Convicted serial killer David Misch was likely just trying to get himself kicked out of the courtroom Tuesday when he broke out into song as he was forced to listen to family members talk about the loss of two women he killed in 1986.
The scene played out at the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin on Tuesday, where Misch, 63, was being sentenced for two more murders — the February 1986 slayings of best friends Michelle Xavier, 18, and Jennifer Duey, 20, on a remote road in Fremont. Misch has been incarcerated since 1990 for the 1988 murder of 36-year-old Margaret Ball in Hayward, and following the conclusion of this trial, he is set to be tried for the 1988 killing of 9-year-old Michaela Garecht, also in Hayward, whose body was never found.
As Bay Area News Group reports, Misch began singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” as loved ones of Xavier and Duey gave statements in court about their losses. Alameda County Judge Paul Delucchi kicked Misch out of the courtroom not long after he began singing, but he reportedly continued to whistle from a nearby holding cell while “family members of two of his victims expressed anger and pleaded with him to reveal the location of a 9-year-old girl he allegedly abducted and killed.”
Misch was convicted of the double-murder on December 20, and on Tuesday was sentenced to 50 years to life. The trial began in October and went on for two months, with Misch giving some bizarre testimony on his own behalf last month, trying to explain away DNA evidence by saying he’d met the girls and shared a cigarette with Duey during a drug deal.
The murders of Xavier and Duey went unsolved for over 30 years until, in 2018, he was charged based on several pieces of evidence. Misch’s DNA had already been found under Duey’s fingernails, but investigators further made a link between numbers that were scribbled in ink on Xavier’s hand a license plate of a motorcycle that belonged to Misch at the time — a small clue Xavier was able to leave for the future, before her death.
Before his 1990 conviction for the murder of Ball, Misch had previously been convicted as a juvenile in 1977 for the rape of a housecleaner at knifepoint.
In 2020, Misch was charged in the 32-year-old cold-case disappearance of Garecht. A friend of Garecht’s had seen her abductor and described him as a slender man with shoulder-length blond hair — a description that matched Misch at the time. And investigators were able to match a partial palm print found on Garecht’s scooter, which she had ridden to a store to buy candy with her friend, to Misch.
That trial is expected to take place later this year.
Previously: Accused Serial Killer David Misch Tells Odd Tale of Selling Cocaine to Woman Found Dead In 1986