The Saturday November 19, 1988 It seemed like a day like any other. The sun was shining brightly, the weekend break was just beginning and Michaela Garecht was regarding to have a great morning with her best friend… but none of that came to fruition.
Minutes following the start of the day, the tragedy would hit the town of Haywardnorth of the state of California, in the United States, where Garecht’s disappearance marked a before and following within the community.
This is the tragic story of the minor who left a shattered family, and an entire country asking for justice. 32 years following his kidnapping, your case was resolved.
Michael’s disappearance
Michaela and Katrina “Trina” Rodriguezboth 9 years old and best friends forever, woke up happy on the morning of Saturday, November 19, 1988 with the illusion of having a great day.
Each one grabbed her skateboard and together they headed for the rainbow warehouselocated on Mission Boulevard in Hayward, where they bought treats and drinks to enjoy your game day, as reported by the media Infobae.
After making the purchases, the minors left the shop and walked along the main road, without noticing that they had left their skateboards behind. Once they realized it, they both ran in search of it, however, Michaela noticed that hers was under a car parked on the boulevard.
She ran to pick it up, however, just as she bent down, a scruffy blond white man in his twenties he grabbed her hard and put her inside his vehicle. Frightened, the girl screamed at the incredulous look of her best friend, who might not react to what was happening before her eyes.
Seconds later, the vehicle started with Michaela inside, the latter being the last time anyone saw her alive.
the first hours
In state of shockKatrina ran to the warehouse and asked an employee for help to call 911. But despite the quick action, the woman mistakenly assumed that the man in question it was someone else who had prowled the place hours before. It was then that she described the suspect as a man in his thirties, with a “hippie style”mustache and a colorful car.
This first false step meant that during the first 48 hours, the most vital in this type of case, the police will look for the wrong manwhich might have been a fatal mistake in the kidnapping of the little girl.
Days later, Michaela’s best friend and sole witness to the kidnapping, Katrina, gave his description of the culprit: stated that the subject was tall, close to 1.83 meters, between 18 and 24 years old, had long hair, which was blond, dirty and had a face full of acne. In addition, he claimed that the car he was driving was old, gold in color, and had a dent in the front bumper.
Immediately followingwards, the FBI and the local police got involved in the search for the girl, and even offered 70 thousand dollars to those who would deliver key information for their discovery. That first year of searching, the troops received more than 5 thousand tracks that didn’t lead to anything.
His family was in utter despair.
Sharon Murch and the relentless search for her daughter
It was during this period that Haywardans, researchers, and the media echoed the relentless search that Sharon MurchMichaela’s mother, went ahead with the aim of finding her daughter.
The woman, who gave birth to her firstborn on January 24, 1979 and who also had two other minor children, Alex y Libbyleft everything aside: she quit her job, her life and ended up divorcing the father of her children, Rodney Garechtfollowing plunging into this journey of no return to find “her baby”.
Seeing that the years passed and there were no traces of the minor, the mother decided launch your own research in parallel. Some clues took her as far as Russia, where the girl would have been seen. But despite all the efforts made, never managed to find his whereregardings.
It had been a long time and still no one knew where Michaela was.
presumed guilty
During the years of searching, there were clues that gave the Garecht family hope. One of them was the evidence that guided the investigation towards Team Bindera recognized criminal who kidnapped another young woman in a nearby area and in the same period that Michaela disappeared, but this information was later scrapped.
Then in 1992a confession opened a new flank. Roger Haggard, an Indiana prison inmate, claimed to have buried the girl’s body in an area of San Francisco called Hunters Point. The police took the man to the scene, but he later admitted that he had made up the whole story.
already in 1994 the researchers added more than 15 thousand possible cluesbut none pointed to the real destiny of Michaela.
Finally, in 2009 the resolution of another case revived the hope of the minor’s family. It was the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugarda young woman who had been kidnapped since she was 11 years old and who turned up alive 18 years later.
So, the police focused on the culprit in that case: Phillip Garrido. The kidnapping had similarities, such as the fact that it happened in broad daylight, in relatively close places and at similar times – just three months apart. The car was also similar.
However, following several studies, the police dismissed Garrido as a suspect since he did not find anything that reliably connected both cases.
2020 and the finding of the culprit
The resolution of Michaela’s kidnapping would come 32 years laterin the middle of the world pandemic due to the coronavirus and following his mother, Sharon, was diagnosed with a hard breast cancer.
The December 21 of that year, in the midst of his chemotherapy treatments, detective Robert Purnell Hayward police contacted her urgently. Although he wanted to speak with her in person, due to the health crisis and her mother’s health condition, they decided connect by Zoom.
Then, what he had been waiting for for more than three decades happened: “It is very hard for us to tell you this. We don’t know where she is (because of Michaela), but we have identified the man who kidnapped her” Purnell told the woman.
It was regarding David Emery Mischa 59-year-old man who was 27 the day he took her and later murdered her, and whose only evidence they collected on that fateful November 19, 1988 – some fingerprints and some belongings – they fit 100% with him.
The criminal is found imprisoned since 1989 for the murder of Margaret Ball (age 36) in Hayward. In addition, he is accused of the double murder of Michelle Xavier (18) and Jennifer Duey (20), which occurred in 1986.
After learning the profile of her daughter’s kidnapper and murderer, Sharon admitted that “I didn’t think the case would be solved (…). What this man did was rape and kill people”.
“You are nothing. You are not important for killing. you are less than a man”, he declared regarding Misch.
Sharon and her life today
Michaela’s mother, who had her fourth daughter in 1993 and who currently lives with her new partner, has had to endure new moments of pain and desolation.
In 2019had to face death of his young daughter-in-law, the wife of his son Alex. Two years later, his daughter Libby gave birth to twins following years of undergoing fertility treatment with her husband. But the happiness was short-lived, since months following her birth the couple was intubated due to pneumonia caused by Covid.19, which caused the death of his son-in-law.
Despite her hard life story, there is something that keeps Sharon with faith and that she expressed to the dedicate a few words to Michaelafollowing discovering the culprit of his kidnapping and murder.
“I love you forever little baby. She rests in peace. I still have to do some things here, but soon in the not too distant future, I will see you. Mom”the woman posted on her blog, in which for years she has dedicated heartfelt letters to her eldest daughter who has been in her mind and heart for the last three decades.
