In 1974, a demon was coming into it’s own and 13 year old Cassie Riley would get to witness it first hand. In fact, she would die looking at it, straight in the face.
Cassie was last seen walking out of a local shopping store. The next time anyone would see her, she would be laying face down next to a creek, her blue jeans and panties pulled down around her feet and her little shirt and bra tugged up beneath her arms. The autopsy report would reveal that she had been severely beaten then drowned.
The last person to see her alive was a young man named Jimmy “Froggy” Daveggio. When the cops stopped by to ask Jimmy a few questions about the girl, his mother provided ‘Froggy’ with an air-tight alibi. His own sister, however, would later state that their mother had lied. No one really knew where Jimmy had been that day. But then, no one really ever knew where he was or exactly what he was up to.
Jimmy Daveggio had some obvious problems from the very beginning. Getting into trouble seemed to be his forte’. He did drugs. He drank and he gambled. He stole cars, got in fist-fights, robbed gas stations, committed burglaries and was even arrested on charges of abduction and rape. (Those charges were dropped however, due to the victim being trashed ass drunk and unable to keep the facts straight.) He was charged with disorderly conduct and arrested for driving drunk. After a while, Jimmy’s parole officer decided that enough was enough and sent Jimmy for a psychiatric evaluation.
James ‘Froggy’ Daveeggio
Michelle ‘Mickie’ Michaud
The determination? Jimmy Daveggio was a sex offender and he was dangerous.
Jimmy’s next move was to Sacramento California, where he joined a motorcycle gang called the Devil’s Horsemen. Since he didn’t own a motorcycle, he stole one. He dyed his hair and added tattoos.
And he got himself a girlfriend. One that liked the way he got things done. And that was with a sadomasochistic flare.
Michelle “Mickie” Michaud was a high school dropout and a runaway with an attitude from hell. By the time she was sixteen years old she was working prostitution and living with a drug dealer. Beatings from boyfriends or pimps was common place and to say she was treated like the white trash she really truly was, would be an understatement.
Then she met Jimmy. He had a motorcycle, purple hair and an attitude that matched her own. And one more plus. No one would treat her like the skank she was, as long as Froggy was at her side.
Before long, the two were a couple and moved in together. Mickie was a stay at home mom and house keeper, while Froggy worked at a local dive tending bar. All seemed well. Until Jimmy got restless. Then there was no pleasing him. He complained constantly, about everything and anything. Then he started bringing other women home. Mickie said nothing about it and decided she’d rather have him happy than not have him at all. Unfortunately, things just escalated from there. Jimmy started beating on her. He would leave for long periods of time without explanation. He started selling crack out of the house with a friend and he was using drugs worse than ever. Financially they were drowning.
With a warrant out for Froggy’s crack-selling partner, the law eventually arrived at Jimmy and Mickie’s place in search of him. Well, they found him and arrested him, but they also found Meth and a gun in Jimmy’s home. And they discovered that he (Froggy) was also a sex offender. Realizing that there were children living in the house, he was ordered to move out at once. The Devil’s Horsemen were also fed up with Jimmy’s shit, so they too kicked him to the curb.
And then things really got stupid and ugly.
Jimmy became obsessed with serial killers. And not just any serial killers. Gerald and Charlene Gallego, ‘The Sex Slave Killers’ of the ’70’s, became his fixation. He decided to mock them. He convinced Mickie to gain him a victim and she did. Froggy raped the young girl and life was suddenly good again. Mickie, happy with the results of the event, was more than willing to take every ‘adventure’ (as she would later refer to their crimes) with him and give it her all for her old man. And that was exactly what she did.
It wouldn’t take long before the ‘itch’ was on Froggy and he and his best girl went on the hunt again. They spied 20-year-old Alicia Paredes, as she was walking home. Mickie pulled the dark, green van up next to her and Froggy grabbed her. He repeatedly raped the young woman while Mickie watched. Then they dropped her off and sped away. Fortunately, Jimmy had made a mistake and had called Mickie by name during the attack. When the young woman was freed, she immediately reported the crime and described the van. She knew the woman’s name was Mickie but she couldn’t really describe the man. In time, Jimmy’s mistake would come back to haunt them.
