pablo, was never arrested or charged, but publicity surrounding police suspicions about him reached a national level. He always maintained his innocence and in 1997 won a $90,000 settlement in a defamation lawsuit against the city of Fairfield based on the public backlash he and his family endured.

Later that year, forensic psychologist John Philpin released his book about
Advertisement
the kidnappings. The book, "Stalemate," chronicles Bindner's odd behavior when he injected himself into search for the missing girls and the lives of the victims' family members.

"This case is a murder case with a child victim, and Mr. Bindner's prior history shows he has a very intense and personal interest in cases involving child victims," Brackman wrote. "Any past experience where potential jurors might be particularly interested or sensitive because of the nature of the killing was unambiguously pursed in the jury questionnaire &

"Mr. Binder wanted to be on this jury and withheld or minimized information that may have lead to his removal from the jury or even any further inquiry from the court, the prosecutor or defense counsel," Brackman wrote.

Kayik was convicted Feb. 20 of second-degree murder in the July 4, 2007, death of Volkan Kayik, who he strangled and then buried in the Sierra mountains. Gleason argued at trial that Kayik killed the boy and hid the body after causing the teenager to bleed during an argument because he feared jail, having previously been warned by a social worker not to abuse his son. Brackman, seeking a manslaughter conviction, argued that Kayik suffers a brain injury that makes it difficult to process stress so, when provoked by his son, he lost control and killed in the heat of passion.

The case was nearing an end when, Gleason said, someone from the district attorney's office recognized Bindner in the jury box. Gleason alerted Brackman and the judge and, after search into his criminal background revealed only a drunk in public arrest, the attorneys agreed to allow Bindner to remain on the panel.

Brackman said she was unaware of Bindner's full background until jury deliberations and, upon reading "Stalemate," learned things about Bindner that contradicted his answers on his jury questionnaire.

Gleason argues that Bindner did not contradict himself and, rather, the 33-page juror questionnaire created by Brackman failed to solicit his relevant past. Some jurors, including Bindner, were asked if a friend or family member had ever been the subject of a criminal investigation, but not whether they had personally been the subject of one — a common defense tactic, according to Gleason.

Gleason said Bindner did disclose the past suspicions against him when he was a prospective juror in the high-profile, 2005 murder case against Scott Dyleski, who was 17 when he was convicted of killing his Orinda neighbor, Pamela Vitale.

Gleason said there is no evidence Bindner's past rendered him incapable of being a fair and impartial juror in the Kayik case, while Brackman objects to his role during deliberations. Other jurors told attorneys that he relayed personal experiences, such as being choked, in an effort to persuade them to convict Kayik of first-degree murder.

"He was certainly the most adamant member of the jury and he did state almost immediately, contrary to judge's instructions, that he formed an opinion," Kayik juror Roger McIntosh told the Times after learning about Bindner's history. "I agree with (the verdict) being thrown out because he clearly had influence to some extent over the jury. He seemed like a decent guy, but he shouldn't have been seated."

[La Vina]

https://www.findthemissing.org/cases/49

NamUs - National Missing Persons Data System - Michaela Garecht # 49


http://www.doenetwork.org/

The Doe Network: Case File 181DFCA - Michaela Joy Garecht


http://www.amw.com/missing_children/brief.cfm?id=23712

AMW.com | Michaela Garecht - Missing Child

[La Vina]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/30/jaycee-dugard-unsolved-killings

Police in Jaycee Dugard case focus on spate of unsolved killings

Search of Garrido home and neighbouring house relates to nine murders in San Francisco Bay area, say authorities

Sunday 30 August
Ed Pilkington in New York and Bobbie Johnson in San Francisco

Police from Antioch, the town near San Francisco where Jaycee Dugard was held hostage for 18 years by a sex offender until her dramatic release last week, will meet tomorrow to discuss reopening more than 10 cases concerning murdered and missing women in the area.

Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have pleaded not guilty to 29 counts, including kidnapping, rape and unlawful imprisonment, after they were discovered last Wednesday to have been hiding Dugard and the two children she had borne her attacker, in tents and sheds in their garden.

Dugard had been missing since being snatched in 1991, when she was 11, outside her house in South Lake Tahoe, about 170 miles away.

Detectives are now homing in on killings and missing persons reports in and around Antioch, in the suspicion that Garrido – known by neighbours as "creepy Phil" – might have been involved in many more incidents. Police have indicated they have reasons for pursuing the investigation, but have declined to give details.

