“And when the girl’s father appeared in the scene, Nancy casually draped a jacket over the camera so the dad wouldn’t see the camera recording his daughter. In another scene, Phil and Nancy went to a park and found a spot where children were playing in the background in a play structure. Phil gave Nancy some instructions on how to use the videotape camera and how to pretend to film him while, in fact, filming the children in the background. The scene continues, Phil plays the guitar, sings a couple of songs, while Nancy is shooting past him on high zoom at the young children playing in the park.”
Referencing another tape, Pesce noted, he had shown it to Jaycee and asked her about what sounded like another man’s voice on the audio portion—in other words, different from Phil’s voice. Jaycee told Pesce, “That’s the way he talked. He used multiple voices and things like that.” When asked by a grand juror if Phil Garrido had ever sold any of these tapes or passed them around, Pesce said they never found any evidence of that.
And then Pierson got to the point of the events of August 26, 2009, and asked Jaycee to tell about what had occurred. She said, “His parole officer came to the house. I was scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Phil said everything was going to be okay. He said he just needed to set the record straight. He never thought he was doing anything wrong.
“I said to him, ‘Well, what do you want me to say?’” (Jaycee meant when she met with the parole officer at the station.) “He said, ‘Just stick to the plan. And if they ask you any questions, just say you need an attorney. You just need to tell them that you’re the girls’ mother and you give me permission to take them around.’ He was trying to get his church going, God’s Desire.”
Jaycee basically reiterated what already had been written about in the parole officer’s report, but with a few major differences. One was that the parole officer came out to the car when she had been sent there by him after the initial meeting in the parole office, and Jaycee said that he called her “a liar.”
She related, “He said I wasn’t their mother. They were his (Phil’s) brother’s kids. They were going to call Child Protective Services, and I said, ‘You can’t take them away!’”
And then there was a key point about how and when Jaycee finally let an officer know that she was not Alyssa. This also differed from the parole officer’s report. Jaycee testified, “An officer came in. Melanie. A female officer. The males were really scary. They thought I was a runaway. And they said they were going to arrest me, take me downtown, and find out who I really was.
“And Melanie came in and said that Phillip confessed and said that he had taken [me], and I started crying. She said, ‘You need to tell me your name.’ And I said that I can’t, because I hadn’t said my name in eighteen years. And—”
Pierson interrupted her and asked, “Did she have you write it down?”
Jaycee replied, “I wrote it down. And then I wrote down my mom’s name (Terry Probyn).”
It was those few written words that were the keys to unlocking Jaycee Lee Dugard’s prison doors at last.
END NOTE
Even after the sentencing against Phillip and Nancy Garrido, for many the damage had already been done. When Phil Garrido kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard on June 10, 1991, it was like a large rock being thrown into a still pond. The shock waves spread out in all directions. Jaycee, her family, South Lake Tahoe, law enforcement officers, judicial officials and ordinary citizens were all affected to some degree. None more so than Jaycee and her daughters.
And all of it could be traced back to one individual: Phillip Garrido. In a very real sense, it was because he refused to keep the worst of his nature in check. Drug use only fueled his refusal to take responsibility for his actions. The use of LSD along with his erratic and narcissistic nature was a lethal combination. He readily admitted to being a spoiled child, and from the late 1960s onward, he acted upon his worst impulses.
Only when he was caught did Garrido pretend to mend his ways. Phil was good at that—convincing authorities in the judicial system and parole boards that he was a good candidate for release. Always a model prisoner, Phil bided his time until he was released. And then, once again, he placed no restrictions upon himself when it came to doing what he desired, which included kidnapping and rape.
