Disappeared from the Dorms: The Unsolved Case of Michael Negrete

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
It was the end of the semester at UCLA. Students
were finishing exams, celebrating, and preparing to head home for
the holidays. A freshman named Michael joined friends at a
dorm party before winding down with a late night computer
game with another friend in the building in the early
morning hours, he stepped out to congratulate his friend on

(00:32):
the win. Then he headed back toward his room. From
that moment on, Michael was never seen again. In missing
persons cases, people will often say someone vanished into thin air,
and in Michael's case, that phrase feels hauntingly true now
over twenty five years later. Those closest to him rely

(00:55):
on the hope that someone will come forward with the
clue that makes a difference. I'm your host, Megan, and
each week on a Simpler Time True Crime, I cover
older unsolved cases and challenge the idea that a simpler
time means a safer time. This week, I'm bringing to
you the unsolved disappearance of Michael Negretti. I want to

(01:37):
give a heartfelt thank you to listener Aaron s who
reached out by email and encouraged me to cover this case.
I knew about it, but I'll be honest, I hesitated.
It's one of those cases that stirs a lot of
debate online, and I didn't want to simply add to
the noise. But once I started digging in, I realized
that the lack of solid, verifiable information and has created

(02:00):
a maze of theories, and it's easy to get lost
in it. At the heart of it, though, is a
kind and talented young man and a family who had
him with them one day and lost him the next
without any warning or answers. They've been left holding both
worst case fears and small threads of hope. My goal

(02:21):
today is to walk you through what is actually known,
touch on the theories with care, and encourage you to
stay open minded with me, because at the time of
this recording, there truly are no definitive answers. So let's
get into it. It was December of nineteen ninety nine.
As the year two thousand approached, a wave of anxiety

(02:42):
swept across the world over what came to be known
as the Y two K bug. Computers had long been
programmed to record years with just two digits, like ninety
nine for nineteen ninety nine. The fear was that when
the clocks rolled over to zero. Systems everywhere might interpret
it as nineteen hundred instead of two thousand, potentially causing

(03:04):
failures in banks, hospitals, power grids, and even airplanes. Governments, businesses,
and IT professionals scrambled to fix the issue, and the
media fed the sense of looming crisis. I myself remember
it being all over the news, and I imagine Michael
Negretti and his friends at UCLA were talking about it too,

(03:25):
and predicting if it was something to really be worried
about or if it was just going to be one
big societal overreaction. Of course, we now know that when
the clock struck midnight, the world carried on just fine.
But all things point to Michael Negretti never getting to
find this out, because the last time Michael was accounted

(03:46):
for was the early morning hours of December tenth, nineteen
ninety nine. Michael was a freshman at UCLA in the
summer of nineteen ninety nine. He had graduated from Rancho
Bernardo High School in San Diego. He was born on
March twenty fifth, nineteen eighty one, in Virginia to his parents,
Mary and Miguel Negretti. After Michael would follow two more boys,

(04:10):
Steve and Dave, and their family would be complete, and
at some point the family moved to the Saber Springs
neighborhood of San Diego. Saber Springs has around ten thousand
people in it. It's one of those master planned communities
with a big suburban vibe to it. Lots of houses
on these rolling hillsides, and also lots of amenities like

(04:31):
parks and good schools, and from everything I can tell,
it's considered an upper middle class neighborhood. Michael was a
gifted musician who played the steel drums in the trumpet,
and because of his musical talent, he was awarded a
scholarship to UCLA, which is about two and a half
hours north of where he graduated from. During that first

(04:53):
freshman semester at UCLA, Michael seemed to be doing really well.
He had made friends, He was involved with music gigs
on and off campus. He was actually part of a
band called Island Fever, and all of his bandmates were
a bit older than him, But they'd later say that
they had him join not only because of how amazing
he was musically. They said he was really reliable and

(05:16):
a responsible kid who they knew they could count on.
He was getting good grades and was looking forward to
wrapping up finals and going home to visit with his
family for the holidays. Just before his disappearance, he spoke
to his mother Mary and talked about his plans to visit,
and she said he seemed completely normal and in good spirits.