Throughout the weekend forensic and homicide officers searched the Garrido home in Walnut Avenue, Antioch, using metal detectors. They dug holes in the backyard, pored over scrap heaps and used a chainsaw to clear vegetation. They also extended the search to the next door house where Garrido, 58, is understood to have been caretaker until its current occupant moved in three years ago.

Local authorities have indicated that the search of the Garrido property and the house next door relates to a string of nine murders that occurred between 1998 and 2002 in Pittsburg, a town of almost 60,000 in the San Francisco Bay area just seven miles from Garrido's home.

The victims' bodies were all found in a remote industrial zone in Pittsburg and neighbouring Bay Point. It is understood that the methods of killing bore similarities and that Garrido used to work in an industrial park on the waterfront close to where several bodies were discovered.

A number of women were found beaten, strangled or stabbed and dumped in the area within a two-month period in 1998-99. They included three women alleged to be working as prostitutes, Jessica Frederick, 24, Valerie Schultz, 27 and Rachel Cruise, 32. The body of a 15-year-old, Lisa Norrell, was also found at around the same time. Norrell, who was adopted from Mexico as a baby by a Californian family, had been in Antioch to attend a rehearsal for a friend's coming-of-age party. Walking home along the short, dark, stretch of highway a few miles from Garrido's house, Norrell was attacked and asphyxiated. Her shoes were found the next morning by the side of the road, and her body was discovered eight days later near a landscaping firm further along the highway. Police did not say whether she was sexually abused.

Lisa's mother, Minnie Norrell, said on local television that police had told her they were now searching for clues to her daughter's death. "I think I started shaking. I'm hopeful that's who it is, just so there's an end. There will never be closure but there will be an end," she told KTVU.

John Conaty, one of two detectives who led the Norrell case, is now an inspector and is believed to be involved in the investigation into Garrido's activities. The other detective, Raymond Giacomelli, was killed in a shoot-out with a drug dealer in 2003.


Other cases in which the police have shown renewed interest since Garrido's arrest include that of Michaela Garecht, who, in 1988, was kidnapped, aged nine, from Hayward, about an hour's drive from the Garrido home, and has not been seen since. There is also the unsolved case of a 17-year-old girl murdered a few months before Garrido kidnapped and raped a woman in 1976, for which he was imprisoned for 11 years.

Over the weekend details began to emerge about the conditions in which Dugard and her children were kept. They lived in an area about the size of a tennis court with an earth floor under tents and sheds. The "backyard within a backyard" was kept obscured from neighbours by an intricate system of tarpaulins, with entry only through a narrow opening shielded by shrubs. Part of the construction was sound-proofed and this section is where it is believed the two daughters, now aged 11 and 15 and called Scarlett or Starlite and Angel, were born.

Photographs have been released showing women's clothes hung on a makeshift rack inside a tent, and a cluttered work area with haphazard shelves and food containers and objects strewn over chairs and on the floor.

Among the 20 or so books on the shelves were several volumes dedicated to cats, and a self-help book on raising families called Self-Esteem: a Family Affair. There were toys and crayons dotted around, a children's swing outside one of the tents, and a vase of flowers.

The possibility that Garrido could be linked to a much greater series of tragedies has caused consternation, mixed with hope of new leads, across the Bay area. In South Lake Tahoe, where Dugard used to live until her abduction, banners and ribbons have been tied to hundreds of trees and posts, all in pink, the colour of the clothes she was wearing that fateful morning of 10 June 1991.

[Kelly]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/three-lost-girls-linked-to-garrido-1779891.html

Three lost girls linked to Garrido

By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
9/1/09

The story of Philip Garrido, the convicted rapist accused of abducting Jaycee Lee Dugard and holding her captive in his backyard for 18 years, darkened further yesterday when he was linked to the disappearance of three other schoolchildren.

Police searching 1554 Walnut Avenue in Antioch, where Garrido held his 11-year-old victim and fathered her two daughters, say they are searching for evidence that may implicate him in the cases of Amanda Cambell, Ilene Misheloff and Michaela Garecht.

All three were snatched from the street, in outwardly similar circumstances to Jaycee, between 1988 and 1991, after Garrido left prison on parole. None of the abductions – which all took place in broad daylight, within an hour's drive of Garrido's home – was solved.

Michaela, nine, was thrown into the back of a car outside a supermarket in nearby Hayward in November 1988, three months after Garrido was freed from prison for rape and kidnapping. With blonde hair and blue eyes, she bore a striking resemblance to Jaycee.

"If Jaycee can be alive, Michaela can be alive," her mother, Michaela Murch, told reporters. "It really has my hopes up. I would give anything for her to be able to come home and hold her in my arms and give her the love I've been holding on to for the past 20 years."