In many ways, Jaycee’s case was not unlike a Thomas Hardy novel, where incidents that began as such small factors turned into a major tragedy. If there had been a roadblock on the highways out of the Tahoe Basin within the first crucial minutes after the kidnapping, none of the years of agony would have taken place. If Phillip Garrido’s 1976 kidnapping and rape case had been looked at more closely by law enforcement in the summer of 1991, there may have been an inspection of his Walnut Avenue residence that year. If the Nevada parole board had factored in Phil’s major drug bust of 1972, they may not have voted 3–2 to release him from the Nevada prison when they did. If Nancy Garrido had released Jaycee in 1993, when Phil went back to prison for six weeks, sixteen more years of captivity for Jaycee would have been avoided.
But as in Churchill’s words, “the terrible ifs” accumulated, and freedom for Jaycee and her daughters had to wait until two vigilant women at UC Berkeley felt that something was wrong with Phil Garrido and the two girls who accompanied him to Sproul Hall on August 25, 2009. At least then, there was a chance for a new beginning for Jaycee, Angel, and Starlit.
There was one silver lining to all of this. Because of changes and improvements in the way sex offenders were monitored after all the news about Jaycee came out, a fourteen-year-old Concord girl was saved from a similar fate. In a very real sense, that girl owed her life and freedom to Jaycee. Without Jaycee, that girl most likely would have ended up raped and confined, or more likely dead.
Jaycee had endured what no one should have had to endure. And yet she did it with such unbelievable dignity and grace, as to become the remarkable young woman that she is. Filled with compassion, strength, and an indomitable will—Jaycee became the daughter that any mother would be proud to call her own. She became the mother who any daughter would look up to and announce with pride that Jaycee was her Mom.
Jaycee Lee Dugard
spent the first nine
years of her life with
her mother, Terry, a
single mom. When
Terry married Carl
Probyn, the family
moved to South Lake
Tahoe, California.
(Yearbook photo)
Jaycee eventually liked
the move and enjoyed
her classmates at
Meyers Elementary
School. (Yearbook photo)
Jaycee Dugard had been missing
for eighteen years when, on
August 25, 2009, University of
California, Berkeley policewomen
Ally Jacobs (left) and Lisa
Campbell (right) became
suspicious about a man with two
girls on campus. (Cathy Cockrell/
UC Berkeley NewsCenter)
For her work in breaking open the
case, Officer Ally Jacobs received
a thank-you from the entire city
council in her hometown of
Brentwood, California, where she
lived with her two young sons.
(Author photo)
Jaycee Dugard announced her
true identity at the Concord,
California Parole Office.
Reporters showed up at the
nearby Concord Police
Department soon after the
news broke. (Author photo)
After the revelation that “Alyssa” was actually
Jaycee Lee Dugard, law enforcement investigators
descended upon the home of Phillip and Nancy
Garrido near Antioch, California, where Jaycee
and her two daughters, fathered by Phil, had
been kept in seclusion. (Author photo)
Ju
st two of the many officers and
investigators, after a long, hot day
of work at the Garrido home.
Temperatures in the area that
August reached over 100 degrees.
(Author photo)
The Garridos’ green van was
hauled away as evidence to a
police yard for further investigation
of its interior. (Author photo)
Reporters from around the world
descended upon Walnut Avenue
once the incredible story broke
about Jaycee Dugard, her
daughters, and the kidnappers.
(Author photo)
While reporters were interested in all the police activity, the police were just as interested in the reporters. Most officers had never seen a media frenzy like this before and captured it on camera. (Author photo)
Young Phil Garrido attended
classes in the small town of
Brentwood, California, about fifty
miles east of San Francisco.
(Yearbook photo)
Phil was bright and popular with
girls in school, but he made only
average grades and didn’t join
any clubs. He was much more
interested in playing bass guitar
in his rock and roll band.
(Yearbook photo)
Many people who knew him said
that Phil Garrido was different after
he had a motorcycle accident and
started taking illegal drugs. He
turned from being a “nice, clean-cut
kid” into a “dope-smoking stoner.”