(05:37):
Michael lived on the sixth floor of Dykstra Hall on
the UCLA campus, which was huge. It's a co ed
building and there were around nine hundred students living in it.
Besides music, Michael was an avid video game player, and
something great about college campuses in nineteen ninety nine was
that they were early adopters of advanced Internet and technol

(06:00):
and so Michael was able to actually do online computer
games with classmates who lived in other rooms in his
residence hall on campus. On the evening of Thursday, December ninth,
nineteen ninety nine, Michael attended a dorm party across the
hall from his room. The person hosting the party was
a good friend of his, someone who he had really

(06:21):
hit it off with during that semester. His name was
Ross Wolf, and I was able to see him do
an interview with student reporters with the Daily Bruin, which
is the UCLA student newspaper and its spinoff podcast, Ross
and others who attended the party said it was pretty
laid back for the most part. There was some drinking

(06:41):
and listening to music, and Michael had been drinking some margaritas.
Michael may have been a bit intoxicated or buzzed, but
nobody had the impression that he was wasted and falling
all over or anything. As that party wrapped up, he
went back across the hall to his dorm to play
a vide on the computer with a friend who lived

(07:02):
on the hall. In that same Daily Bruin podcast about
Michael's case that I referenced before, one student sat down
with current day law enforcement who had reviewed Michael's case,
specifically the early case notes, and they answered the question
of how were they all gaming in nineteen ninety nine
and what was the internet like? And as many people remember,

(07:23):
a lot of people's home internet during this time was
dial up internet, which it was really funny seeing the
officers explaining that to students who were absolutely not born
when dial up internet was having its moment. But in
this case, the officer said that the UCLA campus had
DSL Internet, so back then high speed internet and dorms

(07:45):
wasn't the Wi Fi were used to you today. DSL
used the regular phone line in their room, but ran
through a special modem that gave a much faster always
on connection than dial up. You'd plug in a chunky
beige desktop PCs straight into it with a cable, and
that made it possible to play games or share files

(08:06):
with friends down the hall without tying up the phone line.
Michael and his friend did this until computer record show
he logged off at around three forty or three forty
five am on Friday, December tenth. He then walked down
the hallway to congratulate his friend who had won the game.
There is never any definitive discussion over who this friend is,

(08:30):
but a lot of the source material presents it as
if they just sort of met up in the hallway,
gave a quick handshake, and then Michael returned to his dorm.
The source material also makes it seem like this friend
was right on the same floor and down the hall,
but unlike Ross Wolfe's party that we know was right
across the hall because he said as much in an interview.

(08:51):
There's nothing concrete that I can confirm with one hundred
percent certainty that the guy he was playing computer games
with was just down the hall, saying Michael departed his
presence to head back to his room. That was the
last confirmed sighting of Michael Negretti. His roommate was asleep
when all of this was happening. At nine am, the

(09:11):
roommate woke up and noticed Michael wasn't there, but all
of his personal belongings were his shoes, his clothes, his wallet,
all of his musical instruments, his toothbrush, anything of value.
Just to be clear, it sounds like the clothes he
was last seen wearing were missing along with him, but
all the rest of his clothes were left behind. The

(09:34):
next part isn't really clearly reported on. We don't know
exactly the order in which people grew concerned, but we
know that he missed a final exam and obligations with
his band, and this was hugely out of character for him.
Several sources say that not much happened over that first weekend,
and that his parents were contacted about him missing his
social and school engagements, and that it was that Monday

(09:57):
that his parents filed the police report it was a
little tricky with him going missing heading into a weekend,
because those are a little less predictable on a college schedule.
On a college campus, it's not uncommon for kids to
leave for a weekend, and especially at this point in
the semester. This is during finals time, so that definitely
kind of threw a wrench into things. UCPD, which is

(10:22):
the campus police department at UCLA, did start the search
for Michael pretty quickly, though later articles would state that
Michael's family thought their response was a bit lukewarm, sort
of we've seen this before. A college student goes away
for a few days and comes back, he'll turn up.
And they were basically like, no, this isn't how he operates.