Ilene, 13, went missing on her way to an ice-skating lesson in nearby Dublin, in January 1989. Amanda was abducted in Fairfield, 40 miles away, while cycling to a friend's house in 1991. She was four years old. There were no witnesses. None of the three girls' bodies has been found.

A team of 40 detectives is combing through the tents and sheds on Garrido's property where Ms Dugard, who is now 29, is believed to have been hidden away with her two daughters. Sniffer dogs were also brought in to help search for human remains. The property next door was sealed off and searched at the weekend after it emerged that Garrido acted as caretaker there during the early 1990s, building another series of sheds in its sprawling garden. The properties are in a blue-collar neighbourhood on a semi-rural patch of land near the Sacramento River.

Police have also declared Garrido a "person of interest" in the murders of up to 10 prostitutes who were strangled, stabbed and dumped in ditches near Antioch in the late 1990s. A spokesman said Garrido "had access" to the various crime scenes, which were all on industrial parks, but did not elaborate further. So far the evidence linking Garrido to other cases is circumstantial at best. But he has a history of sexual violence.

[LoriDavis]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8451296

Garrido Investigators Unearth Bone Fragments
Jaycee Dugard's Captor Eyed in Other Missing Girl Cases
By SARAH NETTER, MIKE VON FREMD, RONNA WALDMAN and ARIANE NALTY
Aug. 31, 2009  

Investigators looking for links between Phillip and Nancy Garrido, the couple accused of kidnapping and imprisoning Jaycee Dugard for 18 years, and other missing children in the area today unearthed bone fragments at a property Phillip Garrido frequently used.

Phillip Garrido forced his kidnapped victim to live in squalid conditions.

More PhotosContra Costa Sheriff's Department spokesman Jimmy Lee said a cadaver dog sniffed out the bone fragments and they were taken to a lab for examination. Police do not yet know if they are human or animal.

"We are taking very seriously the possibility that he could be connected to some others," San Francisco FBI Special Agent Joseph Schadler told ABCNews.com today.

The revelation that Garrido is being investigated for other missing children is in addition to probes by detectives who say that Garrido is a person of interest in a string of prostitute murders.

Rod Garecht told ABC News that police have contacted him looking for any connection between Jaycee's 1991 abduction when she was 11 and the 1988 kidnapping of his 9-year-old daughter Michaela.

"Anything to keep her in the news and keep people talking about her is good," Garecht said today.

Like Jaycee Dugard, Michaela Garecht was grabbed off the street in broad daylight, pulled into a stranger's car in front of witnesses. His daughter, with her dirty-blonde hair and wide smile, could be Jaycee's twin.

Michaela would now be 30, a year older than Jaycee who was found alive last week at age 29 along with the two daughters fathered by Phillip Garrido.

When Garecht saw the story about Jaycee Dugard last week, Garecht said he wondered if the woman police had found was actually Michaela.

"When I saw her, the picture they showed of her as a child looked a lot like my daughter," he said. "I kept thinking it was Michaela and not that other girl."

Though police have confirmed Jaycee's identity, "there's always a glimmer of hope," Garecht said.

Michaela's abduction was witnessed by a friend, Garecht said after the two girls had finally won hard-bargained permission for a scooter trip to the corner store for sweets, about a block away.

Garecht said that one of the girls' scooters was moved from near the store's entrance to leaning against a car in the parking lot. It was his daughter who ran over to retrieve the scooter and when she did, the kidnapper yanked her into the car right in front of her friend.

"There's still a possibility that she's alive," Garecht said, although he added, "not much possibility."

Michaela Garecht and Jaycee Dugard were two in a string of young girls who disappeared in the late 1980s and 1990s. Schadler said that they are looking specifically at abductions that took place after Garrido was paroled in the late 1980s after serving prison time for kidnapping and rape.

"The issue with Jaycee being found is just something that reinforces our hope," Mike Misheloff told ABCNews.com.
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[La Vina]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/richmond/detail?entry_id=46624

                         
Michaela Joy Garecht
                                                                                Jaycee Dugard

Jaycee's case gives hope to mother of missing girl

September 01 2009 at 07:32 AM
Posted By: Michelle Richmond

November 19 of this year marks 21 years since Michaela Joy Garecht was kidnapped from a parking lot in Hayward, California. She was nine years old. Her friend saw a man grab Michaela and force her into a car. Michaela's mother, Sharon Murch, has never stopped searching, and Jaycee Dugard's recovery 18 years after her kidnapping has renewed Murch's hope for some sort of information about what happened to Michaela

On her blog this week, Murch has written about her hopes that there is a connection between Michaela's case and Jaycee's. Michaela and Jaycee looked "a great deal alike." Michaela went missing from Hayward in 1988, Jaycee from South Lake Tahoe in 1991. Like Jaycee, Michaela was

dragged into a car, and the car her kidnapper was driving, "an older, tannish-gold, full-size sedan, boxy in shape, with body damage," was similar to the car recovered from Garrido's back yard. (Scroll down to see the sketch of Michaela's kidnapper.)

