News just broke that a pretty, blond 11 year old girl adbucted 18+ years ago was found. Her kidnapper kept her hidden for 18+ years, had 2 kids with her, and was picked up handing out religious literature at a college. Now, it surfaces that he has ties with the Jehovah's Witnesses. Anyone know him?
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Jaycee Lee Dugard was only 11 when she was snatched off the street in El Dorado County. For the next 18 years, she was confined in a shed or a tent.
She never went to school. She never saw a doctor. She never got a first date or went to a prom, and she bathed in a makeshift, outdoor shower in an Antioch backyard.
Her closest human contact, police say, was with the 58-year-old convicted rapist who they allege kidnapped her, then impregnated her twice starting when she was 14.
Last seen as a little fifth-grader in a windbreaker and pink stretch pants, she was reunited on Thursday with her joyful mother. Now 29, she is in good health, police say, except for the horror of what she has endured.
"Living in a backyard for 18 years does take its toll," El Dorado County Undersheriff Fred Kollar said.
Authorities say she was taken by an Antioch couple, Phillip Craig Garrido and his wife, Nancy. They allegedly kept her in isolation in their backyard without detection, despite the fact that Garrido is on lifetime parole for kidnapping and rape and subject to home visits by a state parole agent.
No one knew she or her daughters – now 11 and 15 – were there until this week.
CAMPUS COP BECAME WARY
The break in the case began Tuesday when a police officer at University of California, Berkeley, became suspicious.
Authorities said the officer spotted Garrido with two children on campus, where Garrido apparently had gone to distribute religious-themed literature, a frequent hobby of his.
Upon questioning, she discovered Garrido was a parolee and contacted his parole agent in Concord. That agent summoned Garrido to his office on Wednesday, where he arrived in the company of his wife, two girls and a woman identified as "Allissa."
After some questioning, the agent became concerned.
"The parole agent had never seen these individuals, Allissa and the two young children, during his visits to the house and thought that the females in Garrido's company were suspicious and contacted the Concord Police Department," Kollar said.
When police arrived, the women were separated from Garrido. He eventually confessed to having kidnapped Dugard, police said, and in separate questioning "Allissa" confirmed that she was, in fact, the girl kidnapped from Meyers in 1991.
The couple were booked into the El Dorado County jail Thursday on rape, kidnapping, conspiracy and other charges and each was being held in lieu of $1 million bail.
Dugard had not surfaced since the abduction, despite all the fliers distributed over the years and despite the fact that a drawing of a suspect seen driving away with the girl is a close likeness to Garrido's wife, Nancy.
The day she was taken, Dugard set off from her home in Meyers to walk to her school bus stop. Each morning, she would check the clock on the microwave at 8:05 a.m., then head off.
On that day, as her stepfather, Carl Probyn, watched from the house, a car made a sudden U-turn and cut the girl off. Someone reached out and dragged her inside as she screamed.
Then she was gone.
'HE HAD NO PAROLE VIOLATIONS'
The day of the abduction, Phillip Garrido was on parole, subject to stop by any law officer and to searches and surprise visits at his home.
He had been convicted of federal and Nevada state charges in connection with a Nov. 22, 1976, incident when he was 25 and kidnapped a woman from the Tahoe basin, drove her to a warehouse in Reno and sexually assaulted her. His attorney blamed the crime on Garrido's five-year abuse of the hallucinogenic drug, LSD, according to Bee archives.
Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison and five years to life in Nevada prisons. But, after stints in federal prisons in Leavenworth, Kan., and Lompoc, as well as a Nevada state prison, he was released on lifetime parole in 1988.
He was under federal supervision from 1988 until 1999, when California parole agents took over his case. "He had no parole violations," corrections Undersecretary of Operations Scott Kernan said. "He was compliant with his conditions of parole."
State corrections officials said Garrido had been on "passive" GPS monitoring since sometime between 2006 and 2008, meaning parole officers did not continually track him electronically. His movements could be traced, but there were no restrictions on where he could go.
They said his home typically would have been visited by his agent three times a month and that he would have been expected to make regular office visits, as well.
However, spokesman Gordon Hinkle said officials could not provide the dates or frequency of actual visits to the home because the records still were being reviewed Thursday.
Garrido apparently lived at the Antioch home, 180 miles from the site of Dugard's abduction, from the time he got out of prison.
Christine Murphy, Garrido's high school sweetheart and first wife, said Thursday that Garrido had grown up in the Contra Costa County area and had graduated from Liberty Union High School in 1968 or 1969.
Murphy, reached by telephone at her home in the Midwest, said her former husband had been a musician and drug abuser and that she divorced him after he committed the Nevada kidnapping and rape.
"Last I heard, he found God," she said. "He was marrying a Jehovah's Witness lady, somebody he met who visited in Leavenworth."