(10:42):
His mother, Mary, actually told the La Times a few
days into the search quote, He's usually quite aware of
his schedule and the things he asked to do. This
is a complete shock to me end quote. Police started
by interviewing Michael's roommate as well as partygoer There's the
friend down the hall who he had been playing the
video game against, and eventually branched out to other people

(11:06):
in Diykster Hall. Over the next several days, sent tracking
dogs were used and followed his trail to a bus stop.
This bus stop is at the corner of Sunset Boulevard
and Bellagio Drive, and some sources say this is miles
down the road. I mapped it and we'll have a
picture on the Instagram at simpler time crime Pod, but

(11:26):
it's only point seven miles away from Diykster Hall. Having
said that, the police went on to say that his
scent zigzagged all over campus. Now that could mean that
the actual path from say a high level perspective was
zigzagged if you were to do a bird's eye view
over campus, or it could mean that his gate was zigzagging.

(11:48):
I tend to think it's more the first scenario, because
I think it would be hard for scent dogs to
be so precise that they're picking up on someone's walking pattern.
And it could also explain the longer mileage referenced in
the source material, because they could be saying he didn't
take a straight path to the bus stop. All of
that conjecture may not even be important, though, because police

(12:10):
would later say they didn't think the dogs were reliable
and described them as possibly confused. In that recent interview
with the student podcast The Daily brun Current law enforcement
elaborated on that a little bit more, and it sounds
like there were various jurisdictions on this search. There were
opportunities where there could have been contamination that would have

(12:31):
possibly misled the dogs. And also Michael attended this campus
and walked all over it all the time, so it's
possible that the dogs were picking up on his scent
from his previous days of attending classes. Still, investigators spoke
to all the company bus drivers and they passed around
Michael's flyers to them as well as distributed them on buses,

(12:53):
hoping anybody would recognize him. But nobody was able to
place him on a bus or share that they had
seen him since that night. Nancy Greenstein, the campus police
spokesperson at the time, told the La Times quote, We've
searched door to door, talked to his friends. He doesn't
seem to have a girlfriend. We have no hints of

(13:14):
where he could go or where he might be. That's
why we're asking the public for assistance. And police truly
did search door to door. Current law enforcement told The
Daily Bruin that when they reviewed the old police files
that it can confirm that officers spoke to everyone in
that building and their search was comprehensive. They actually sent

(13:36):
an officer down the garbage chute to look personally on
the off chance that Michael suffered some sort of mishap
or went down there after a more nefarious encounter on campus.
Within a week of his disappearance, Michael's family created a
website for him titled Please help Us Find Mike Negretti.

(13:57):
Just before Christmas, Michael's case was featured on the Nash
syndicated TV show Extra. His uncle Bill Klein said, quote,
my hope is that Michael or someone who knows Michael
or where he is, is going to pick up the
phone and call. All his money, keys, and ID card
were left behind in his dorm room. He left with nothing,

(14:18):
no jacket, no toothbrush, nothing. Now, one question that has
come up was did a campus like UCLA have surveillance
or CCTV footage from back then? There has actually been
internet rumors that footage exists of Michael leaving Dykstra Hall.
But I've done a deep dive on this case, as

(14:39):
have others, and no such footage is out there. In fact,
I actually located an article in the Daily Bruin from
the year Michael went missing, but before his disappearance that
I've linked in the show notes. In it, they discuss
the increase in campus surveillance footage, but it was primarily
focused on helping to prevent retail theft in stores on campus.

