Trial postponed for man accused in Reno kidnapping

Tuesday, Feb. 23, 1999 | 11:48 a.m.

U.S. District Judge David Hagen continued the trial of James Daveggio following a closed hearing with lawyers. Details of the hearing were sealed by the court.

Daveggio's trial had been scheduled to begin Tuesday.

Daveggio, 38, also is charged in California with murder in the strangulation death of a 22-year-old Pleasanton women.

Michelle Michaud, 40, a former prostitute and a codefendant in the Reno and California cases, has pleaded guilty in the Reno kidnapping case and is awaiting sentencing.

The 20-year-old Morrison College student said she was abducted in September 1997 by a man and woman in a green van matching the description of Michaud's. She said she was taken to California and sexually assaulted before she was released near Auburn.

The victim identified Daveggio in a photographic lineup, but was unable to make a positive ID of Michaud, authorities said.

The couple was indicted in November by an Alameda County, Calif., grand jury in the strangling of Vanessa Lei Samson, 22, who was snatched off a Pleasanton street on Dec. 2, 1997. Her body was found two days later off Highway 88 in Alpine County.

Michaud and Daveggio were arrested Dec. 3, 1997, at a hotel-casino at Lake Tahoe. Police said Michaud's green 1994 Dodge Caravan had been revamped into a "murder and abduction chamber," with restraints to shackle victims to the floor.

Police in Pleasanton said Michaud confessed to the slaying.

Michaud was arrested for prostitution in 1991. She met Daveggio at a bar where he was a bartender in 1996.

Investigators have said the couple from Sacramento kept books on serial killers.