NEIGHBORS NEVER SAW GIRL
Garrido maintained a blog that featured religious-themed writings, and neighbors in Antioch described him Thursday as a mysterious man who rarely interacted with them.
Even more rare, they said, were glimpses of an older woman they assumed was his wife and Garrido's young children, who some neighbors believe were home-schooled.
Not one neighbor said they ever saw Dugard.
A few said Garrido's mother lived at the home, too, and suffered from dementia. Neighbors reported ambulances responding to the home several times in recent months.
Many said they were aware that Garrido was a registered sex offender and that they kept their distance.
"That's all you can do, is steer clear," said Betty Unpingco, 52, who lives a few doors down.
Haydee Perry, 35, moved into her boyfriend Damon Robinson's house, next door to Garrido, a couple of months ago. She has visited Robinson's home for a few years and said she saw only one little girl living at Garrido's. Perry estimated she was 11.
She said the girl was nervous, uneasy and "not right."
"It was not normal behavior," Perry said. "She wouldn't smile. She would just give this blank stare."
Perry didn't know the little girl's name but said she looked very similar to the pictures of Dugard on television, with light skin and blonde hair.
The little girl reportedly told Perry that she had two older sisters, one a young teen, the other 28. Perry never saw either of them.
Sometime around 2001 or 2002, the Unpingco family hosted a high school graduation party for one of their daughters. They borrowed speakers from Garrido, their neighbor, and when they saw him loitering out in the street, they invited him in, said Monica Unpingco, now 33.
That was before they knew Garrido was a convicted sex offender. But they knew something wasn't right when he had too much to drink and began "acting really weird" around the teenage girls, she said, "eyeing them and saying things he shouldn't have been saying."
Robinson said a friend of his grew nervous after seeing tents in Garrido's backyard and what she thought were people living in them. She called the Sheriff's Department, but Robinson said Garrido managed to deter the deputies and they left without searching the home.
"Alls they had to do is look over the fence," said Robinson, 38. "That girl would have been back with her family, no doubt."
But the El Dorado County undersheriff said it would not have been that simple.
Kollar described a collection of two tents, two sheds, a shower and an outhouse hidden from the rest of the world by a fence lined with trees, garbage cans and an old dishwasher.
The only access was through a narrow gap in the fence with a tarp hanging over it.
The largest shed was 10 feet by 10 feet, and none of the structures was higher than 6 feet, Kollar said. One of the sheds was soundproofed and could be opened only from the outside. Electrical cords were all that powered the structures.
The tents were situated to "isolate the victims from outside contact," Kollar said, "as if you were camping."
Parked in the backyard was a vehicle matching the description of the one involved in Dugard's abduction.
There was no evidence that any of the alleged victims ever left the compound before the 15- and 11-year-old girls were spotted Tuesday on the Berkeley campus. Both of the young girls were born at the house, Kollar said.
Dugard was likely taken straight to the home in Antioch after she was abducted, Kollar said. As far as investigators know, she never tried to make contact with the outside world.
"None of the children had ever gone to school, they'd never been to a doctor, they were kept in complete isolation in this compound," Kollar said
'THEY FOUND JAYCEE … ALIVE'
Authorities say they still have DNA testing to complete, but that they have no doubt the 29-year-old woman is Dugard. And they were certain enough to break the news to the family before it became public.
For Dugard's family, the end to the nightmare came at about 4 p.m. Wednesday.
The couple is separated and both live in Southern California, Carl Probyn in Orange County and Terry Probyn in Riverside.
Their 19-year-old daughter Shayna called Carl Probyn at about 4 p.m. Wednesday and said, "Mom has something to say to you. Are you sitting down?"
Then Terry got on the phone with the news.
"They found Jaycee, she is alive," she said as the couple began to cry over the phone.
Terry Probyn had been called by FBI agents at work and given the news, but she initially thought it was a cruel joke.
Then an agent put Jaycee on the phone.
"My wife said that who she spoke to remembers everything," Carl Probyn said. "My wife and Jaycee were joined at the hip."
A Ford sedan matching the description of the car involved in Jaycee Lee Dugard's 1991 abduction is loaded onto a tow truck in the Antioch backyard of Phillip and Nancy Garrido, her alleged kidnappers.
Haydee Perry stands outside her Antioch home, next door to where Phillip Garrido and his wife allegedly held captive Jaycee Lee Dugard and the two daughters he fathered with her. Perry said that she saw only one little girl living at Garrido's. Perry estimated she was 11. She said the girl was nervous, uneasy and "not right."
Jaycee Lee Dugard, seen in a childhood photo from 1991, when she was abducted.
Suspect Phillip Garrido is on lifetime parole for kidnapping, rape.