(15:01):
And I'll just read a few notes from the article here.
It says departments such as Parking Services, the Administrative Cashier's Office,
the Central Ticket Office, and the UCLA Store use security
cameras to monitor visitors and employees. At Parking Services, two
security cameras scan the customer lobby, while each employee entrance

(15:22):
is equipped with a large security camera and card key scanner.
In addition, each of the Parking Services booths are equipped
with security cameras. Each of the cameras is connected to
a VCR with a long record tape. The cameras are
not monitored in real time. Other areas on campus which

(15:42):
handle cash, such as the Central Ticket Office and the
Administrative Cashier's Office in Murphy Hall, have security cameras. Another
campus location with security cameras is the UCLA Store in
Ackerman Union. The Ackerman Store has fifty four security cameras
on the A level so that gives you a snapshot
of where they were located on campus, and none of

(16:05):
them mentioned having any in the dorm areas, pivoting back
to searching the campus, though they also did a search
of all construction sites. There was a ton of construction
happening at UCLA at the time, and one theory was
that Michael may have fallen into some sort of construction
hazard and then his body was accidentally or intentionally buried

(16:26):
in a construction site, but university police stated they searched
this out completely and that they've ruled it out as
a possibility. After the year two thousand rang in, the

(16:47):
Negretti family and all those close to Michael felt a
deeper sense of dread. With each day passing. They felt
their hope of finding Michael safe and alive dwindling, and
they were just as puzzled as ever. At this point,
the campus police and university officials felt that Michael chose
to leave on his own, but his family did not agree.

(17:08):
They felt that Michael would not leave and not loop
them in, and his mom told the North County Times quote,
I honestly feel that the Michael I know would at
least tell me where he was. My perception is of
great puzzlement. I wonder where are you and why end quote.
At Around this time, Michael's computer was turned over to

(17:29):
an IT forensic technician to see if they could find
any information about Michael's online behavior. Michael had an AOL
instant Messenger account and was active in the gaming community.
Had he met up with someone in a chat room
or could they identify anyone he may have been talking
to on the Internet. People were using chat rooms on

(17:53):
AOL and MSN messaging a lot during this time, and
learning about online safety and how dangerous this could be
was a bit of the wild West at the time,
millennial over here. And I remember being in online chat
rooms without my family's knowledge and responding when people would
put asl age sex location in there and just giving

(18:15):
it out on the Internet. And then oftentimes my friends
and I would be on these chat rooms and we
would be giving fake information and we thought it was
so funny. We had no sense of what could have happened.
I think at the time many people still just held
this belief that the Internet still held this great barrier
between you and whoever was on the other side of it.
But we know through a few tragic cases that that's

(18:38):
wasn't the case, is not the case. And when I
talk about simpler time true crime and how things weren't
always simpler, really that was at this time where we
were at a bit of a learning curve with how
dangerous the Internet could be. But going back to the
computer stuff, I'm not going to bury the lead, and
even though this might be a little out of order,
I'm going to just tell you the computer outcome. Now,

(19:00):
something happened to Michael's computer that rendered tracing his usage impossible.
Some websites say that his hard drive got corrupted or
erased in error, and some point to the campus law
enforcement is watching this. Some say when they turned it
over to the FBI it happened. We don't know exactly
the chain of events and whose custody the computer was

(19:22):
in when this happened, but either way, this unfortunately was
a dead end, which is bad because I personally believe
it could have told us a lot of information. Despite
this setback, Current day law enforcement told the Daily Bruined
podcast that the original investigators did serve a search warrant
to AOL to find any of his chat logs, and

(19:44):
if that did produce anything. They aren't saying or releasing that,
but I got the sense that it was a dead end.
In January, a fundraising concert was held for Michael at
Long Beach Poly High School and featured the school's jazz
combo as well as a jazz solo vocalist and steel
drum band. Michael loved jazz, and he used to walk

(20:06):
around and sing jazz songs to himself, which when I
was reading that, I couldn't help it smile to myself.
It's those pieces that are mentioned about him, like how
he was known to have a loud and sudden laugh
that was very distinctive, and how he was an expert
at reciting Simpson's trivia, and how he hates bare feet.
It's those things that gave you the glimpses of the

(20:27):
little idiosyncrasies that Michael had that we all have and
reminds us that the people at the heart of these
cases are so much more than the mystery that surrounds
their final circumstances. It's those little things that we remember
most about our loved ones when they're gone, and the
things his family probably still thinks about to this day.

