Hunting Evil

by Carlton Smith

What did a high-priced hooker and a low-class sex offender have in common? It was - according to police - their lust for stalking, raping, and terrorizing young women and girls, in one case as young as thirteen years old.
Michelle Michaud and her husky-voiced boyfriend James A. "Froggy" Daveggio used to hang around the local high school in search of their prey and are suspected of brutally raping numerous women in the gutted van that was rigged to strap down their victims. But they may have gone further than that...
When the body of 22-year-old Vanessa Lei Sampson was found by the side of a California highway, police zeroed in on Michaud and Daveggio, who may be responsible for the young woman's murder, as well as numerous rapes.
Investigating a case as strange and gruesome asfiction - one of the few in which a woman has taken part in sexual assault - author Carlton Smith explores the twisted motives and shocking exploits of this dark and deadly duo.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

270 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 15, 2000

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good read, in a kind of sickening way. By the end I felt as if I'd followed the perps through every day of their lives. These two are so depraved I don't think I could ever get myself to read the book again.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. A prime example of what I have heard called "the banality of evil". Despite all of the hyperbole on the back cover and the grandiose posturing in the minds of the main characters, in the end, it isn't the story of Bonnie and Clyde, but a sad little story of two misfit tweekers sponging and stealing their way through life who let things go too far. They weren't masterminds, not Hannibal Lecter or even the Iceman, but a petty thief with a temper and a gambling addiction and a hooker with Walton fantasies and a submissive nature. They lived out of a van when they couldn't borrow or steal enough for a hotel. They wrote bad checks and got welfare when they could, and then as they got more and more twacked out his fantasies got deeper and darker as time went on, and things progressed from raping young acquaintances and their own children to snatching girls off the street and eventually killing one. It's undoubtedly sad, and pathetic really, but it's even sadder to realize that there was nothing special about these people. Nothing so out of the ordinary happened to them that doesn't happen to countless others throughout their lives. Another sad aspect of their story is that there is an innocent man imprisoned for a murder that occurred when James Daveggio was a teenager and that he most likely committed, and sloppy police work and the need to find a suspect immediately resulted in the arrest of an innocent kid with a record and a defiant attitude that made a likely suspect. A fairly disheartening portrait of the everyday nature of evil and the depth of ugliness in the seemingly ordinary.

[Eva-Marie Nevarez · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - "All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing."
Love it. So, so true.
Carlton Smith is one of the better t.c. authors IMO. He always manages to make his books interesting no matter what part you're reading. The actual court aspect of this case was very short, less than 10 pages if I remember correctly. That'll make a lot of readers happy because in my experience the majority of t.c. readers are, like myself, more interested in the rest of the story. That's not to say I (or anyone else) doesn't want to know the outcome, we certainly do, but that a lot of the time going through the details of an actual court proceeding can become tedious to say the least. Here Smith keeps it short, actually a little too short IMO.
I'm not sure that I've ever read of a case where so many authority figures dropped the ball. Out of every single person with any kind of authority, however little, in this story, the only person who I think could be said to have done a good job would be, sadly, Michaud's lawyer. How utterly sad is that?
In the beginning, somewhere a little before page 50, there is a mistake or two with someone's name. It was a confusing until I figured it out. It makes it worse that there are a lot of players here so it's hard to keep them straight to begin with.
I liked the chapters, how Smith broke the story up. It was in a slightly different manner than most t.c.'s and I liked it.
I'm not sure why Smith thought it a good idea to go off on the side stories about people like Mike Ihde and such. There wasn't a need from what I can see. The only connection is that they knew each other. Lots of criminals know each other. I don't get that connection. Michaud's brother was in jail/prison around the time of her last incarceration but he wasn't talked about. Seemed strange to me.
The two saddest aspects of the entire case are 1. that an innocent man had his life thrown away by spending it in jail all because of the shoddy work done by the police. This brings me to 2. The shoddy police work. This man didn't have to spend his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit. (He was still locked up at the time of the writing which was 2000.) Vanessa Samson didn't have to die. The other women and girls didn't have to be raped. This "man" (the term is used loosely) and the "woman" could have been stopped. Time and again, they could have been stopped.
Michelle Michaud is a sick bitch. She put her own daughter on a plate and handed her over to this sick fuck she was with. She herself molested her teen daughter and then watched at she was molested and raped by her so-called boyfriend. That's some mother.
I could rip her to pieces with my bare hands after reading her dialog with the police detectives. How she was so sorry, she felt such remorse, she "saved" (she obviously doesn't know the meaning of the word) one girl but couldn't save the other, how could she do this to her own daughter, everyone will think I'm a monster.
I hope someone who knows her reads this - I think she's a monster! She doesn't deserve the title of mother. She's one of the most disgusting creatures to ever live one this earth and she doesn't deserve to breath the same air as REAL mothers like myself.
I hope that the two of them have to live with daily torture for the rest of their miserable lives. I hope they have done to them what these did to these women and girls. Forever.
Why do some babies have the horrible luck to be born to evil freak assholes like these while other babies are born to parents who love them?
I sincerely hope the women and girls who lived through meeting these two find peace. They deserve it.

[Ronnie Cramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his acknowledgments, author Carlton Smith write, 'This was not an easy book to write, nor will it be an easy one to read.' That is certainly true, and while it isn't a complete success either, the book is still worth reading.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. I am certain that the main subject of this book, James A. Daveggio, was involved in far more crimes than he was actually caught at. I am OUTRAGED that Marvin Mutch is STILL imprisoned for a crime he did not commit (as of Sept. '06 he was still in prison)!! Just one of the many failures of our justice system.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a true story of a man-woman team who were alleged to be serial rapists.

[Brittany Haeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

The details of these crimes are sickening, prepare to be disturbed if you choose to read this

[Chevaughn Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye-opening and fast-paced— highlighting how evil people can plague and destroy society for reasons even they themselves couldn't explain.

[Michelle Silvestri-Oetinger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truely evil...this book places fear in your heart knowing that these sick people are out there looking to victimize innocent people. One criticism is that there are so many charactors it was hard to keep them all straight!

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my experience, few authors besides Ann Rule write interesting true crime books. This book is as well-written and interesting as Ms Rule's accounts.

[Edwina Book Anaconda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A true crime novel about two truly evil people.
I hope they both rot in prison.

[John Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

I randomly found this book in the library.
Got me to think about how the drugs affect minds and the ways victim mentality develops over time.