Lost and Found (14 page)

Slowly it began to take me to another style of living and thinking, in the long run I lost much of my reasoning powers. Seven years of using made me fall from reality.

On my own I have been seeing Dr. Kiehlbauch of Men. Health. We have private one hour sessions, in which we have progressed very well.

At this time I have started and finished high school in order to prepare for college.

I have been working at the carpenter shop as I desire to learn the trade. So I have inrolled [sic] in an apprentice carpentry program lasting four years. Along with that I inrolled [sic] in drafting school as I felt it was a very important part of carpentry.

This summer I start college. After my four years of drafting and carpentry I plan on a two year computer course.

I have set my goals and find myself well on my way. It shall take seven years of schooling to complete these courses.

In all respects my life has changed. Of course that is because I wanted to, knowing this is my chance to get my life in line. Drugs have been my down fall [sic]. I am so ashamed of my past. But my future is now in controle [sic].

If I may please, all I ask is to be given the chance. By writing and asking for a report on me from Dr. Kiehlbauch and all departments would be giving me the fairest examination I could hope for.

Sincerely,

Phillip C. Garrido.

In the March 24 motion to reduce his sentence to twenty-five years, Phillip Garrido carefully listed reasons why Judge Thompson should do so. He noted that when he committed the crime, he was “suffering from the effect of marijuana and a drug known as LSD,” claiming they cause him to withdraw from reality, so he lacked the capacity to conform his conduct to the law.

Garrido also “prayed” for the reduction in his sentence, claiming that a lengthy stay behind bars would interfere with his further education and future plans.

“The Petitioner’s long sentence denies [him] certain training and rehabilitation,” stated the motion. “It is the Petitioner who has set his own goal to reform his old way and live a new life on his own. [He] could become a very useful citizen and be rehabilitated if he could have his sentence reduced to twenty-five (25) years, which would make him a parole date in eight (8) years, where he could be released to the State of Nevada as an Educated Person and being a rehabilitated person.”

On April 5, 1978, Phillip Garrido turned twenty-seven. The same day, he received a glowing progress report of his first year in Leavenworth. His senior case manager, R. S. Rose, wrote that he was making good progress and had a clean conduct record.

“Mr. Garrido has demonstrated an above average adjustment in all areas of his confinement,” read the official report. “Mr. Garrido has maintained a clear conduct record while at Leavenworth.”

Garrido now worked as an apprentice carpenter, responsible for woodworking equipment, cabinet-making and installation.

“His work supervisor has rated him average,” stated the report. “He shows regular attendance on the job, gets along well with others, reacts well to authority, and accepts responsibility. Mr. Garrido is presently receiving Meritorious Good Time for his responsibilities within the Carpenter Shop.”

The report also applauded Garrido’s recent academic accomplishments, as he now pursued college-level courses.

“Mr. Garrido has been successful in significantly elevating his academic level of performance,” noted his education supervisor.

It noted that on March 16, Inmate Garrido had been reassigned from the basic educational program to the Drafting Vocational Training Program. And he had also enrolled in eight hours of college course work for the upcoming summer session.

“He is an exemplary student,” stated the report, “and cooperative in all respects.”

Two weeks later, Leavenworth clinical psychologist Dr. J. B. Kiehlbauch prepared a detailed four-page psychological evaluation of Garrido, to help U.S. district judge Bruce Thompson decide whether to reduce his sentence.

“Mr. Garrido is the product of a prosocial middle class family, now broken,” wrote Dr. Kiehlbauch in his report, “from which he inculcated generally appropriate values, though he described himself as over-condoned and pampered by his parents. A high school graduate, he has no military service or work record of consequence, describing himself as a ‘semi-professional musician.’

“There seems little question that Mr. Garrido was ‘a spoiled child.’ It is characteristic of him to go to extremes in whatever commitments are made or programs are undertaken; depending on the character of the pursuit, this can be contributory to excellence or extreme derogation.

“At this point in time, only occasional feelings of depersonalization, cognitively construed hallucinations, and nightmares plague him from the earlier toxicity. He has good management of impulses in the psychosexual realm, and appropriately oriented toward their prosocial expression throughout his future years.

