(Click to enlarge)A man and his wife have denied abducting California woman Jaycee Lee Dugard when she was a child and holding her in their home for 18 years. Phillip Garrido, 58, and his spouse Nancy, 54, denied 28 charges when they appeared briefly in court in Placerville, El Dorado County.
Ms Dugard was bundled into a car in the county in 1991 on her way to school.
Police are also searching the Garrido home in Antioch for clues to several prostitute murders in the 1990s. Several bodies in the unsolved murders were dumped near an industrial park where Mr Garrido worked.
No pictures have been released of Ms Dugard as she looks today. Ms Dugard and two children she bore in captivity in Antioch, 200 miles (320km) away from where she was abducted, were freed this week. They are staying at a motel near San Francisco after being reunited with Ms Dugard's mother.
Phillip Garrido, 58, a convicted rapist and kidnapper, is suspected of fathering Ms Dugard's children while he kept her in his backyard. He and his wife Nancy, 54, are accused of abducting her in the town of South Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She was forced into a car as her stepfather Carl Probyn looked on. Mr Probyn tried in vain to give chase on a bicycle.
Police have admitted that they missed an opportunity to uncover what was happening at Mr Garrido's home in November 2006, when a neighbour alerted them to suspicious behaviour there.
Sheriff Warren E Rupf: "We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure"
"The caller said Garrido was psychotic and had a sexual addiction," Sheriff Warren Rupf told reporters. But the investigating police officer only spoke to Mr Garrido and did not enter his property to carry out a search.
Ms Dugard was bundled into a car in the county in 1991 on her way to school.
Police are also searching the Garrido home in Antioch for clues to several prostitute murders in the 1990s. Several bodies in the unsolved murders were dumped near an industrial park where Mr Garrido worked.
No pictures have been released of Ms Dugard as she looks today. Ms Dugard and two children she bore in captivity in Antioch, 200 miles (320km) away from where she was abducted, were freed this week. They are staying at a motel near San Francisco after being reunited with Ms Dugard's mother.
Phillip Garrido, 58, a convicted rapist and kidnapper, is suspected of fathering Ms Dugard's children while he kept her in his backyard. He and his wife Nancy, 54, are accused of abducting her in the town of South Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She was forced into a car as her stepfather Carl Probyn looked on. Mr Probyn tried in vain to give chase on a bicycle.
Police have admitted that they missed an opportunity to uncover what was happening at Mr Garrido's home in November 2006, when a neighbour alerted them to suspicious behaviour there.
Sheriff Warren E Rupf: "We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure"
"The caller said Garrido was psychotic and had a sexual addiction," Sheriff Warren Rupf told reporters. But the investigating police officer only spoke to Mr Garrido and did not enter his property to carry out a search.
"I'm first in line to offer organisational criticism and to offer my apologies to the victims and accept responsibility for having missed an earlier opportunity," said Sheriff Rupf.
Fred Kollar, undersheriff in El Dorado County, described finding a makeshift compound in the backyard consisting of sheds, tents and outbuildings. The true identity of the backyard's inhabitants only emerged after Mr Garrido was called in along with his "family" for a parole office hearing on Wednesday.
Suspicions had been aroused when Mr Garrido, who has a printing business, was seen acting suspiciously towards the children as he tried to enter the University of California, Berkeley, campus to hand out religious literature. Diane Doty, a neighbour, has said she often heard children playing in the backyard.
"I asked my husband, 'Why is he [Garrido] living in tents?'" she said on Thursday.
"And he said, 'Maybe that is how they like to live.'"
The alleged abductor has himself told a US TV channel that his story was "heart-warming".
"It's a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around," Mr Garrido told KCRA television from El Dorado County jail.
Court records show that Mr Garrido was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 25-year-old woman in South Lake Tahoe in 1976.
Mr Garrido is also apparently delusional. He doesn't seem to understand that he has comitted a heinous crime.He obviously has no remorse. He thinks his story is "heart warming."
Below are some readers reactions to this story:
Unless Dugard was kept under lock and key for the entire 18 years of her captivity, over the next few days, certainly there will be an abundance of pieces about Stockholm syndrome and wondering why she didn't ask for help before... If Dugard's captors gave her any freedom, locals will start piping up about how she went to the grocery store or to the park, suggesting that she could have fled at any time.
Torie Bosch, blogging at DoubleX, speculates about the reasons why Jaycee Dugard did not escape.
Over the last 18 years I have often thought about what happened to Jaycee. Every time there was a news report about the discovery of bones in California, I would follow up to see if it was the remains of Jaycee. It never was. Over 18 years my mind wandered back to me sitting in Jaycee's bedroom with Terry, how neat and tidy it was, ready for her return. I hadn't thought about Jaycee in a while, until today.
Anthony Batson, formerly a producer for America's Most Wanted, remembers the day he interviewed Jaycee Dugard's parents.