"Before this happened I had been thinking perhaps Michaela might be alive, perhaps she might come home," Murch wrote to me by email yesterday. "There has been so much going on lately, after twenty years, and why?"

Dugard had been living in tents with her two daughters on the property of her alleged kidnapper and rapist, Phillip Garrido, in unincorporated Antioch. It has also been widely reported that a neighbor called police in 2006 to say that five women and girls were living in Garrido's back yard. Murch speculates on her blog about one of the unidentified women:

Could it have been Michaela? One of the key things the neighbor mentioned is that the girls "all looked the same," and everyone has commented on the striking similarities between Jaycee and Michaela...Who are the other girls who were kept in the back yard? If some came and went, where did they come from and go to?

On August 27, Murch wrote of her elation at hearing the news that Jaycee was alive, elation which was followed by more sobering thoughts:


And as the day went on, I began to acknowledge that this probably wasn't going to lead to a solution in Michaela's case, and that if it did, it likely wouldn't be a good one. If this guy had kidnapped Michaela in 1988, and then had kidnapped Jaycee in 1991, and she had never seen Michaela, that would not bode well for Michaela... But you never know. This guy seemed to be some kind of a would-be cult leader. Perhaps he had followers, and perhaps they had other people's little girls also.

It is probable that Garrido, who told neighbors that he was a "sex addict," knew other sex offenders. According to an article in the Telegraph, "Neighbours have described how unsavoury looking men arrived by car at his house, got drunk, took the drug crystal meth and lined up outside a tent." The LA Times reports that Garrido's zip code is home to more than 100 registered sex offenders, dozens of whom were convicted for crimes against children, some of whom live within easy walking distance of Garrido's property. A search of the sex offender registry for that zip code turns up a map rampant with tiny red rectangles, the code for offenses against children; clicking on the rectangles leads to a photograph of the sex offender, along with his address and the nature of his crimes.

On her blog, Murch shared a poem that nine-year-old Michaela wrote the week before she was kidnapped. Michaela said the poem "was about people who had been kidnapped and were being held captive:"

The people knock on doors of steel
The people knock, the people kneel
They think of things that aren't real
Outside the doors of steel
The people walk, the people know
That outside those doors
The people know
The people think that you may say
The people think that they, too, may
They lack the confidence you have
They think it's real, the dreams you have
The dreams they feel

On August 27, Murch wrote of the poem, "I've always believed it held some mysterious key to what happened to Michaela, but what? Today I just kept coming back to what Michaela had said. 'It's about people who have been kidnapped and are being held captive.' She didn't say it's about people who have been kidnapped and killed. They were being held captive. They were alive."

America's Most Wanted, which featured Michaela's story 20 years ago, will be in the area to do a second piece on her next week. The episode will tentatively air on October 3rd. Watch a recent Channel 2 story about Michaela here.

Murch first wrote to me in June 2008, after having read a a novel I wrote about a missing child. "Over the years, I have taken a lot of criticism for saying that I think my daughter is probably most likely not alive," Murch wrote. "While it was very painful for me to consider my daughter's death, to live every day thinking about the million different ways your child could be suffering is the stuff of madness. Who could ever make peace with that?"

So opening up new hopes also opens up old wounds. But one thing that so many parents of missing children talk about is the horror of not knowing, a horror that remains, no matter how many years pass. The wounds are always there. Maybe there is no connection whatsoever between Michaela's case and Jaycee's. But perhaps there is. And perhaps Jaycee's recovery will lead to some answers for other families.

In a message to Michaela on her website, Murch writes, "In the days after you were kidnapped, I'd stand in the doorway gazing down the street, looking for your little blonde head bobbing towards home. For weeks I wouldn't leave the house because I was waiting for you to call...It has been over twenty years now, and my waiting has changed over those years, but it has not ended. I am still here, and still waiting for you to come home.


If you have any information about Michaela, please contact Inspector Robert Lampkin at the Hayward Police Department: (510) 293-7079, or Special Agent Marty Parker at the San Francisco FBI:(510)251-4169



The man who abducted 9-year-old Michaela Joy Garecht from a Hayward parking lot in 1988