“In effect, it does appear the instant offense evolved from the potentiation by drug use of what were comparatively normal drives to abnormal forms of expression and intensity.”

Dr. Kiehlbauch appeared much impressed with his patient’s positive progress in his first year at Leavenworth.

“He has gained measurably with respect to these over his period of service to date,” wrote Dr. Kiehlbauch. “Highly significant is Mr. Garrido’s record of accomplishment in training, education, and treatment since his arrival here. He has achieved conspicuously in educational self-development, on-the-job training in carpentry, and in a drafting vocational training course.”

And the psychologist also noted how the convicted kidnapper and rapist was now a devout Jehovah’s Witness, participating in religious ceremonies with other inmates.

“The depth of his religious commitment and his impact on his life philosophy are clear,” noted the doctor, “and his style of dealing with these phenomena, is on balance, quite healthy. He sees himself as one whose life is and will be based on his strongly held religious beliefs.”

As to his progress in treatment, the doctor noted that Garrido had been “regular, active, and highly productive.” And taking into account his long fifty-year sentence, their work had involved developing his personality, resolving areas of conflict and reevaluating his lifestyle patterns.

Dr. Kiehlbauch reported that his patient was “acutely conscientious,” his “prime concern” being that their lengthy sessions together were “inconveniencing his supervisor,” as it kept him away from his work detail.

“Mr. Garrido follows a very active work and leisure activities schedule,” he explained, “and seems quite healthy in his interests.”

The doctor also reported positive results for a barrage of psychological testing Garrido had recently undergone. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Test—used to identify deviant personality traits—showed Garrido’s personality was “healthy,” falling within normal limits.

Garrido was also given the Bender Motor Gestalt Test, developed in 1938 to screen children for developmental disorders or brain damage.

“Activity and approval-seeking behaviors were a strongly recurring phenomena,” wrote Dr. Kiehlbauch. “The protocol reflected careful attention to detail and manner of presentation without significant derogatory indicators.”

Dr. Kiehlbauch also put his patient through the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Test, where he was given forty unfinished sentences to complete. Developed in 1950, this test is commonly used to test sex offenders and evaluate their state of mind.

“The Incomplete Sentence Test,” wrote the psychologist, “reflects Mr. Garrido as a sensitive young man, who is deeply committed religiously and goal oriented in management of life’s problems and aims.”

Dr. Kiehlbauch reported that the test also revealed Garrido becomes “driven” and “compulsive” when he commits to a cause or purpose, approaching it with “extreme zeal and diligence.”

“Appropriate degrees of secondary narcissism,” wrote the doctor, “and considerable conflict with regard to his current marital situation are also clear.”

Summarizing his report, Dr. Kiehlbauch expressed great surprise when Phillip Garrido rejected his offer to help him transfer to a far easier mental health facility. Instead his patient had insisted on spending a minimum of three more years at Leavenworth, allowing him to complete his religious education and development program.

“All things considered,” Dr. Kiehlbauch wrote, “this examiner recommends 1) a modification of the current sentence to indeterminate parole eligibility, and 2) a recommendation that he be paroled when treatment and training goals are accomplished, unless there is some dramatic change in his condition in the interim.”

Dr. Kiehlbauch also recommended that on his eventual release from prison, Garrido should receive psychological treatment and parole supervision to ease his transition back into the community.

“Prognosis for successful transition to the community is considered very good,” reported the doctor. “The likelihood of further extralegal behaviors on Mr. Garrido’s part is seen as minimal.”

Three weeks later, on May 10, Assistant United States Attorney Leland Lutfy filed a motion in district court urging Judge Thompson to deny Phillip Garrido’s plea to reduce his sentence. He pointed out that the defendant had filed his motion well past the 120-day limit after sentencing, and was therefore void.

“While defendant Garrido’s motion might at first blush appear to be made by a repentant criminal,” wrote Lutfy, “the Court should keep in mind the nature of the crime for which Garrido was convicted and the circumstances surrounding it.”