(20:48):
The concert was ten dollars a ticket, and the money
went back to the Michael Negretti Search Fund. A week later,
Michael's family put up a five thousand dollars reward for information.
At the end of January, there was another benefit concert,
this time in Solana Beach. In March, Michael's name began
showing up in the classified ads. In between people selling

(21:10):
puppies and advertisements for childcare was a line that read
missing persons, Please help Missing Michael Negretti, with a link
to a phone number in the family run website. Michael's
nineteenth birthday arrived with no sign of him, marking for
his family yet another milestone passing without Michael, and about

(21:31):
a week after his birthday, his parents told the paper
that they believed their son was dead and that foul
play was involved. On April thirteenth, two thousand, the Negretti
family upped the reward to one hundred thousand dollars. Mary
Negretti told the North County Times quote, I've always figured
that something terrible happened to him, but there's no evidence

(21:52):
of it. UCLA Police spokesperson Nancy Greenstein added the additional
reward hopefully will lead to more information and will allow
us to continue our investigation. Still, at this time, university
officials in law enforcement stood by the fact that while
they were completely baffled by the case, they had no

(22:13):
indication that he had met with foul play. They felt
it was just as likely that he suffered some sort
of accident or had become disoriented and something had happened
to him. The increased reward did not bring out any
new substantial leads, and with that the university Police Department
turned over the missing person's investigation to the Sheriff's office.

(22:34):
In early June, his family and friends held a rally
at UCLA. Mary Negretti said, quote, our goal is to
attract a crowd of people, make some noise, and let
the students see that there are still people who are
actively looking for Michael. At the rally, they handed out
missing persons flyers, pictures of Michael, and bumper stickers. Mary

(22:56):
continued on by saying, if there are any students who
are hold holding back any information about Michael and what
may have happened to him, we hope this will show
them that a lot of people have been and still
are affected by Michael's disappearance. We want Michael to be
utmost in students' minds before they scatter for the summer,

(23:17):
and the Sheriff's department had the same idea, So while
students were still present, they handed out a questionnaire to
all nine hundred Dykster Hall residents, and after they got
them back and started going through them, it was then
in July of two thousand that something struck their attention.
It was a detail in one of the surveys about
a man in the dorms that night, someone who didn't

(23:40):
quite fit in. One of the students reported that around
four thirty am on the morning that Michael went missing,
they witnessed a man who was inside Dykster Hall who
looked like he didn't belong. He was white, with a
stocky build, about five foot eight, and was in his
mid thirties, so with most of the kids in the
storm being eighteen to twenty years old, he stood out.

(24:02):
Some sources say he was acting suspiciously and was in
close proximity to Michael's dorm room, with one even saying
that when this student went to pass him, he turned
away and sort of obscured his face. This student was
able to provide details for a composite sketch and all
have that on the Instagram. Like many composite sketches, it's

(24:23):
kind of generic, but it's what we have. Just how
relevant is this information? That's hard to say. Some people
have been skeptical as to why it took so long
for this student to come forward, but one of the
source material states that this student said they did come
forward at the beginning, but no one did anything with it,
so I don't know. Police said that they didn't want

(24:45):
to treat this person as a suspect, but they wanted
to speak with them in case they were a witness,
you know, the classic approach. And unsurprisingly, this mystery person
did not come forward. In all of the years since.
With this man never being a identified, sleuths all over
the internet have tried to do side by sides of
people who may look like the composite sketch. I don't

(25:07):
know how much you all followed the Delphi case out
of Indiana, but that was another one where people relentlessly
try to compare people to the suspect sketch. And it's
really a tricky balance. On one hand, the power of
community can be a great thing. It can generate possible
leads or things to look into, But in general, the
family feedback from that case was largely discouraging of the practice.