Though the investigation is now ongoing, perhaps more details will emerge [about Nancy Garrido's] role in this 18-year saga. Was it fear that kept Nancy silent? Or does this just go to show how some women can overlook the monster in their husbands?
YourTango's Julie Leung turns the spotlight on Phillip Garrido's wife.
The fact that various acquaintances thought Garrido was crazy and actually saw Dugard and her daughters reveals how willing we sometimes are to ignore the strange behavior of others, and how this willingness can sometimes allow criminals to operate with impunity for years.
Jezebel's Anna N.
Fred Kollar, undersheriff in El Dorado County, described finding a makeshift compound in the backyard consisting of sheds, tents and outbuildings. The true identity of the backyard's inhabitants only emerged after Mr Garrido was called in along with his "family" for a parole office hearing on Wednesday.
Suspicions had been aroused when Mr Garrido, who has a printing business, was seen acting suspiciously towards the children as he tried to enter the University of California, Berkeley, campus to hand out religious literature. Diane Doty, a neighbour, has said she often heard children playing in the backyard.
"I asked my husband, 'Why is he [Garrido] living in tents?'" she said on Thursday.
"And he said, 'Maybe that is how they like to live.'"
The alleged abductor has himself told a US TV channel that his story was "heart-warming".
"It's a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around," Mr Garrido told KCRA television from El Dorado County jail.
Court records show that Mr Garrido was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 25-year-old woman in South Lake Tahoe in 1976.
Mr Garrido is also apparently delusional. He doesn't seem to understand that he has comitted a heinous crime.He obviously has no remorse. He thinks his story is "heart warming."
Below are some readers reactions to this story:
Unless Dugard was kept under lock and key for the entire 18 years of her captivity, over the next few days, certainly there will be an abundance of pieces about Stockholm syndrome and wondering why she didn't ask for help before... If Dugard's captors gave her any freedom, locals will start piping up about how she went to the grocery store or to the park, suggesting that she could have fled at any time.
Torie Bosch, blogging at DoubleX, speculates about the reasons why Jaycee Dugard did not escape.
Over the last 18 years I have often thought about what happened to Jaycee. Every time there was a news report about the discovery of bones in California, I would follow up to see if it was the remains of Jaycee. It never was. Over 18 years my mind wandered back to me sitting in Jaycee's bedroom with Terry, how neat and tidy it was, ready for her return. I hadn't thought about Jaycee in a while, until today.
Anthony Batson, formerly a producer for America's Most Wanted, remembers the day he interviewed Jaycee Dugard's parents.
Though the investigation is now ongoing, perhaps more details will emerge [about Nancy Garrido's] role in this 18-year saga. Was it fear that kept Nancy silent? Or does this just go to show how some women can overlook the monster in their husbands?
YourTango's Julie Leung turns the spotlight on Phillip Garrido's wife.
The fact that various acquaintances thought Garrido was crazy and actually saw Dugard and her daughters reveals how willing we sometimes are to ignore the strange behavior of others, and how this willingness can sometimes allow criminals to operate with impunity for years.
Jezebel's Anna N.
Jeannie
ReplyDeleteThe Garrido's are guilty as sin.
The DNA of the children will proved who the father is. You can bet your last thin dime it's Garrido.His wife is just as guilty.
You have been shield from a lot of the horror that go on. I can't say that the women is crazy, but I know they are sick.We have a husband and wife here that the wife lets her husband make love to their children, The law finally caught up with them and now they are incarcerated thank goodness.
They should get the death penalty without a trial. Just hang them high.
Nan
You know most of these so called “police/ parole officers” always have a chip on their shoulders, and even when they fail to do their jobs they appear arrogant like saying “what are you going to do”, let’s face it, she saved herself, she was not saved by the authorities. Does anyone believe that the authorities were still investigating her disappearance? The car used in her kidnapping was in the backyard, the lazy ass cops didn’t even bother to go through the backyard when the information indicated that kids were living back there, they didn’t check local schools to see if the kids were going to school or even asked to see the kids, no report to child protective services, boy how lazy can you be and still pick up your public service check, not to mention the parole officers who failed to visit and find out where this freak was living and what he was doing, amazing, simply amazing.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree he should have served all the time for his first offense, but don’t let our authorities off the hook. It gets worse after you read more about the facts. I guess she was taken in 1991, and in 1993 (only two years later) after violating probation he spent for 4 months in federal prison (California have yet to release any details of that violation or explain why he was again released into the community). Nevada officials said they were never notified of Garrido's parole violation, which would have allowed the state to revoke his parole.
ReplyDeleteHad California parole inspected his home in 1993, we would not be here now asking questions, we would be saying our system works, now I am not sure of anything. Because now I wonder how many more of these freaks are in our country doing the same thing under the noses of our so called authorities.
I can only say if you have a neighbor that fits this profile, call and call again to try to ensure that this does not happen again. Simply amazing.