Soon he was using LSD almost on a
daily basis. (Mug shot)
Despite Phil’s yen for illegal drugs and sometimes bizarre behavior, his high school sweetheart, Christine Perreira, eloped with him to Reno in 1973. (Yearbook photo)
Phil got into very serious trouble in 1976 when he kidnapped Katie Callaway in South Lake Tahoe, California. He took her across state lines into Nevada to a warehouse in Reno and raped her for hours. Only the lucky arrival of a police officer at the warehouse saved Katie. (Mug shot)
Phil got an early release from
federal prison and served his
probation near Antioch in a house
his mother owned. In 1993, while
living there with Nancy, Phil broke
the rules of his probation and was
sent back to prison for a short time.
(Mug shot)
Phil’s mug shot was taken again
when he was arrested for Jaycee
Dugard’s kidnapping in 2009.
At the time, he had a distinctive
growth near his nose. (Mug shot)
At the time of her arrest, Nancy
Garrido looked care-worn and
dazed. (Mug shot)
There were concerns that
other missing Bay Area
children might have been
kidnapped by Phil and
Nancy Garrido.
Blond-haired Michaela
Garecht was one of them.
She was kidnapped in
broad daylight in
Hayward, California, in
1988. Phil was residing
in a halfway house nearby
at the time. (Yearbook
photo)
Michaela’s mother, Sharon (second from left), went to Walnut Avenue when all the police activity was going on there in August and September 2009. Sharon had hopes that Michaela might still be alive, as Jaycee was. (Author photo)
A house next door to the Garrido home came under police investigation when they learned that Phil had been caretaker of that property for a period of time when no one lived there. (Author photo)
Police scent dogs were used by investigators on the neighbor’s and Garrido’s properties, searching for signs of human remains. (Author photo)
Hayward Police Department Lieutenant Christine Orrey gave progress reports to journalists about digging for remains in the properties’ backyards. (Author photo)
Forensic bone
specialist Bill Silva
told reporters that
even though human
bone fragments were
found on both
properties, the bones
were very old and
might have come
from a Native
American burial site.
(Author photo)
Phil and Nancy Garrido were arrested on multiple charges in El Dorado County, where the initial kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard had taken place. Their court appearances were in Placerville, California, an old Gold Rush mining town originally known as Hangtown. (Author photo)
The DA’s office in El Dorado County put together a team that compiled literally thousands of pages of documents on the case against Phil and Nancy Garrido. (Author photo)
Phil often stared off into space during court proceedings. (Author photo)
While Phil came into court with no emotion showing on his face, Nancy generally looked distraught or embarrassed about being there. (Author photo)
Nancy Garrido liked
her first attorney,
Gilbert Maines, but
he got into trouble for
allegedly making
remarks about how
he was going to
make money from a
(Author photo)
Judge Phimister threw
Maines off the case and
appointed Stephen Tapson
as Nancy’s lawyer. Nancy
was initially not pleased
by this development.
(Author photo)
Phil Garrido’s lawyer,
Susan Gellman,
commiserated with
Maines about this
development. (Author
photo)
When it snowed
outside the
courthouse, Phil
Garrido’s lawyer,
Susan Gellman,
bundled up and
wore a cowboy hat.
(Author photo)
Veteran courtroom sketch artist Vicki Behringer took binoculars to court to capture every detail in exacting precision. (Author photo)
Katie Callaway Hall
(first woman from left)
was the woman Phil
had raped in 1976.
Katie came to all the
court hearings in the
Garrido case. She
wanted him to know
that she was there and
sticking up for Jaycee
and her daughters.
Katie called Phil a
monster. (Author photo)
Represented by famed lawyer Gloria Allred (photo above, third from left), Jaycee’s biological father, Ken Slayton (also above, fourth from left), often went to court hearings. He sat next to Katie Callaway Hall in the gallery. (Author photo)
Judge Douglas Phimister had to rule on numerous decisions about points of law and media requests during pretrial hearings for Phil and Nancy Garrido. (Author photo)
Not unlike Walnut Avenue near Antioch, the Placerville courthouse became a beehive of reporters’ activity after every major court hearing in the Garrido case. (Author photo)
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