(25:29):
It's a slippery slope because you end up putting people
on trial with the court of public opinion, and we
don't even know for sure that this person in Dexter
Hall exists or if he holds any significance to Michael's disappearance.
Having said that, a little bit later, as I get
into the theories discussed in Michael's case, I'll be addressing
the two most common composite sketch comparisons. The one year

(26:01):
mark came with no new leads, and then another year
passed After that. William Howell and Joe Purcell from the
Sheriff's Department were completely baffled. They were interviewed along with
Michael's parents. In an April two thousand and one interview
with The LA Times, Sergeant Howell said, quote, it seems
like there's nowhere to turn. This is a kid who

(26:24):
wasn't inny lick of trouble. Usually those kinds of cases
lead us in a certain direction. There's a light at
the end of the tunnel. In this case, there's absolutely
no certainty anywhere. It's maddening. Howell's partner, Joe Purcell went
on to say, it's like he never walked the earth.
At this stage in the investigation, Purcell and Howell were

(26:47):
working in the homicide unit and Michael's case was finally
being investigated. As such, he hadn't touched his bank cards
or bank account since his disappearance. His social Security number
hasn't been used. Howell also shared that they found a
profiler within the Sheriff's department. He was an expert who
tries to solve crimes by looking at statistical data and

(27:10):
probing into criminal psychology, and the Sheriff's profile advised them
that they had more than likely already interviewed somebody who
knew what happened, and this just was really hard for Howell.
He said, I just don't see it. If we've already
interviewed somebody who knows what happened, we don't know it.
I don't know it. I've been fooled. And if that's

(27:32):
the case, I should just retire right now. The frustration
can clearly be felt in this exchange, and Michael's family
felt that, amongst a ton of other ever changing emotions themselves.
They talked about how they had now spent two Christmases
and two birthdays without him, and how they even tried
to hold a small birthday celebration for him a few

(27:52):
weeks back. The Negrettes gathered in their dining room with
this little lemon cake and one single candle, and Mary
said quote, it was pitiful. There was no joy, only
emptiness and heartache. Later in the interview, Mary shared that
she no longer felt she would ever see her son
alive again, and only had hopes that someday someone would

(28:13):
come forward with information to at least give her answers.
In two thousand and three, Mary Negretti went on The
Mantel Williams Show. On the show, he had infamous psychic
Sylvia Brown. And if you don't know about Sylvia Brown,
go look her up. She's awful. She has a long
history of being wrong and weighing in with her psychic

(28:35):
visions to vulnerable people desperate for closure and answers. She's
dead now, but she's just been replaced by other people
who prey upon vulnerable people in the same way. On
the show, Sylvia Brown told Mary Negretty that her son
was still alive and residing in the West Los Angeles area,
She said, quote, he's still around the UCLA or close

(28:57):
to the UCLA area, in like Brentwood Westwood, around the
same area. He's not dead. Mary would later say that
she didn't really believe in psychics, but went on the
show to get his name out there, something that only
happened briefly once during the airing, so she was pretty disappointed.
In the years since, his family has understandably backed away

(29:18):
from the spotlight. They just as much want answers today
as they did nearly twenty six years ago, but they
also had to resume some of their life back. In
that two thousand and one article with La Times, Mary
said that she and her family tried to distract themselves
by staying busy, but it wasn't easy. She said, quote
mostly we're totally down. I'm asking myself how am I

(29:42):
supposed to deal with this? And that's where she said,
I must admit I really don't have any hope I
will ever see him again. I do tell myself, we
will find out what happened someday with what time we

(30:04):
have left. I'd like to go into the various theories
that are out there and the possibilities of what could
have happened to Michael Negretti. These are just that theories.
Nobody knows what happened, and anybody mentioned is presumed innocent
until found guilty. The first is that Michael left his
dorm room, and he left Dykster Hall that night and

(30:25):
something happened to him on campus. Now, a lot of
sources refer to Michael as being barefoot, but you'll remember
me saying he was actually known to hate being barefoot.
His shoes were left behind in the dorm, so my
personal belief is that it's more likely he was wearing
some sort of hard sold slipper or the type of
shoes you'd wear around your house, and that to me,
would indicate that he was intending to be right back

