Star witness' testimony challenged

RENO, Nev. - The government's star witness took the stand Thursday against James Daveggio, who's charged with the kidnap and rape of a Reno college student, and immediately had her truthfulness challenged by the defense.

Michelle Michaud choked back tears as she recounted the night of Sept. 29, 1997, when Daveggio allegedly snatched the 20-year-old woman off a Reno street and threw her into Michaud's van, then repeatedly raped and sodomized her for two hours.

Michaud, who testified against her former boyfriend in a plea agreement with the government, said she looked in the back of the van only once as she drove west from Reno into California and Daveggio swore at her and told her to watch the road.

"I'm crying and I'm shaking and I'm trying to drive," she said. "Tears are falling silently down my face."

Michaud, 40, largely repeated the chronology of the rape that was given by the victim in testimony on Wednesday - that Daveggio grabbed the girl as she walked home from Morrison College, raped her, then let her out in a deserted cul-de-sac along Interstate-80 at Emigrant Gap.

She said that the only other time she saw something was at the agricultural station near Truckee, Calif., where cars are checked for any produce that might carry parasites.

She said she glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed that Daveggio was not wearing a shirt and had covered the woman with blankets and a pillow.

"She was so quiet I thought she was dead. I thought he had smothered her right there," she said.

Daveggio's attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Michael Kennedy, bored in on Michaud's statement that Daveggio wasn't wearing a shirt.

He stressed in his opening statement that the victim said Daveggio had no scars or other marks, even though his chest and both arm are heavily tattooed.

"How could she not notice the tattoos? You saw him with his shirt off, right? he asked.

Michaud said it was dark and she didn't know what the woman could see.

Kennedy also asked her about Daveggio's nickname, "Frog," referring to his raspy voice. The victim said after the rape that her attacker had a high-pitched voice.

"I never really call him 'Frog,"' she replied. "When I first met him, I asked him what his Christian name is because I didn't want to address him by an amphibious name."

Kennedy, who called Michaud a "convincing, compulsive liar" in his opening statement, pointed out that her agreement with the government is pegged to her testifying. And he ticked off a litany of at least 22 times she lied to investigators after she was arrested Dec. 3, 1997.

Even though she pleaded guilty in the kidnapping, she said she remained unconvinced she had done anything wrong.

"I didn't kidnap her," she said. "I'm not seeing myself as being involved because I didn't know he was going to do it."

Police contend the kidnapping and rape took part during a crime spree that allegedly included a murder in California.

The couple were 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, 38, were arrested at a Stateline hotel-casino the day after the Pleasanton abduction.

She was to return to the witness stand again on Friday.

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