The prosecutor then reminded the judge how cruelly and viciously Garrido had treated his victim during her kidnapping.

“Garrido treated this girl no better than he would a side of beef,” read his motion, “and the Court’s imposition of sentence was equal to Garrido’s actions.”

Judge Bruce Thompson agreed, ruling that Phillip Garrido’s fifty-year federal sentence would remain.

16

NANCY

On July 20, 1979, Phillip Garrido’s mother Pat, now fifty-eight and nearing retirement, and his new stepfather Herschel Franzen, purchased a three-bedroom gray cinderblock house in Antioch, California, for $68,000. Built in 1951, 1554 Walnut Avenue was a 1,457-square-foot home in an unincorporated rural part of town. It fronted almost one acre of land in its backyard.

All the houses in Walnut Street have large extended backyards, where chickens and other domestic animals wander around freely.

Dale and Polly White moved into their house on Viera Avenue around the same time. And their back garden backed directly onto the Franzens’, sharing a back fence.

“I used to work at the post office,” said Polly White. “Pat had a post office box there and I’d see her occasionally and ask how she was doing. We were not friends but I just knew who she was.”

After losing his fight to have his sentence reduced, Garrido, now twenty-eight, settled down at Leavenworth to serve his time. He regularly exchanged letters with his mother, who wrote him all about her new home in Antioch, which would one day be his.

In early 1980, a few weeks after Garrido’s divorce was finalized, a cellmate introduced him to his attractive twenty-five-year-old niece Nancy Bocanegra, who was visiting him in Leavenworth.

Garrido struck up an immediate rapport with the shy, soft-spoken petite beauty, who lived in Denver, Colorado. The willowy, dark-haired, olive-skinned girl was also a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and over the next few months Phillip Garrido assiduously courted her with romantic love letters.

He told the withdrawn and impressionable woman how he had now found God, putting his former life of sex and drugs behind him. And when he proposed marriage, saying it was God’s plan for them to be together, she had no hesitation in saying yes. Soon afterwards he wrote to his ex-wife to tell her the news.

“He found God,” said Christine. “He was marrying a Jehovah’s Witness lady, somebody he met who visited Leavenworth.”

Now that he had exhausted all his appeals, the ever-calculating Phillip Garrido had embarked on another tack. For if he had a loving wife and a stable home life awaiting him on the outside, his chances of parole would be far higher than they were at the moment.

Nancy Bocanegra was born on July 18, 1955, in Bexar County, Texas, one of six children of Mexican-American parents. There was little that stood out about the pretty, dark-haired girl, as she grew up as what her brother David would later describe as “an all-American girl” in a “loving” home.

“[She was] a normal kid,” remembered David Bocanegra. “A teenager going out with her friends, working, having a good time.”

When she was seventeen years old, the Bocanegra family moved to Denver, Colorado. Nancy found a job as a nursing aide and according to her brothers never got in any trouble with the police.

“I don’t think she even had a speeding ticket,” said David.

“Not even a parking ticket,” added another brother, Rey.

But after Nancy met Phillip Garrido at Leavenworth, everything changed. In the fall of 1981, twenty-five-year-old Nancy Bocanegra began making frequent trips to Leavenworth, Kansas, to visit her fiancé.

“I knew Nancy,” said Garrido’s father Manuel. “She came down to visit him in prison. I took her to lunch. I got to know her.”

Manuel Garrido says he got on well with Nancy and approved of the match. But her family was horrified at the prospect of her marrying a convicted kidnapper and sex offender.

“Once she met Phillip,” said her brother David, “that was it. It was like she was no longer around.”

On Wednesday, October 14, 1981, Phillip Garrido married Nancy in a religious ceremony performed by Senior Pastor Nanfore Craig, of the Leavenworth Prison Interfaith Church. A couple inmates acted as witnesses, and after the ceremony a prison official took a wedding photograph of the newly married couple.

A few days later, Phillip Garrido proudly sent it to his father, who had refused to attend the wedding. He wrote on the back, “All our love, Phillip and Nancy Garrido.”