(30:48):
whatever it is that he was doing so as sort
of a sub theory underneath that, what might have made
him leave that night? You know, was there an opportunistic person,
maybe even that man in the hallway that saw him
and said something like, hey, can you help me with something?
It's just outside here, and we have no idea what
he'd be asking for help with, but maybe Michael goes

(31:09):
outside and the person then has a weapon. Did he
meet someone he met online. Sources say he didn't have
a girlfriend, but maybe he met with someone in a
chat room or a gaming community. Number two, let's talk
the accident while on campus. Theory did he fall into
a construction site. Police ruled this out because they said

(31:31):
they searched everything. But some have speculated that maybe he'd
locked himself out because we know he left his keys
in the room, and that maybe he was trying to
navigate some back doorway in through some sort of construction zone,
and that he fell into a dangerous area and died. Again,
there's no evidence of this, but the idea does get
passed around, and police have never spoken to that specific scenario,

(31:55):
just that they've gone through all the different construction work
and that they had ruled that theory out. Number three,
was Michael involved in drugs? Police said they didn't reveal
anything like that in their investigation. He had been drinking
that night, but not excessively. But Michael's younger brother allegedly
made a tumbler post in twenty thirteen that has since
been deleted. And I want to tread carefully with this

(32:17):
because he's not only deleted it, it's been removed now
from places like Wayback Machine, which is an Internet web
page archive. So to me, that shows he's gone through
a great deal of hassle to just get this off
the internet, and it makes me think that his brother
doesn't want to be a focal point of this conversation anymore.
But just briefly, I'll say that in it, he mentioned
that his family had found out that he had gotten

(32:40):
involved in the rave scene and taken ecstasy, and that
it was his opinion that maybe he was on drugs
that night, wandered off in an incoherent type of state,
and that someone took advantage of him and he ran
ined the wrong person. Is it possible that a college
student was on drugs? Absolutely? Do I trust that his
family probably got a deeper in side scoop into his

(33:01):
life than what's been publicly reported. Yes, but his behavior
didn't really align with that that night. He had been
already to a party earlier and then he just pivoted
to going online and playing video games on his computer.
That's not exactly the vibe of taking ecstasy. If anything,
he's being wanting to take something to mellow out. Still,

(33:23):
it can't be ruled out completely. And adjacent to that theory,
is that that's the whole reason he left the dorm
that night to attend some rave, which they did fly
pretty under the radar, is my understanding of rave culture
at the time. You had to kind of be invited.
They were secretive, they were in these concealed locations. So
did he go to a rave when something happened, or

(33:44):
did he go out to buy drugs? Others have mentioned
that it's really not the most primetime of day to
go buy drugs, and that kids pretty much dealt drugs
right on campus, so the idea of leaving and going
off campus or somewhere else to get them was kind
of a stretch. But you now, the next theory is
that something happened to him in Dykster Hall that night,

(34:05):
and that his body was disposed of, either in accidental
overdose and someone panicked or an altercation that turned deadly.
And just going along with that, one thing I haven't
yet told you about is the phone calls. According to
reporting in the North County Times in November of two thousand,
just before the one year anniversary of his disappearance, something

(34:26):
odd happened. It was at an apartment complex off campus
where former students of Dykster Hall were now residing, and
they had all lived at Dykster Hall at the time
Michael went missing. Three people reported hearing a phone conversation
from someone in the complex who spoke about details in
the Negretti case that were unknown to the public. And

(34:49):
then the detectives went through all the residents. There was
forty to forty five apartments and they interviewed all the
residents there, but no information surfaced to locate who that
caller was. So are the students at Michael's residence hall
holding a secret? If multiple people know what happened, it's

(35:09):
a long buried secret, something that's not very common, you
know what they say about two can keep a secret.
If that's the case, and now is definitely the time
to come forward and allow this family to get answers
on what happened and give them at least a little closure.
Whatever that looks like. Number five I guess would be

(35:29):
that theory that he ran away, or he has amnesia,
he's living under a new identity. Now, there isn't a
single piece of evidence that supports this, other than people
who occasionally post pictures of people they think look like
a Michael in his forties, so, while not impossible, highly
improbable in my very personal opinion. And finally there's the