Froggy told Mickie to find another victim and he worked at removing the middle seats from the van so he’d have more room when they were on a ‘hunt’. (That would be the term he would later use to describe the crimes that the duo were committing.) His next victim would be forced to perform oral sex on him while Mickie held her head. The one after that would be Mickie’s own daughter. And good ole mommy was right there, doing her thing, to ensure that Froggy got whatever he wanted. And he always got whatever he wanted. Even if Mickie had to get brutal to ensure it. And you can trust that she would and often did. Even with her own daughter. The next victim received the same treatment with the added twist of taking her picture in pornographic style.
In November of 1997, Mickie was arrested and thrown in the slammer for writing bad checks. Froggy rode out the time away from Mickie by renovating the van even further. By removing the rear bench seat, the entire interior was now usable space. As soon as Mickie was released, the duo was up to their old tricks again. This time they grabbed a prostitute. But this little lady was having none of it and fought back to win. She escaped and headed straight for the cops. Statements were already being taken from one of the young girls that Froggy had assaulted, describing the rape and the van. And Mickie’s own daughter wasn’t keeping the family secret very well either. She told the cops that her mother had bragged about a similar rape in Reno that belonged to their list of conquests. She told them what they had done to her and one of her friends. She told them about other attacks that she knew about and assured them that there were probably plenty more that she didn’t know about.
Vanessa Lei Samson
Froggy was getting bored and wanted to up the game a bit with the next ‘hunt’. He wanted to torture someone this time. In fact, he wanted to torture and kill someone. He sent Mickie after a few necessities that he felt he would be needing. She would need to get a man’s shirt, a flashlight and a few curling irons. They also stopped at an adult sex shop and bought a gagging device and a video. Then they drove to Pleasanton and it was there that they saw their target, the woman that they had come here to kill. Within minutes, they had grabbed 22 year-old Vanessa. Froggy tied her up, gagged her with their new toy and began raping her. Then he assaulted her with the curling iron, using it to repeatedly sodomize and penetrate her. Then he gave Mickie her shot at the girl while he drove. Mickie used her time well and continued the sexual assault until the van came to a stop.
Froggy took the trio into a hotel and he and Mickie continued the assault and torture of young Vanessa together. When the time was right, Froggy gathered the three of them back into the van. With Mickie driving, Vanessa was again bound and Froggy spent the ride torturing her until he finally wrapped a rope around her throat and strangled her to death, as he raped her one last time, assuring her that they would be bound together forever via this act. Then they dumped the dead girl’s body and casually drove away.
The FBI wanted to find Mickie and so they contacted her mother, who told the authorities exactly where they could find her daughter and the scumbag that she lived with. The agents found them and arrested them on charges of the kidnapping and assault of Alicia Paredes.
When Mickie was originally searched, the officer found a nylon rope in her pocket. In searching the van, authorities found the receipt from the hotel in Pleasanton. Other items found, that would mean very little at this point, were the video, ‘Submissive Young Girls’, a book on serial killers, two curling irons and a packet of serial-killer trading cards. None of which would mean anything at the moment but would be the pieces of the puzzle that would finally make the picture complete.
On December 4, Vanessa’s body was discovered, along with her discarded backpack that lay nearby. She had a ligature mark around her throat and it was more than obvious that she had been assaulted, raped, sodomized and tortured for a long period of time, before someone had finally had mercy enough on her to kill her.
While she was sitting in jail, Mickie saw the news cast about a dead girl being found off of Highway 88. She confided in one of the other inmates about her involvement in the woman’s disappearance and in her death. Bad move on Ms. Idiot’s part. The inmate immediately told the authorities everything she had said.
Mickie and Froggy instantly became the prime suspects in the murder and those few little items, found earlier, were about to prove their guilt.
Mickie and Froggy were taken to Alameda County, where a grand jury indicted both of them for the kidnapping and murder of Vanessa Lei Samson. Five years after the fact, Michelle Lyn ‘Mickie’ Michaud and James Anthony ‘Froggy’ Daveggio were finally sentenced to death.
It was reported that both Mickie and Froggy were hopeful that they, like their hero’s, the Gallego’s, would one day be featured on a serial-killer trading card of their very own.
Several books are available if you would like to read more
pic credit – Murderpedia