(35:51):
composite sketch. Did this man in the building have something
to do with Michael's disappearance? And who was he? I
mentioned earlier that there are two main people who come
up a lot. The first I just want to get
out of the way because I feel kind of awful
even mentioning this one, but it gets discussed online so
much I really couldn't avoid it. Michael grew up in

(36:13):
Saber Springs, and one of the people who was friends
with Michael's dad, Miguel Negretti, was a man named Damon
van Dam. If that name sounds familiar, it may be
because you recognize it from the high profile murder case
of his daughter. Seven year old Danielle Vin Dam was
abducted from her Saber Springs home in February of two
thousand and two. A neighbor of the Van Dams, a

(36:35):
man named David Westerfield, was arrested and found guilty of
Danielle's murder. He's currently serving a life sentence. Damon Van
Dam has gone on a radio show background that time
in two thousand and two and he actually brought up
Michael Neggretty. He said on it quote, I was in
Los Angeles in nineteen ninety nine when Michael Negretti disappeared.

(36:55):
I am a friend of Miguel Negretti and Michael's father,
and I worked with the men when it happened. End quote,
which I believe he means he helped in the search.
A website popped up that did a side by side
of Damon van Dam to the composite, and it surmised
that he met up with Michael Negretti on the night
of his disappearance. While Damon does resemble this sketch, so

(37:17):
do a lot of men, and like I said, it's
kind of on the generic side. The website that fuels
this rumor also tries to connect Damon to the disappearance
of Adam Walsh and the disappearance of Tiffany Sessions out
of Florida. It all seems to want to draw a
pattern of behavior out of Damon van dam thus implying
he may have had something to do with his own

(37:38):
daughter's murder and that David Westerfield is innocent. The motives
with this one are suspicious, and this whole theory feels
like a gigantic leap. The second is a theory related
to sex offender Mark Collins Rector. He was huge into
gaming and was nearby the UCLA campus at the time
of Michael's disappearance. He was one of the early two

(38:00):
thousands dot com failures, but was more notably arrested for
various sex crimes against teenage boys. He does look a
lot like the composite sketch, so many have speculated that
he may have met Michael in some sort of chat
room or on aim or the gaming community and lured
him out. It's hard to say. It also feels like

(38:20):
a stretch to me. Any connection to him is pure
speculation at this point, and police have never named him
as a suspect. Not much has happened in the case
for years. At one point there was a burst of
hope when Michael's Aol instant messenger screen name train fan
one was activated, but it turns out that his username
had expired from inactivity and that someone knew had just

(38:42):
taken his name. There is an active Facebook group that
tries to keep Mike's name out there. I've even seen
them out there trying to compare Mike to John Doe's
that were found, and there was one that was kind
of promising a few years back, but he was ruled
out as a match. And Michael's case is still brought
up as one of those mysteries that people just can't shake,

(39:04):
similar to the case of Brandon Swanson or Jason Jolkowski.
It's like the earth just swallowed them whole. But I
believe someone out there holds the answers, and it's never
too late to speak up. Michael would be forty four
years old now, and he would no doubt still be
gifting the world with his musical talents and warming his

(39:25):
family's hearts with his contagious laugh. While they can't get
all of that back, they can get the knowledge of
what happened that night and have the chance of giving
him a proper burial. If you can give them those answers,
or you know absolutely anything about the disappearance of Michael
Negretti from the UCLA campus in nineteen ninety nine, please

(39:48):
contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office at three two
three eight nine zero five to five zero zero. This
has been another episode of a simpler time to true.
If you appreciate the work I'm doing. Please leave a
five star review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you want to support the show and have the

(40:09):
ability to do so, consider clicking the link to my
spreaker supporter page at the bottom of the show notes
and pledge five dollars a month. This helps me to
continue doing the work I'm doing and dedicate even more
time to it, and I'll soon be adding some more
bonus content. Case suggestions can be sent to Simpler timecrimepod
at gmail dot com. As always, thank you so much

(40:29):
for listening, and join me again next Monday.

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